An enjoyable experience that matches together a platforming collect-a-thon with a game mechanic that is unique and captivating. The story centres on overcoming one's bullies whilst sharing positivity by painting uplifting murals. As you bring colour back to the town with a magic brush, you choose which art designs to use and add your own vision to the story. These murals all remain on the map as you progress which is a wonderful touch. The genies you get to create are expressive, charming and add an interactional element through their requests that really brings the game up a notch in terms of immersion.

There was room for improvement in places. Occasionally, the map is a little difficult to read, but counteracted as protagonist Ash can easily clamber across many surfaces to reach places to put murals. The story comes to a close a little earlier than anticipated too but there's some replayability. I thought the motion sensor controls were fine and serviceable but they missed a trick by not allowing you to also use an optional PS Move controller! I'd have loved to have been able to use that as a brush. The devs addressed this, slightly, with a VR/Move level (which I haven't played) but it still could have been added to the main game.

Lots of fun and worth playing for its innovation alone.

Not hugely into the LEGO games other than LEGO Jurassic World, but this was a pleasant surprise. It's a GTA-clone bringing to mind family-orientated predecessor Simpsons Hit & Run, but unlike that game (and even many other LEGO games), this has its own original story. Lots of the story beats riff off other action-adventure and/or crime films and it's written very well. Genuinely humourous too. I can't recall when I've laughed out loud this much playing a game.

It's standard LEGO game gameplay of using different character types to puzzle and combat your way through the story. It's fairly rewarding but simplistic. The driving is decent if not a little sluggish. Probably let down the most really by its very lacklustre soundtrack. Very boring and repetitive, and I think the inclusion of a radio, with instrumental tracks, could have been a really great addition.

Maquette struggles in places to work as a game and doesn't always mesh well in its story-driven content either. Although I enjoyed some of the recursive puzzles a lot, there were plenty that were so obtuse and out there that they made me feel dumb when I worked out the solution. I don't think that's a marker of good ludic design if the way to play the game alters this much.

Sure, it's a beautiful looking game (although on PS4 suffers from significant frame-rate issues and stuttering) and the love story between the two feels like a modern, realistic attempt at navigating relationships.

That said, why is it told through a maquette world? What is the maquette of the gameplay and title really for? I get that there were some metaphoric connections between symbolism in the maquette and the real world, but it felt very tacked on. I learnt after finishing the game that this whole story WAS tacked on. Originally, the story revolved around a more fantastical setting involving a wizard trapping someone in the maquette. Makes more sense than what we got.

The game left me feeling frustrated, miserable and honestly quite bored.