--Gandalf, Lego The Hobbit
Unlike Lego Lord of the Rings on the Vita, Lego The Hobbit on the same platform makes some very pointless and misleading changes, a major one being the isometric view that it has for the entire game. An isometric, or top-down, perspective of course does not make a game of poor quality (and I have even reviewed isometric games where having that overhead camera angle was very fitting), but when PS Vita or 3DS editions of Lego games used this, it differentiated these handheld versions of the games from their home console counterparts in ways that are at best unecessary, not representative of Lego games as a whole, and, most importantly, that make portable games appear as if they cannot handle standard console mechanics or quality, which is untrue in both the case of the Vita and the 3DS. That this is so gratuitous only makes it more out of place. It is as if the developers wanted to treat the handheld systems as if they could not handle even abridged versions of the otherwise same edition as the plug-in systems, and this misrepresents the capabilities of the Vita and its competitor the 3DS--the two versions of Lego The Hobbit are supposed to be identical besides the differences in the number of screens they are played on.
Production Values
The camera is so far from the characters and environments that it is hard to see the detail of them, but the graphics of the gameplay segments are at least not a horrific underuse of the Vita from the 2014 era. Avoiding a pitfall from another Lego game on the system, the cutscenes have both competent audio and visuals, not the blurriness of Lego Batman 2's videos. These cutscenes are actually the only part of the game that is not seen from a top-down perspective! The overhead camera of this game extends even to a Super Mario-like set of hub words where the controllable character walks from one fixed point on the map to another, with bonus or optional areas off to the sides marked by blue pathways. From these points, you can obtain one-time resources, talk to NPCs who want minor items from random levels, replay levels, rewatch cinematics, and more. The hub worlds and levels feature dialogue pulled from the first two Hobbit films, and this time, it sounds more natural than the truncated dialogue in Lego Lord of the Rings that is also from its respective movies.
Gameplay
Like the camera, the gameplay of the Vita version of Lego The Hobbit has its unusual characteristics. For starters, you can now only jump at predetermined jump points (which move you across chasms or elevated potions, so you cannot jump while standing in place). You can trigger special attacks by quickly filling up a meter by the character icon in the upper left corner. Then, if you die, you have to restart the entire level. They are thankfully short, and some of the optional gold brick challenges for several of them are about completing the level within just a few minutes, so this does not mean one must start 15 minutes' worth of gameplay over, though this could greatly annoy certain players. Despite the bizarre camera and respawn choices, there are still plenty of collectibles and gold brick challenges, albeit ones that are mostly very easy or very difficult, to incentivize replay, and there is some diversity in how the various characters fight enemies, using hammers, swords, or something resembling a flail. There is still enough to both make this Vita edition of yet another Lego game unique, just not always in a positive way, and to offer a comparatively easy platinum trophy.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Strangely only exploring the events of the first two of three Hobbit movies without even having The Battle of the Five Armies as a DLC expansion, not that the Hobbit films are anything more than projects of wildly differing quality even within the same individual movies anyway, the game follows their plot very closely for the most part. The levels are just put in a more chronological sequence so that Smaug conquering the Lonely Mountain is shown before Gandalf visits Bilbo at the Shire. The encounter of Bilbo and his party of dwarves with the trolls that almost eat them, the appearance of the Necromancer (Sauron), the fight with the spiders of Mirkwood, the escape from the elves, and so on are all included in cinematics and levels. The basic tale of Gandalf "persuading" Bilbo to help a throng of dwarves reclaim a mountain treasure and Bilbo accidentally discovering the One Ring in the process is intact--other than the climactic battle that the entire third film covered.
Intellectual Content
The mild exploration and puzzles of most Lego games is simplified to a great extent by the isometric viewpoint, so the puzzles are easier to see from a distance and, moreso than usual, just amount to selecting the right character in story mode or free play to complete a given task. Far from having puzzles with the complexity or lore significance of Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 and far from even being able to hide things offscreen vertically like in Lego Batman 3, this is one of the most pathetic of the Lego games on the Vita or any other system when it comes to the depth of the puzzles. The camera angle really does change quite a bit about this.
Conclusion
This portable version of Lego The Hobbit is a strange mixture of changes that are a step backwards or just random changes that are completely pointless when it comes to actually showcasing what the Vita is capable of and reflecting the nature of standard Lego games more accurately. There is more uniqueness among Lego games because of this, but artistic uniqueness is not always the same as artistic quality for the same reason that philosophical originality is not rational if one is autonomously coming to logically impossible or unverifiable conclusions. For what it is, Lego The Hobbit on the Vita could have certainly been worse, but longtime Lego game fans will not find what they might expect waiting here. Lego Lord of the Rings on this same gaming platform is a much better example of representing the overall franchise and its generally superior mechanics.
Content:
1. Violence: With the camera zoomed out so far from the minifigures, the non-graphic fights of Lego games are even less "violent" in their presentation now.
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