I sat down with eager anticipation to play the massively multiplayer online game Lego Universe. Having only a limited experience with MMOs, I was curious to see what I would discover in a world “fashioned by imagination.”

To properly create an MMO, you need to have a semblance of a story, and Lego Universe has barely that semblance. Imagination Land has been encroached by a chaotic force of darkness called “The Maelstrom,” which corrupts imagination. Your objective is to destroy this chaotic force and free Imagination Land, making it safe for Lego citizens in general.

You start by creating your character. I have to admit I did this with relish, actually spending about an hour on the process, despite the fact you could probably do it in less than five minutes. Your “character” is a Lego figure you create with Lego pieces.

Despite my aforementioned relish, I was pretty disappointed here. Lego has literally hundred of pieces to choose from, but you are limited to a select few to build your character. You can choose facial expressions, hair pieces, clothing and the color of each item. That’s pretty much it. I was all set to do some cool things, like create a Lego person with a few pieces from the Star Wars universe. Or maybe toss in some Lego pieces that popped up in the Lego: Batman or Lego: Indiana Jones games. Creating a Lego person with Han Solo’s gun belt on his hip, tossing on a fedora, maybe adding a Batman utility belt or something like that would be a really cool thing. But I couldn’t even choose options like a police uniform or anything — just basic clothes from city figures.

That’s a big drawback. For a game that touts “imagination,” I was hoping to go hog wild. Lego pieces have gotten really advanced, including making Ewoks (figures that have small bodies, which could be great to make a dwarf, hobbit or anything I want to create like that). My 6-year-old nephew was disappointed he couldn’t make a figure that looked like Darth Vader. I assumed it was because it was a copyrighted material. But at the same time, he also wanted to make a skeleton figure (Lego figures have skeletal-like figures), but even though skeleton’s are not copyrighted, it isn’t an option.

Oh, well, no worries. I made the figure I wanted and sat down to play.

When I started, I had no gear or weapons. I was on a quest to find gear and goods to provide for my well-being. In Lego Universe, there are basic needs your character has: hearts, shields, coins, tokens and imagination. Each has their own function.

Hearts are pretty basic; they are your health needs and how much damage you can withstand. Shields ratings fluctuate, based on the gear you posses, which provides armor ratings. The higher the armor rating your item gives you, the more armor you can have — no matter what your health is. Imagination points are needed to activate special abilities and create “quick builds.”

I began to fight my way through the first “world” and eventually got to the second “world.” Each world is a modestly constructed Lego platform where you can get into some interesting adventures and some decent quests, but I didn’t find them amazing or spectacular. As a whole, they were a lot of wide open spaces and very little use of Lego options, more dedicated to creating silly things than cool things. But that’s Lego for you. Half of its charm has always been about making things silly or cute, rather than cool or awesome. To be fair, this game actually has a pretty good mix of silly and cool, but you don’t see cool for a while into the game.

Eventually, you’ll get into the second world, where you are free to join what I will loosely call a Lego guild. There are four primary guild houses, each with a subcategory. One is dedicated to warriors, another to rogues, another to dark wizards and one to light wizards. Well, that’s my interpretation of the guilds. The Sentinel guild is dedicated to the Lego knights and samurai, the Ventura guild is dedicated to pirates and daredevils, the Paradox guild uses Maelstrom powers to give them special “dark magic” and have space marauders and sorcerers. The “white magic” guild is the Assembly; they have engineers and summoners.

I chose Ventura mainly because if I maxed out my pirate class, I could get a monkey (I felt this was a no-brainer). Each class has different abilities and different powers. For example, the Assembly class can construct or summon things. I’ve seen a player build a massive Lego gun turret that mows down enemies while we’re playing. Very handy, I must say. As for myself, I am able to wield a cutlass and a pistol (my monkey distracts the bad guys, so I can “smash” them). Though, of course, that’s not all I can do.

Now, you can eventually gain a multitude of different gear. From guns, hammers, knives, spears, sickles, drills, magic wands, maces, swords, staffs and even bare-handed ninja skills, you do gain variety as the game progresses and you purchase more stuff. So with those regards, I felt somewhat vindicated by my original complaint. You can also gain hats, shirts, pants and other add-ons. Some of these add-ons have no ability other than their looks, while others give you modifiers to damage or shields, as well as health or imagination.

You don’t gain levels or experience in Lego Universe. Instead, beating monsters will give you “tokens,” which are needed along with coins to buy specialty gear and equipment. I have noticed a monster that normally gives me a lot of tokens starts giving me less and less tokens the higher the power level of my gear becomes. This is a nice feature for game balance, which I liked.

I also liked the fact that as you play, you cannot steal someone else’s treasure. That is, if I kill a monster, the treasure on the ground is invisible and untouchable to everyone but me. Good times, but it does stink to drop a monster down to hardly anything and some bum comes in for a quick one hit, one kill, and takes all the treasure. To add to this disgrace, you are absolutely unable to “fight” or challenge” another player to a combat. So if he takes your treasure, you can’t simply smash him to get it back. In fact, even if you want to fight each other, just for practice, you can’t. This is a “kids’ game” and that sort of thing is probably considered bad form, or something equally lame. Grr ...

You can gain extra “imagination slots” and “heart containers” by completing specific quests but not by leveling. Smashing bad guys does nothing for that. Also, you can find pets, which don’t do anything except look cute and occasionally dig up rather useless and mundane treasure.

Despite these unique and helpful innovations, I am generally unsatisfied as an adult with the majority of the game. So far, I have completed nearly every single quest in the entire known Lego universe in under two weeks (they provide a “daily quest” in which you go to a world, smash set amount of bad guys, then come home. Meh ...). I have also not only maxed out my pirate gear, but decided to spend money to max out my daredevil gear (you can’t buy guild gear outside of your faction, but you can multi-class your gear within a faction — like a knight carrying a samurai sword). They only have a few worlds built, and I’m patiently waiting for more. In the meantime, the “chat mode” with friends is simply abominable — again, if you’re an adult.

When you make a Lego “friend” in Lego Universe, you are given a filter with which to chat. It is so restrictive you can’t even type out numbers or even spell them. So if you wanted to meet a person at a certain time to play you may have to type in “bad grammar code.” So you might say “Let’s meet at too times too times too minus one” so they will know you really mean 7 p.m. This is obviously to protect kids from giving out addresses (or should I say “a dress” since I can’t even write “address”). I say screw that. It should be the parent’s responsibility, not the game’s.

Oh well, this is negated if you decide to become “best friends,” in which case the filters are removed. However, you must go offline and fill out a form that confirms your age, and that is a bit time-consuming.

Now, I should also add there is currently no “role-playing” that I can see. So far, everyone is themselves. No one is a character playing on a quest. I am simply “Dain,” not “Dain the Scoundrel” who is out to kill Lego bad guys, save Lego damsels and find Lego buried treasure. If I talk to someone, I introduce myself as me, not my character, and that’s pretty much what everyone does, which is kind of sad. I would like to have more of a “character,” but oh well.

Right now, I have done just about everything there is to do in the game. I occasionally go out to hunt dragons (Lego dragons are not easy to smash, but they are cool and fun to fight, surrounded by the spirits of dead ronin warriors possessed by the Maelstrom who attempt to “smash” you).

To keep myself occupied, I spend the majority of my time at my “property.” This is a piece of land set aside for you to build things on, and other people can visit it and see what they think. But I must admit, this is fairly difficult to do; as the mechanism to build things is very difficult and takes a lot of time and patience.

So far, I am friends with a few good Lego companions who have helped me with this game. They include Armitage, HowdyDonut, lostlego and Tantalus. Go check them out when you play, as they are a pretty good group of people, and they also enjoy people visiting their “properties.”

I eagerly await a patch or add-on that will include more unique suits, gear and worlds. Supposedly, the Sentinel factions gain the “space ranger,” the Paradox faction gains the “shinobi,” the Assembly faction gains the “inventor” and the Ventura faction gains the “adventurer” (duh). Until that time, I will keep building my little property and making it as cool as possible. Come visit me at Dain’s Iron Hills, if you want, and you can feed a Lego banana to my monkey.