About the loading times: when does the game load? Once at the beginning? In between missions? When changing areas?
Whenever you enter buildings. So like, the game has to load the interior of the police station as it's a separate "level" compared to the open world sandbox (which seems pretty large). It seemed to be loading between missions too, but that could have been because the early missions almost all require you going to the police station.
Loading times were well over a good minute. They were pretty damn bad. But yeah, the rep did note this was a dev build and that the load times would hopefully be improved in the final game.
How did you like the gamrplay? Typical Lego or something else? And since some people are interested in that, how where the driving controls?
I unfortunately didn't get a chance to play it for myself. My colleague was first to play, and we were stretched for time, so I didn't want to hog the controller for our website when there were a couple of other websites that needed to have a go. Fairs fair.
My colleague was pretty happy with it. He liked the first couple of LEGO games but has grown tired of them specifically because they're all basically the exact same thing with a new coat of paint / setting. He was hoping that Undercover wasn't a typical LEGO game but instead did its own thing, and he walked away with that impression.
Gameplay was very basic from what we saw, but we were aware of the fact we essentially saw the game's opening levels which are mostly tutorial based. Like, there's a whole system of puzzles/object using that requires you equip the right outfit/disguise that we never really saw much of. Each outfit has its own perks and abilities, and grants you access to new areas.
EDIT: As a side, a note on the nicer points of the graphics, the interior of the police station looked great. Like, the sun is shining through the big office windows, and the shadows they cast are all dynamic (as they should be). But it avoids that goofy effect some games have where characters and props are casting a different toned or sourced shadow to the lights. Here there's a really nice uniformity to the lighting and shadows, where it all looks like it's being cast from the same source, and blend into each other upon contact. It's not a new effect, but it made the interior of the police station look quite nice and clean.
The per object motion blur looks great too.