Lego Dimensions Beetlejuice Fun Pack Review
By Paul Rudoff on Nov. 5, 2017 at 11:30 PM in Video Games

The Lego Dimensions Beetlejuice Fun Pack includes one figure and one vehicle. The figure, as if you couldn't guess, is Betelgeuse, and he is accompanied by Saturn's Sandworm.

Betelgeuse (henceforth referred to as Beetlejuice) is the only character who can access the Beetlejuice world. Beetlejuice's full range of abilities includes Illumination, Magic, Mind Control, Mini Access, and Super Strength/Cracked Lego Objects. While none of these abilities are unique to Beetlejuice, his snarky humorous comments make him a fun character to play with.

The sandworm can transform from Saturn's Sandworm into the Spooky Spider and then into the Haunted Vacuum. It has a native sonic smash ability.

None of the movie actors return to voice their characters, not even though the use of archive audio. That's understandable since TT Games wanted to have new dialog and the movie actors may have either cost too much money to hire or won't sound like they did 30 years ago. Beetlejuice is voiced by Christopher Swindle. While he doesn't sound like Michael Keaton, he does an admirable job and is one of the better soundalikes. I do not know who voices Lydia and Delia Deetz, Barbara and Adam Maitland, The Minister, Harry the Hunter, Juno, or any of the other characters you'll find in the Beetlejuice world, but they all do good jobs in their roles.

The Beetlejuice world seems rather small and underwhelming at first, but it may be the only multi-layered world in the game. You start off in the sandy desert of Saturn outside the Deetz house, but once you go exploring, you'll soon find all the iconic elements from the film. These include the house interior (living room, dining room, attic), the Netherworld Waiting Room, the Underworld Office (hidden in the desert and not connected to the waiting room), and the town model.

You can actually go inside the model, called "Model Town", and there you will find the Maitland house, the bridge where the Maitland's had their accident, The Inferno Room undead strip club (no "Girls Girls Girls" on the sign and, sadly, you can't go inside), Miss Shannon's School for Girls, Maitland Hardware Store, the church, the fire department, and the graveyard with Beetlejuice's massive grave.

Eventually, you'll be able to enter the grave and the Maitland house, too. In a nice little detail, while in the model, you can see the outside attic "world" and even fall off the table. You will die if you do that, unless you have the Fall Rescue cheat activated, in which case you'll go right back onto the model. Model Town is also where you'll find the world's red brick and there's a nice reference to "The Fly", which was in the movie.

Of course there's a jukebox to repair in the adventure world, which contains the following tracks: Main Theme, Dunes, House, Spooky, Underworld Waiting Room, Battle Arena. There is no Harry Belafonte or Danny Elfman music. The "Main Theme" here is a not-so-soundalike to Elfman's original. I thought Warner Brothers owned the Beetlejuice music (the score, not the Belafonte tracks), unless they didn't want to spend the money to pay royalties to Elfman. Then again, I'm pretty sure they used his Batman score in this game or the other Lego Batman games.

All of the Year 2 worlds include 10 collectibles to find, signified by blue markers on the minimap, but I think that the Beetlejuice world may be the exception to that. There were five things to "break" in the Maitland house (which I unintentionally broke), but I did not see any standard 10 "collectibles", as I did in the other worlds. I think they may not have been included due to the multi-layered nature of this world. You see, in the other worlds, if you went inside of a building, you would lose your blue marker collectible progress. The way the Beetlejuice world is laid out, it's an "interior" inside of an "interior" inside of an "interior". As such, you would constantly lose your collectible progress, and I think the developers realized that and left them out.
Once change I noticed is in the Saturn area, where there's a task involving growing six plants. In the past, you'd have to locate them on your own. I don't know if it's just in this world or patched in for other worlds, but once the task has been activated, the green earth icon pops up all around the world so that you can easily find the other plants.

(analog screen capture by me, Paul Rudoff, since I could not
find any HD videos that spotlighted the archaeological find)
The Saturn area also contains a really cool Easter Egg. Behind the house you will find a bulldozer. Use a tow vehicle to grab the battery on top of the rock structure directly across from it to start it up. Follow it, fighting worms along the way. If they destroy the battery, you will have to retrieve it from the original location. When the bulldozer eventually arrives at its destination, it will reveal some dirt piles, which can be dug up by a character with the dig ability. In the end, you'll dig up an Atari 2600 system and joystick with a Lego Dimensions game cartridge. Sadly, it's not playable. This is a reference to the buried Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges, a result of the video game crash of 1983. The cartridges were excavated in 2014 due to the documentary Atari: Game Over, which is available on Blu-ray and DVD. I'm surprised that TT Games didn't have an actual E.T. cartridge since E.T. is one of the Lego Dimensions licensed properties.

If you have both Beetlejuice and Slimer on the toypad, Beetlejuice will ask Slimer if he wants his help to bust the busters. This reminds me of the Universal Studios Florida street scenes where Beetlejuice would cause problems for the Ghostbusters, who had no trouble putting him in a Ghost Trap.
In order to use the Lego Dimensions Beetlejuice Fun Pack in the game, you will also need one of the Starter Packs, which are available for a variety of systems: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and WiiU. Of course, if you just want to play with it as a physical toy, you're free to do that without a Starter Pack :-)
Check out the complete list of Lego Dimensions packs to buy that I posted in my review of the Ghostbusters 2016 Story Pack. Also be sure to check out all of my Lego Dimensions reviews here on The Corner Penthouse and the Ghostbusters items on Spook Central.
(Images used in this review came from these videos: Official Beetlejuice Spotlight, GameUnboxingReviews BJ Free Roam, JayShockblast BJ Free Roam, PackAttack BJ Quests, and Wave 9 New Character Interactions. Product was provided for review by WB Games.)
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