“Everything is cool when you’re part of a team!” That’s the next line in the ‘Everything is AWESOME!’ song made famous from The LEGO Movie, and it fits well with Forza Horizon 4 because there’s plenty of teamwork in the hugely successful open-world racing game which, up until now, was set in a realistic looking United Kingdom. The Forza Horizon 4 LEGO Speed Champions expansion takes you to a magical place full of different types of LEGO pieces. With a LEGO Horizon Festival, a racetrack, pirate ship cove, football stadium, airport, and much more packed into this expansion, Forza Horizon 4 LEGO Speed Champions is AWESOME!

The expansion kicks off with a sample race through the LEGO world using the three LEGO cars available at launch, the 1967 Mini Cooper S Rally, Ferrari F40 Competizione, and the vehicle on the cover art of the base Forza Horizon 4 game, the McLaren Senna. Was that a hint Playground Games gave us of what to expect when the second expansion was announced just last week at the E3 2019 Xbox Press Conference? We should have seen it coming. Unfortunately, the game literally currently only provides three LEGO Speed Champions cars. It looks like there will be at least one more added soon, and hopefully we’ll get other LEGO Speed Champions added such as the Porsche 911 RSR or Turbo 3.0, the 1968 Mustang Fastback, the Ford Fiesta M-Sport WRC, or even the Scuderia Ferrari SF16-H given how much Forza games love Ferraris.

Once you complete the opening event you’re provided with a baseplate on the outskirts of the LEGO Horizon Festival to build your house. There’s a whole heap of brick challenges spanning across different parts of the game that you must complete which gradually unlocks pieces of your house, including parts of the garden such as a pool, soccer pitch, and even a yacht. The challenges range from completing standard races to destroying a certain number of objects within a time limit to using a certain vehicle to get from point A to point B on the map, and much more. You’ll find at first that you unlock a bunch of them just by playing the game normally as you would a Forza game or any open-world racing game, however some of the more intricate challenges will require you to do some planning and possibly try a few times to complete.

The new map is built on top of a standard world, so you will still see standard water, ground textures, and even trees, however, everything else (including most of the trees) is LEGO. There’s a town in the middle of the map called Brickchester which is full of LEGO life, a desert in the north, a lighthouse on the southern tip, and much more to explore. There are two drag strips, and over 110 roads to race on.  While there are almost twice the amount of roads than that of the previous expansion, the map somehow feels a bit smaller. Trailblazer challenges are back, though they seem easier than the ones in the Fortune Island expansion.

There is an hourly Forzathon event in this expansion and it’s possibly the most enjoyable one to participate in, purely because of all the LEGO blocks flying everywhere as you complete each of the three tasks with the other players. There’s one new story which unlocks a few quick-chat phrases and wheelspins, a Goliath race, and basically everything you’d expect to find in a typical Forza Horizon map except for a Showcase event. We’re not sure why a Showcase was left out, but perhaps one is in the works.

To be honest, the Forza Horizon 4 LEGO Speed Champions expansion feels a little rushed. The vehicles are limited, the barn find isn’t ready, the NPC cars in the open world aren’t LEGO, and the list goes on with little details that leave us thinking Playground Games maybe wasn’t ready to release it in the first half of 2019 which they had promised at launch. With Forza Motorsport 8 being all but confirmed as a launch title for Project Scarlett late next year, it’s going to be a long wait until we get some new Forza content so it’s a shame this expansion wasn’t given a little bit more time for some quality control.

The May Forza Horizon 4 update came with some censoring for a lot of the in-game music. There were religious and drug references that were missed in the original rating and so now we have a game with a somewhat broken soundtrack. Luckily this expansion introduces a new LEGO radio station with its own DJs. The new LEGO radio station has a very recognizable track list, which is entirely the LEGO Everything is AWESOME! song on repeat. Okay so maybe the new LEGO radio station is completely unbarable after about 30 seconds, but at least it helps set the atmosphere and might get a laugh or a raised eyebrow out of friends and family.

The Forza Horizon 4 LEGO Speed Champions expansion is a whole heap of fun for all ages. Whether you’re a single digit child or a crazed LEGO fan in your 40’s, the attention to detail and accuracy in creating a LEGO world to race in has been done very well. There are several different ways one might say they have finished the expansion, however a full completionist will require around 20-30 hours to knock off all the LEGO brick challenges, fully upgrade their house and unlock all achievements. Despite the lack of LEGO cars at launch, we still had a blast in the LEGO Speed Champions expansion and hold our breath for Playground Games to release more cars in the coming weeks/months.

Forza Horizon 4 Lego Speed Champions retails for AU$29.95 and can be purchased for AU$26.95 with the Xbox Game Pass, or it’s available for free if you own the Forza Horizon 4 Ultimate Edition. Check out our reviews of Forza Horizon 4 and the Fortune Island expansion.