First Impressions:

1) Nice graphics. Reminds me of the other LEGO games (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc), but not quite as much detail in the landscape. However, that’s common of some MMOs.

2) Game Play – Decent. Seems to us fairly standard controls (WASD keys, right-click mouse to look around, etc).

3) Content – Hard to say, since I’ve only played a grand total of 1:42 minutes. But for the starting area, it’s nice. You start learning how things work pretty quick.

All in all… I liked it. There are some things that could be done better. Some sort of Quest journal, and quest beacons would be nice. So I can locate whoever I need to talk to. Ability to run around a bit faster… character seemed to move too slow for my tastes.

And a better chat system. You get almost the entire UI for the screen, but the chat box is in the lower right, it’s opaque, and to me, seemed a bit clunky. It was also hard to tell in the chat window what was “System” messages, and what was other players.

Some of his criteria were:

• rolling barrels (using LEGO barrels if possible)
• Donkey Kong throwing the barrels
• a barrel-jumping minifig
• ladders and ramps that closely resembled the originals

He ended up using minifigs for Mario and the girl.  And then he found the troll.  Looks close enough to a gorilla, right?  

In addition, he used a light sensor to detect when a barrel was rolling, a motor to carry the barrels from the bottom to the top (and send them rolling) and another motor to control the jumping action.  For the complete details, including a video of the game in action, check out Dan’s LEGO Donkey Kong page.