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"If you're a fan, buy Bionicle Heroes. If you're not a fan, don't bother."

First off, I'll just expand on the title. If you're not an avid gamer that's not a Bionicle fan, there's very little reason for you to buy this game. Unlike other Lego games, little of the charm that made the Star Wars or Racers games more popular can be found here (and you can't build anything, dang). Plus, the BIONICLE game is lacking most things that good normal games have, anyway. Bad graphics, unexplained lapses in frame rate, weak storyline (even if you understood it all beforehand), bad voice acting, simple combat system. It doesn't help that, with the exception of the second-to-last level, it is a very, very easy game that you could probably get through in one sitting. For those reasons, I'm not going to explain some of the lore and fan talk included in the next paragraph, but there's an in-game guide if you still feel compelled to buy it.

As for the gameplay itself, it's a third-person action/adventure. You have a health bar, and some elemental energy (both rechargeable through power-ups found throughout the world), and you fight various monsters with your elemental powers. After the first level, each level (eight levels in all) afterwards has some fairly interesting gameplay variants, like a sledding level, a mine cart (cringe) level, one Toa has the power to levitate, one Toa has the power to swim fast, etc. The landscape and scenery aren't too detailed, and nothing special. It's far from free-roam, but you have a decent number of places to go within the levels.

For the easily amused littler ones, and the Bionicle fans, though, the game holds slightly more merit. Aside the voice-acting, the sound is pretty good. There are a few fun levels (rock-hopping in Ta-Wahi, jumping around and swimming as Gali Nuva, playing a game to destroy a Rahkshi as Lewa). And at the time, it was cool to finally “be a Toa”. The fairly-recently released Bionicle Heroes is a far more fun and complete alternative, however. A few frustrations for fans are around as well, though. As a former Bionicle fan myself, even after forgetting a lot about the whole plot and stuff after three years, a few storyline flaws and irregularities stood out, and you'll notice them too. You don't actually get to play as all the Toa, only some as the original Toa and some as the Nuva.

The game's not completely terrible, so it gets a 3/10, but I'd think about other options long and hard before buying this one.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/07