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November 9, 2006 –
In what could only be the result of a late night brainstorming session consisting of copious amounts of booze and illicit narcotics, the Bionicle Heroes were born. Then again, that has to be how most great cartoons/toy lines/comic books/breakfast cereals are born these days.

“Hey man, how about four pet turtles wander into radioactive ooze and learn martial arts from a giant rat?,” goes the rags-to-riches story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator. He later added, “Pass the bong.”

All you need to know about Bionicle is that the Toa are the good guys, the Piraka are the bad guys, and the fight is over the all-powerful Mask of Life. Oh, and this all takes place on the island of Voya Nui. And, I almost forgot, everything is made out of LEGOs.

The advanced targeting system of Bionicle Heroes.Apparently, little rugrats the world over are getting a real kick out of this new line of LEGOs, and so, naturally, Traveler’s Tales signed on to develop the videogame. Eidos, the publisher of the original LEGO Star Wars, knows a good developer when it sees one, and will release the Bionicle Heroes next week. That’s right, next week. It was a bit of a surprise for us too, but the holiday season is a time for kids, and Bionical Heroes, most assuredly, is a game for the kiddies.

Although Bionical is a third-person shooter, the formula TT has taken is straight out of its LEGO Star Wars titles. You shoot things (sorry, no light saber this time around), and those things explode into bits of LEGOs. The more pieces you collect, the more secret, playable characters you unlock, like the evil Piraka. Although Bionical characters are a kind of like LEGO cyborgs, the mechanical good guys are able to harness elemental powers by using different Toa masks. You got your fire, your ice, your earth, your air, your water — all kinds of elements at work here. Each mask let’s you use a different weapon and a different special power. Our earth mask gives us a cool missile launcher and the ability to build things. The water mask lets you walk on top of rivers and lakes to reach new areas, and the air mask gives you serious jumping powers to get some serious, um, air.

Come in 3PO. 3PO do you copy?!The mechanics are very simple. There’s an auto-aim function that is actually a green laser shooting at enemies from our hero’s head. You can switch on the fly between masks in order to find the best weapon for the job or use a special power to reach a new area. When you come up to, say, a cliff, there will be a button prompt to hit Y, which will automatically switch to one of the masks that let’s you climb things. And then you walk up, hit B to use the special power, and on you go. The only odd thing we found in the controls is that our Bionical doesn’t strafe. The left stick moves forward, back and turns left or right. The right stick looks up and down and turns left or right. Personally, I would have done what every third-person shooter does and use the left stick to strafe. Alas, it is not to be.

The setup is classic LEGO as well. There’s a kind of lobby where you can buy new characters and specials. From there, you can select different missions in the same way that you would select to replay the battle of Hoth in Star Wars. You can replay levels as much as you like to pick up valuable canisters and get even more LEGO pieces. Eventually, you’ll unlock every damn Bionical hero and villain in the game, and you’ll come away feeling that your life is more complete.

Visually, BH looks alright, almost like a high-res port of a current-gen game, as LEGO Star Wars on the 360 is. The sound is a bright spot as the evil Piraka laugh like baritone super villains and a cool musical score plays throughout the action. Click on the image link below for new pics of BH in action, and stay tuned for gameplay videos and a full review next week.

Bionicle Heroes takes you to the amazing island of Voya Nui, a world filled with heroes and villains, past and present. Take control of the heroic Toa Inika and battle the villainous Piraka in a fight for the future. Explore jungles, volcanoes and mountains on the mysterious island and master the unique weapons and abilities of the Toa Inika in this epic quest.

Genre: Action

Publisher: Eidos Interactive

Developer: TT Games

Online Play:

Local Play:

November 9, 2006 –
In what could only be the result of a late night brainstorming session consisting of copious amounts of booze and illicit narcotics, the Bionicle Heroes were born. Then again, that has to be how most great cartoons/toy lines/comic books/breakfast cereals are born these days.

“Hey man, how about four pet turtles wander into radioactive ooze and learn martial arts from a giant rat?,” goes the rags-to-riches story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator. He later added, “Pass the bong.”

All you need to know about Bionicle is that the Toa are the good guys, the Piraka are the bad guys, and the fight is over the all-powerful Mask of Life. Oh, and this all takes place on the island of Voya Nui. And, I almost forgot, everything is made out of LEGOs.

The advanced targeting system of Bionicle Heroes.Apparently, little rugrats the world over are getting a real kick out of this new line of LEGOs, and so, naturally, Traveler’s Tales signed on to develop the videogame. Eidos, the publisher of the original LEGO Star Wars, knows a good developer when it sees one, and will release the Bionicle Heroes next week. That’s right, next week. It was a bit of a surprise for us too, but the holiday season is a time for kids, and Bionical Heroes, most assuredly, is a game for the kiddies.

Although Bionical is a third-person shooter, the formula TT has taken is straight out of its LEGO Star Wars titles. You shoot things (sorry, no light saber this time around), and those things explode into bits of LEGOs. The more pieces you collect, the more secret, playable characters you unlock, like the evil Piraka. Although Bionical characters are a kind of like LEGO cyborgs, the mechanical good guys are able to harness elemental powers by using different Toa masks. You got your fire, your ice, your earth, your air, your water — all kinds of elements at work here. Each mask let’s you use a different weapon and a different special power. Our earth mask gives us a cool missile launcher and the ability to build things. The water mask lets you walk on top of rivers and lakes to reach new areas, and the air mask gives you serious jumping powers to get some serious, um, air.

Come in 3PO. 3PO do you copy?!The mechanics are very simple. There’s an auto-aim function that is actually a green laser shooting at enemies from our hero’s head. You can switch on the fly between masks in order to find the best weapon for the job or use a special power to reach a new area. When you come up to, say, a cliff, there will be a button prompt to hit Y, which will automatically switch to one of the masks that let’s you climb things. And then you walk up, hit B to use the special power, and on you go. The only odd thing we found in the controls is that our Bionical doesn’t strafe. The left stick moves forward, back and turns left or right. The right stick looks up and down and turns left or right. Personally, I would have done what every third-person shooter does and use the left stick to strafe. Alas, it is not to be.

The setup is classic LEGO as well. There’s a kind of lobby where you can buy new characters and specials. From there, you can select different missions in the same way that you would select to replay the battle of Hoth in Star Wars. You can replay levels as much as you like to pick up valuable canisters and get even more LEGO pieces. Eventually, you’ll unlock every damn Bionical hero and villain in the game, and you’ll come away feeling that your life is more complete.

Visually, BH looks alright, almost like a high-res port of a current-gen game, as LEGO Star Wars on the 360 is. The sound is a bright spot as the evil Piraka laugh like baritone super villains and a cool musical score plays throughout the action. Click on the image link below for new pics of BH in action, and stay tuned for gameplay videos and a full review next week.

December 19, 2006 –
Ever since the emergence of LEGO Star Wars last year, the bar for licensed titles has been raised substantially. Odd enough, it comes from a game that shy’s away from complex visuals, and instead brings two-button gameplay, no voice acting, and almost no signs of a commonplace high-budget game. Instead, LEGO Star Wars embraces the idea that videogames have one true goal in order to rise the ranks; they need to be fun. LEGO Star Wars changed many people’s perception of what could be done with a license, and LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy secured that perception again this year with another killer showing.

Along comes developer Traveller’s Tales again. This time the Star Wars license has been dropped, but the world of LEGO remains, as does many of the familiar elements to the previous games. Once again, the team shows that licensed games have a fighting chance in this insanely robust industry, as Bionicle Heroes manages to again tap the bar up just a little higher for everyone else in the business.

Rather than taking the same route with design as the popular LEGO Star Wars franchise, Bionicle is pushed in an entirely different direction. The game is entirely one player throughout, makes use of nearly every button on the controller, and takes inspiration not from classic quarter-jerking games like its predecessor, but in a fully robust and visually stimulating adventure game. The top-view camera has been dropped for a shoulder-mounted third-person perspective similar to Resident Evil 4 (though the main character is shoved almost entirely to the left side of the screen), and the game is swarming with bloom effects, motion blur, high-res textures and surprisingly captivating scenery.

The story for Bionicle Heroes focuses – obviously – around the LEGO Bionicle product line. As the toys themselves are geared towards the pre-teen/teen age range, the game follows suit. Players take control of a legendary hero – known as the TOA Inika – that is sent to obliterate a few thousand baddies. At the top of the food chain- an evil Bionicle that has stolen the legendary Mask of Life. Basically it all comes down to you as the player running through level after level, kicking the crap out of robo-villians and beating the beastly bosses at the end of each level. The game offers six different elemental areas to check out, each with multiple sub-levels to jump into. In the style of Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie, the levels will actually open up in sections of the wall after the preceding level has been completed, allowing the Bionicle to literally dive into the next chunk of the world. From the main HUB of the game players can also partake in the age-old LEGO tradition of cashing in pieces as money, purchasing a ton of upgrades, secrets, and extra content goodies along the way. Not too shabby.

Where the game really shows Traveller’s Tale’s commitment to the product is in the main gameplay, which has players jumping into a world made up of the Resident Evil 4 perspective, weapons inspired from the Unreal Tournament universe, and almost Halo-like environments. Obviously those comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt, as each one is more or less a template for design, but it at least shows the strongly rooted gameplay – not to mention the ambition of the team – for Bionicle Heroes. Players will enter with one main armor mode that has a specific gun, and from there will find the Bionicle masks hidden throughout the level.

Each mask brings about different special abilities such as the power to lift objects a la the “force” in LEGO Star Wars (blue aura and all), the ability to walk up walls, or over bubbling lava and rushing water. The idea is that each mask is essentially a new character you can work with, switching on the fly between their weapon types, powers, and attributes while sharing the same main health. The combination works extremely well, letting players work as a one-man team by blasting enemies with a rocket launcher, changing quickly to the shotgun, and then sniping away at emerging foes from a distance with the ice-like sniper rifle. These masks (or mode types) can be switched to on the fly with the shoulder buttons, and can be used even when previous mode types would still be reloading, making fast-switch gameplay a must when in hectic battles.

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