I haven't played Lego Island 2 in nearly two decades. I had this game when I was a child during the 2000s. I messed around in it a lot but I never got very far in the game. Back then, I was so easily entertained. Simply exploring the starting island and throwing pizzas at lego people was enough for kid me.

Well, since I have taken it upon myself to delve into the history of Lego games, I finally got around to digging up my old CD of this game and install it

Surprisingly, it installed easily with no issues on Windows 10. I put the CD into my disc drive, yes I still have a disc drive, and was greeted with the installation screen. I miss these unique install screens that games used to have. Of course, nowadays you buy and install every pc game digitally through Steam or GOG or one of the many other digital distribution applications that exist. The experience of installing a game with the disc and navigating the unique little install windows is lost these days.

Once you boot up the game, the intro videos play for Lego Software and Silicon Dreams. Man these are nostalgic for me. All of the lego pieces that fall down to create the logo and the sound that plays. Then there is the small room with the little bottle of goo that falls down. I've watched these countless times as a kid. Seeing them again really was something.

The install screen

The Silicon Dreams video.

Anyway, enough jabbering about that, how is the game? Compared to Lego Island 1, it is a much more structured story driven experience. You only play as one character this time, Pepper, who was the canonical main character from the first game.

The story is simple, Pepper delivers a pizza to the Brickster and the Brickster uses the pizza to escape just like the first game. This time however, it won't be so easy to catch him. He steals the constructopedia and scatters the pages all across the three main islands. He then escapes and opens a portal that summons robots that run around and harass the lego people. Over the course of the game, your main objective is to retrieve all of the lost pages of the constructopedia, apprehend the robots, and capture the Brickster.

The first island is Lego island which is where the game begins. Lego island looks quite a bit different this time compared to Lego Island 1. However, like the first game, it is small and you will get to know this island down to every last brick as you traverse up and down its roads and hills.

You are also given much more freedom of movement this time compared to the first game. You can jump and go off the roads and explore the hills and beaches. You can even swim as well. Vehicles are still all accessible including boats and aircraft. The land vehicles unfortunately don't go very fast however, so you will spend most of your time on Lego island running.

Inside Pepper's house

One of the lost pages of the Constructopedia

The launch station on top of the highest mountain

The other two islands that you will explore are Castle island and the desert/oasis.

Castle island is home of two rival kingdoms. Their life's goal is to fight each other endlessly. Here you must repair their bridge so they can continue to battle, and of course retrieve the lost page of the constructopedia.

This is a good time to talk about this game's mission structure. As you explore each island, you must complete various mini-games. These are all varied and pretty simple to grasp for the most part. Depending on how well you do at the mini-game you earn a bronze, silver, or gold medal. The medal you earn doesn't matter for progressing the story, but you can go back and replay these missions at Pepper's house for a better score.

The next island is the desert and oasis location. This area is where I ran into the first and only actually difficult mini-game. Near the end of the desert section you must complete the desert speedster mission. This mission requires you to drive a car through a canyon while avoiding obstacles and trying to keep your speed up so you can make it across. The problem is you can only accelerate the car so far until it gives out and you lose speed. This is not a problem when going downhill or flat terrain, but going uphill is nearly impossible. Oh boy this mission had me going for probably 30 minutes before I finally beat it. This one was actually frustrating and I thought my game was glitched because I watched a youtube video of someone else playing it and they didn't have nearly as much trouble as me going uphill. Suffice it to say I never want to play desert speedster ever again in my life.

However, the torment doesn't end there. After finally getting through that hell, shortly after comes the bi-plane flying mini-game. This mission is actually glitched and I had to download a mod to fix it. The problem was that you have limited fuel and must collect fuel canisters throughout the mission to be able to keep flying. This is not supposed to be hard to manage, however, there is a bug that causes the fuel to use up 3x as fast as it's supposed to. So I couldn't even get to the first fuel canister before running out and getting a game over. After doing some googling, I found there is a mod manager and a patch you can download that fixes the problem. A link to the mod manager is at the bottom of the page.

A nice view of the desert region

The bi-plane level

With the desert and oasis island complete, the game will take you to space for your final battle against the Brickster. The space section is really cool, but unfortunately pretty short. You fly through an asteroid field and then have to jump down into the moon's gravity. Once on the moon, you can explore around and collect one of the game's few collectables.

The collectables are a minor part of the game that seem to not serve much purpose except to increase your overall score in a particular zone. Each zone of each island has its own collectables. The castle island has chalices, the desert and oasis have gems, and the moon has crystals. They are an optional thing to look for which rewards exploration.

Back to the moon, this location has a really ominous atmosphere to it. Being in space, it's pretty dark. The geography of the location is strange with winding pathways that go over and through the rock. There are also little alien guys running around which you can't interact with, but add some life to the environment.

The moon is also the one and only time you get to make pizza in the game. After completing the pizza making mini-game, all of the alien guys go to sleep and you can enter the Brickster's lair.

Flying through the asteroid field

This place can be dark and ominous

The pizza building mini-game

The final battle against the Brickster is rather anti-climatic. You ascend the tower, jumping over gaps, and then at the roof, throw pizzas at him until his mouth burns and he runs into a room that gets him locked in. I guess I didn't expect much anyway compared to the first game and being that it's a game for kids. Still, they definitely could have put more effort in the final battle. Well as they say, it's about the journey not the destination.

All in all I enjoyed my time revisiting Lego Island 2. Finally beating it for the first time after all of these years gave me a bit of closure for my childhood. While the game may be short, that kind of works for this type of game. Most of the game consists of the mini-games, which are just a collection of short challenges. So the game relies on its replayability more than its length. The first Lego Island was much the same in that respect. Both games are about immersing yourself in the Lego world and completing a variety of fun challenges.