Lego 2K Drive attempted to offer racing fans something unique and stand out in a crowded genre, but ended up handicapping them in the name of chasing profits.

With its open world and visually unique race tracks, Lego 2K Drive promises to offer the best of "Mario Kart" and "Forza Horizon" in one family-friendly package. The game not only offers paved tracks, but also the ability to assemble your own car with virtual Lego bricks.

Unfortunately, LEGO 2K Drive is far from perfect. To unlock new vehicles and characters, you have to endure monotonous tasks or spend real-world money. Also, the graphics and performance are not ideal when played on the Nintendo Switch. For a review of the Lego 2K drive, click here.

Lego 2K Drive is an open-world racing game. Naturally, you will spend the majority of your time behind the wheel, whether on the race track or exploring the vast hub world of Bricklandia.

Driving in Lego 2K Drive is satisfying thanks to the arcade-style controls. The basics are simple: just learn to keep your foot on the gas pedal and drift around sharp turns. However, the controls are very different between heavier and lighter cars, so every time you unlock a new car, a new challenge awaits you.

The first time you drive a new motor, it may go off the track and explode. But learning how each car handles and drifts around corners is a rewarding process.

In the story mode of LEGO 2K Drive, the ultimate goal is to win the Bricklandia Cup. To earn the entry ticket, players must travel around Bricklandia and participate in races and challenges.

In most cases, winning a race in the story mode is not that difficult. However, 2K Lego Drive keeps things tense by making sure that your AI opponents don't go too far ahead or behind you. In addition, the race course is dotted with useful power-ups. These include rocket launchers, mini bombs, and spider webs. Power-ups can be fired at opponents, smashing their cars or slowing them down.

Of course, other racers can also use power-ups against you. When you hit a bump, parts of your car will fly off your car, but if you hit a fence, plant, or other fragile object, your car's health will be restored.

While I enjoyed destroying my opponent's car, I found it difficult to recover my car's condition after returning fire. It would have been nice to have better placed obstacles to destroy. The obstacles are usually at the edge of the course and you have to go off course to break them. It is often easier to concentrate on driving and hope you don't hit anyone.

Pole position is easy to get, but you need to be strategic if you want to get the fastest lap time. The type of terrain (road, off-road, water) must be considered and the appropriate vehicle selected accordingly. Smart use of boost is also important. Keep your meter full by boosting straight lines and hitting obstacles.

To unlock new races, you must complete quests in the open world. Fortunately, there is a lot of variety in these tasks, such as picking up characters and dropping them off at designated locations or running a course while jumping over buildings.

Some of the quests are fun and can improve your racing skills. We liked the one that guided us through a shortcut on the race course in the story mode, and the challenge to cut down a tree helped us improve our turning accuracy. However, the individual quests don't give you much XP, so you have to complete a number of them before the next race is unlocked.

Fortunately, there are many quests to choose from, which helps keep things from getting repetitive.

Lego 2K Drive's customization tools are impressive. The game offers a giant toy box of virtual Lego bricks, giving you the freedom to build almost anything you can imagine.

However, it cannot be built from scratch and instead must use one of the existing frames as a starting point. Once a new vehicle is designed, there are many options for paint, decals, and decorations.

Be aware that building your dream car may not be so easy. LEGO 2K Drive has many tutorials that explain the basics of building a functional car, but even after watching them all, I wasn't quite sure how to actually build a good looking car.

If you struggle to build a beautiful car, you could instead buy a ready-made model from Unkie's Emporium, but this comes with the problem of monetization.

The real strength of customization in this game comes into play when designing a car for a specific task.

For example, I struggled with a mini-game in which I had to prevent a wave of robots from destroying three power transmission towers. After my first attempt failed, a pop-up hint suggested that a wider vehicle might be better suited for the job. I headed to the garage and built as large a vehicle as I could. It wasn't pretty, but it allowed me to complete the mission with flying colors on the next attempt.

The LEGO 2K drive has two types of currency: BrickBux and Coins; BrickBux can be earned by winning races or completing challenges, while Coins can only be purchased with real world money.

At Unkie's Emporium, you can purchase new vehicles, characters, and cosmetic items. Thankfully, everything in the store can be purchased with BrickBux, but it takes a lot of money to buy the most desirable items. This is a serious problem.

Playing LEGO 2K Drive would be more rewarding if new vehicles and customization options could be unlocked at a reasonable pace by winning races. Currently, players are forced to work for several hours to purchase new vehicles. The progression system seems designed to encourage people to spend money on coins to skip the tedious tasks.

The multiplayer part of Lego 2K Drive allows players to choose between individual races or longer cup series. It can be played locally or online.

In my testing, the game was playable online, but the driving felt slower compared to the smooth races when played solo. Nevertheless, smashing your friends' cars and competing for the fastest lap time is a winning formula for fun.

Unfortunately, I had trouble finding others online who were playing LEGO 2K Drive. After waiting for about two minutes in the online lobby looking for a race, the game forced me to play against a CPU driver. I raced against bots for several rounds until eventually other players joined me.

When played on the Nintendo Switch, Lego 2K Drive looks rather disappointing. Before each race, a flyover of the track and surrounding area is shown, but these cutscenes do not portray the game at its best. Textures and character models are blurry and indistinct.

At the very least, they improve during actual gameplay. The visuals are vibrant and colorful, and it is fun to watch the vehicles transform in milliseconds: cars, speedboats, and off-road baby carriages. It is also impressive to see Lego parts flying all over the place when colliding at high speeds.

Lighting effects also play a part in improving the game's graphics. Bricklandia looks quite beautiful in the setting sun, and the game's rough edges are less noticeable when driving at night.

As for sound, Lego 2K Drive brings catchy tunes and punchy sound effects. The soundtrack is an interesting mix of musical genres, ranging from the relaxing country riffs of Big Butte County to the thrilling sci-fi horror soundtrack of Robot Invasion.

However, if you want to actually hear the background music, you may want to adjust it in the settings menu. I could barely hear the soundtrack in the roaring engine until I tweaked the audio mix.

LEGO 2K Drive is an overall enjoyable experience. The game's greatest strength is its fully explorable open world, and its build-your-own-car system helps it stand out from rival racing games.

However, the hassle of unlocking new cars, characters, and items is tedious, and I wished the aggressive monetization was a bit more controlled. Lego 2K Drive is still worth playing, but be warned that they will do everything in their power to squeeze a few more cents out of you.