Lego Dimensions Review - Stay Puft & Slimer Fun Packs

Warner Bros. Games recently released the Stay Puft & Slimer Fun Packs, which completes the run of Ghostbusters content for Lego Dimensions, and I have the honor of reviewing them for you today. ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS REVIEW

Before I get to the Fun Packs, I feel that an addendum to my Starter & Ghostbusters Level Pack review is in order. I have now had the chance to play the game patched-up on both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, which provided me with more details and insight.

The Xbox 360 version is UNPLAYABLE out of the box. The game would *always* freeze during the cutscene after the Lord Business boss fight on the second story level (The Simpsons' "Meltdown in Sector 7G"). It's happened to other people, too, as noted here and here. Rebooting the X360 doesn't help as it does it EVERY TIME! There is no workaround; no way to skip the cutscene (not on the fist playthrough). Patching the game fixed it, but the game should work from start to finish without needing to be patched. I had no problems like this on the PS3.

While patching the game fixes this problem, the latest patch itself presents another problem. With Patch v1.09 (released around May 6, 2016), all of your Red Brick Extras/Cheats will keep being turned off when you exit worlds, levels, or resume your saved game. The cheats all stayed active with patch v1.08, so it's definitely an issue with v1.09. Whether it's intended or a bug is unknown since there are no patch notes. It's not system-specific as it affects my X360 version (I refuse to update the PS3 past v1.08 for this reason), but others have the problem on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as noted here and here. So, if you need to patch your game now, you're screwed and will be forced to accept the v1.09 update. Since you don't need an update for the latest wave of packs, if you had already patched your game prior to May, there's no need to install the v1.09 patch. Long story short: Do NOT install the v1.09 patch on ANY system, if you can help it.

Prior to v1.09, the various patches added many useful new features to the game. One patch removed the annoyance that I mentioned in my review, where you had to move a character around the toypad to use their special ability; such as Batman's stealth, Wyldstyle's sense, and Gandalf's illumination. Now, you just have to press Circle/B when prompted to use that ability. You still have to move around the toypad to master build and to shake the boss lock-ons.

Another patch added a "Hire A Hero" feature, which lets you pay in-game studs (currency) to rent a character with a specific ability for 30-seconds so you can solve a puzzle. You need to have the "?" hint boxes turned on, and sometimes 30-seconds is not enough time. I rented Doc Brown for the drone puzzle in the Sedgewick Hotel foyer, and *just* as I was getting the hang of driving the drone, my 30-seconds was up and I accomplished nothing. A complete waste of 50,000 studs.

If you have a Ninjago character (who all have the Spinjitzu ability), you can enter the dock area in the Ghostbusters story level ("The Phantom Zone"). I did not have such a character when I wrote my original review. In the dock area, if you do certain things, you can raise the Titanic, and even enter it! More so, with a Delorean on board, you can time travel back to April 13, 1912 and see her just as Jack and Rose originally did...you know, before the faithful encounter with a certain iceberg. (Fun Fact: The skeletons of Jack and Rose are on the bow of the ship in the Ghostbusters world.) According to the Delorean's time circuits, "The Phantom Zone" level takes place on June 16, 1989 - Ghostbusters II's U.S. theatrical release date!


If you have a character with the Laser Beam Deflection ability (such as Wonder Woman or the Portal Companion Cube build 2), along with Wyldstyle (from the starter pack), you can go through the portal on the rooftop in the Ghostbusters Level Pack level and enter Dana's apartment. There are a few minikits you can collect in there with a humorous inside-joke involving a carton of eggs :-) Also, the minikit on the side of the rooftop temple in the Ghostbusters Level Pack level can not be obtained in 2-player mode because the camera does not move into a spot where you can see the puzzle. You must have Peter on the toypad to play the Ghostbusters Level Pack level. Slimer and Stay Puft can not do it themselves. This is true for ALL of the Level Pack levels, who all require the character they came with to be on the pad. For the worlds, you just need a character from that licensed property, so Peter OR Slimer OR Stay Puft are all you need to enter the Ghostbusters world.

Some of the characters that have newly-recorded dialog comment on the Ghostbusters content if they're on the toypad together. For example, if Peter and The Doctor (from Doctor Who) are in the game together, The Doctor will comment on Peter's uniform and his need for a dry cleaner. When The Wicked Witch of the West (from The Wizard of Oz) jumps into the Ecto-1, she will say how the "carriage" is horribly bright, but that she likes the spooky ghost on the side. (She says the same thing EVERY...SINGLE...TIME she drives the vehicle, so it gets old extremely fast!)

Okay, that wraps up my notes/updates on the Starter and Ghostbusters Level Packs. Time for the new stuff...


If you didn't already figure this out for yourself, you can't use the Stay Puft and Slimer Fun Packs by themselves. They're add-ons for the main game, so you need a Starter Pack for which ever of the five systems you own. I went over a lot of that in my previous review, so no need to go over it again. All of the purchase links are at the end of this review.


STAY PUFT FUN PACK

The Stay Puft Fun Pack contains 65 pieces and a printed manual showing you how to assemble Stay Puft. You'll have to follow the in-game instructions to assemble the Terror Dog "vehicle". The Terror Dog minifigure is a bit of a pain to assemble. So...Much...Grey!!! The on-screen instructions were not 100% easy to understand in a few spots. I had to pull off a few pieces and re-place them because I couldn't tell where they were supposed to be *exactly* the first time.

In the game, you can transform Stay Puft into his "big" form, and when you do, his icon in the corner of the screen changes from happy to angry. That's a nice touch. It's also really cute seeing Stay Puft ride on the Terror Dog's back :-)


For what ever reason, the Terror Dog does not normally jump. That seems weird since it leapt a few times in Louis' apartment (and chasing him into the park) in the first movie. I think you can upgrade it to have a jumping ability, but to me, it's something it should do from the get-go. (For the sake of getting this review out in a timely manner, I didn't take the time to get the gold bricks and studs necessary to upgrade any of these new figures.)


The Terror Dog can be upgraded into three different models/configurations. The Terror Dog can become the Terror Dog Destroyer, and then the Soaring Terror Dog. Special features can be purchased for each form. Although the game encourages it, you don't need to physically reassemble the toy into these other models in order to use them in-game.


If you have all of the packs needed to unlock all levels and worlds, then Stay Puft is useless. As far as I can tell, there's nothing he can do that can't be done by other characters you would already have. Now, if you didn't buy those other characters, then that's another story. The same for the Terror Dog. Of course, you can buy them as collectible figures regardless of the game. To my knowledge, neither has appeared in Lego form before, so they're worth buying if you're a Lego or Ghostbusters figure collector.


SLIMER FUN PACK

The Slimer Fun Pack contains a mere 33 pieces and a printed manual showing you how to assemble Slimer. You'll have to follow the in-game instructions to assemble the Slime Shooter. Without a doubt, Slimer was the easiest minifigure I ever assembled! Of course, he came 100% completely assembled :-) All I had to do was just plop him on one small clear brick, attach that to the base disc, and put a hot dog in his hand. Voila! Weirdly, my Slimer minifigure was loose in the box, instead of being in one of the two little plastic bags. You'll have to follow the in-game instructions to assemble the Slime Shooter weapon.

Slimer can fly really well, but I found that swimming underwater was a bit more difficult than it was with Scooby-Doo. In the Ghostbusters world, there are five glass statues underwater that only Slimer can break, but his Sonar Smash ability only works when he's on the ground. The problem is that one statue is on a cliff, so there's no place for him to land so his Sonar Smash can be activated. I managed to get it by resting Slimer on some brown coral above the statue so he could do his thing and break it.


Any vehicle that Slimer drives becomes VERY bright. The Ecto-1 becomes so blindingly white that, to quote Batman, "Why do these things have to be so...bright?!?" The Terror Dog and Tardis both glow neon green when he's on/inside. I don't know how other vehicles react to Slimer. Because Slimer technically hovers, and does not walk on the ground, he can't stand on switches (like the one in the firehouse basement in the Ghostbusters Level Pack level). Ghost Swarms don't affect Slimer, for obvious reasons, so he can fly right past/through them.


The Slime Shooter can be upgraded into three different models/configurations. The Slime Shooter can become the Slime Exploder, and then the Slime Streamer. Special features can be purchased for each form. Although the game encourages it, you don't need to physically reassemble the toy into these other models in order to use them in-game. In it's initial build, the Slime Shooter doesn't move; it just rotates. It also just shoots "bolts" of slime and not a stream, which requires an upgrade.


Slimer is DEFINITELY recommended. He has a fantastic skill set, and is the ONLY character who can obtain these three gold bricks:

• Ghostbusters World - Glass statues underwater near the Titanic.
• Chima World - Sneak past the underwater ghosts; and nearby glass objects.
• Scooby-Doo World - Underwater small access guarded by glass and toxic; and boomerang for nearby switches.

The Slime Shooter is pretty useless. Unless I completely missed a "puzzle" somewhere, I've not seen anything in the game that requires slime, so I'm kinda wondering what the point of the weapon is. Maybe it'll have a use in a future update after the new series of packs are revealed later this year.

WHAT TO BUY

Check out the complete list of Lego Dimensions packs to buy that I posted in my review of the Ghostbusters 2016 Story Pack.

You can read more about Lego Dimensions on the official site, the official Facebook page, and the Lego Dimensions Wiki. For all Ghostbusters Lego Dimensions images, check out the gallery on the Spook Central Facebook page. Some more unmarked high-quality images can be found on Brick Inquirer and Perfectly Nintendo. A nice photo gallery of the actual minifigures can be found at Kotaku. Finally, for videos and some other images, see my Starter & Ghostbusters Level Pack review.