Go go power ... ninja?

I've done quite a bit of LEGO gaming in the past, to say nothing of real-life LEGO-ing, and I'm well-aware that the "LEGO" part of these games' appeal is fairly shallow.

I enjoyed LEGO: The Lord of the Rings because I love The Lord of the Rings. And I enjoyed LEGO City Undercover because I love ... GTA. But LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes - and its dead-horse-beating follow-up LEGO Marvel's Avengers - strained my attachments to those franchises. The LEGO Movie Videogame was fan-service-y fun just like The LEGO Movie was, but...

I have no attachment to Ninjago, so The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game had an uphill battle for my attention to start with. And this game's addition of broad combat "techniques" failed to distract me from its rote beat-em-up formula, environments which are as visually-noisy as they are boring, and a story which is clearly doing a lazy job of following a movie script.

Also, the game crashed to my desktop twice, in the ~60 minutes I played it. Fortunately its checkpoints weren't far behind, but... that's statistically worrying.

I do have to give the game credit for getting me interested in The Lego Ninjago Movie. Many of the game's cutscenes appear to have been lifted directly from the film, and their silly, fast-paced quips were definitely my favorite parts of my brief playing time.

It's rather telling that Steam achievement records show a sharp drop-off between players who finished the tutorial/prologue (Training Dojo) and those who made it through the first major story beat (completing Chapter 3 / Location 1).

Progress: Got to Chapter 4 / the beach.