Nintendo Power magazine gives BIONICLE Heroes a black eye with its review in the January 2007 issue: a disappointing 5.0 out of 10. Its praise is brief and back-handed:
- To its credit, Bionicle Heroes looks pretty darn goodclean textures and effective lighting do a lot to overcome rather conventional level design.
Where the review goes horribly awry is when it claims BIONICLE Heroes “doesn’t feel very LEGO-ish”. Yeah, we had that debate five years ago. But that is not the only misunderstanding.
BIONICLE Heroes has a tough hill to climb when it comes to reviews. First, the target audience is significantly younger than the average magazine reviewer, meaning the controls and puzzles are going to be simpler than they are used to seeing. Second, BIONICLE Heroes comes on the heals of two incredibly successful LEGO Star Wars releases. Magazine reviewers are almost certainly steeped in the lore of Star Wars and have fond memories of classic LEGO bricks and minifigs. They have warm fuzzies about those games before they take the cellophane off of the box.
So here comes BIONICLE Heroes . This is the third time they have seen this game engine and this type of game play, therefore the game gets no points for innovation. Unlike Star Wars , they have no knowledge of BIONICLE or, heaven forbid, their only exposure to BIONICLE has been through earlier BIONICLE video games. BIONICLE Heroes , whose story is tissue-paper thin to begin with and confusingly has characters from the whole pantheon of BIONICLE, has no hope of imparting that knowledge to them and so does not even try.
In short, if you were hoping BIONICLE Heroes would be a great game, you might not be disappointed. But if you were hoping BIONICLE Heroes would get great reviews, then I am afraid you will meet with nothing but sorrow.
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