Red Light! Green Light!
The first season of content for LEGO Dimensions was a bit mixed. The core Story Levels told a lengthy expansive adventure that touched on nearly all the licenses available in Season 1 and even some surprises but the Level Packs were inconsistent.
I initially thought that Level Packs would be a good opportunity for TT Games to explore licenses that didn’t justify a stand-alone game but the Level Packs felt a bit slim. The Simpsons Level Pack for instance recreates The Mysterious Voyage of Homer episode for example but it seems like they couldn’t license the voices so everybody but Homer is silent and since it is just based on one episode of the show the experience is roughly 30 minutes. Similarly the Back to the Future pack only had Marty and the Doc since those were the minifigs and voices that were produced, it was a very truncated version of the film that basically skips all the 50s stuff with Marty’s parents.
However the Ghostbusters Level Pack in Season One had way more voice clips from the film and provided a truncated single level experience from the movie which did manage to touch on a large portion of the film’s events.
The Mission Impossible Level Pack follows this lead and provides a 1-2 hour experience that touches on nearly every scene from the movie. The opening on the plane with Jim Phelps, the American embassy, the Restaurant, meeting with Max, the Liverpool CIA Headquarters and the final train scene are all in there. For someone like me who loves that 1996 film more than I probably should it is a real treat.
Audio from the film is used throughout with Tom Cruise, Jean Reno and Ving Rhames all represented as their respective characters. I believe a sound-alike is used for some new gameplay-based lines from Jon Voight but the Level Pack does a great job of using clean audio takes and music from the film. Even Simon Pegg makes a brief cameo with new lines as Benji despite his character not showing up till a couple films later.
Gameplay wise there are some light stealth mechanics that work well enough. Ethan Hunt can disguise himself as certain targets (though the UI for this can be a bit janky), he can shoot, throw explosive gum, deploy an RC helicopter, climb special walls with suction cups and use an optical camouflage wall that is straight out of Ghost Protocol. Instead of a gadget Hunt gets two vehicles, a sports car and a motorcycle (which I think is the one from MI2). This is a little disappointing since nearly all vehicles in LEGO Dimensions have about the same functionality but Ethan Hunt himself is such a mechanically flexible character than it doesn’t really matter.
TT Games has also started pulling elements from LEGO Dimensions story levels into these Level Packs. So the toy pad puzzle mechanics seen in those levels make appearances here and in one case even result in a brief appearance of 'B.A.' Baracus, which means they are toying with cross-dimensional stuff in these level packs as well. You even get to briefly control Franz Krieger, Jean Reno’s character, which based on what I’ve also seen from the Ghostbusters Story Pack seems to indicate that TT Games is now willing to let you control characters even if they don’t have a physical minifig for them, which is a really good sign for the flexibility of this game in the future.
The Ethan Hunt minifig also gives you access to a new Mission Impossible: Adventure World which is an open-world level that blends together a bunch of different cities from the franchise. The “this recording will self destruct” unseen character from the films gives you silly missions such as retrieving cats from trees but the presentation values seem to have been stepped up a bit from the old Adventure Worlds. You also get access to a new multiplayer Battle Arena but I have not had time to mess with that.
Overall I’m very impressed with what is offered here and it feels like a good value along with the physical toys which are fun to build. If this Level Pack is a quality indicator for this season this could be something special. Now I really want 007 content.