Review: 60395 Combo Race Pack
Posted by benbacardi,
LEGO's latest video game is 2K Drive, a vehicle building and racing game, attempting to put a spin on the classic genre by allowing players to build their own LEGO vehicles to race, and modify them as they wish.
Alongside the game, LEGO have branded three City sets with a "Play it in LEGO 2K Drive" badge, indicating that they are physical builds of the vehicles you can find, build, and customise in the game. The first, and largest, of these is 60395 Combo Race Pack, a set of three vehicles with parts that can be mixed and matched to make less traditional racers.
Summary
60395 Combo Race Pack, 362 pieces.
£24.99 / $29.99 / €29.99 | 6.9p/8.3c/8.3c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
Three excellent little vehicles with great play potential, with a slightly irrelevant tie-in to a video game.
- Fantastic vehicle design
- Great simple modular customisability
- Barely related to the video game
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
The box features the "Play it in LEGO 2K Drive" logo in the top right:
Minifigures
Three racers are provided, one for each vehicle. Although they're all wearing the same outfit, you'll never get them confused - their hair colour matches the vehicle they drive! The torso print is new, featuring a black racing suit design with red, yellow, and blue highlights—again, matching the colours of the three vehicles.
Our first racer's wearing a determined expression on his stubbled face, with dark red fluffy hair, a great-looking piece borrowed from 21337 Table Football. The second has a lopsided smile, and fantastic blue hair only previously used for the rapper RM in 21339 BTS Dynamite. There are probably not many blue hair pieces available for the designers to choose from, but they chose well! The final driver's blonde hair is pulled into a ponytail, and she's got a wide grin on her face.
The rear of the torso is printed with a zip and other detailing appropriate for a racing driver's suit. None of the faces have a secondary expression on the back.
They all also come with a helmet with a black visor, once again themed for their vehicle—although instead of a bright yellow, our final driver opted for an all-black look.
The Vehicles
To match the three drivers, we have three vehicles. The first a small red sports car, featuring a thick black racing stripe running down the middle and sides of the vehicle and a proportionally large air intake protruding from the bonnet. There's space in the middle for a single driver, using some of LEGO's oldest moulds of the steering wheel and windscreen pieces.
It's a small but dense, well-built car, and looks fantastic as well as feeling great in the hand. The front and rear assemblies are attached in an interesting way, a trait shared with the other two vehicles that I will explore later.
The second driver has opted for a sleek blue speedboat. (How these vehicles race each other I'm not sure; perhaps there's a course in the game that can be raced both on water and track at the same time?) Long black and blue fins sweep down the side of the boat and protude out the front, with the driver sitting behind another large air intake in the centre.
The central build of the boat is a very similar size to the race car; they're both eight studs wide, but the length of the boat makes it feel quite a bit larger. A pair of exhausts stick up at the rear.
The final build is a chunky black-and-yellow SUV. This is my favourite of the three—it feels great in the hand, and is a fantastic size to drive around. Printed tiles provide a construction-style design either side of the cab, and there's an appropriately large front bumper.
The rear of the SUV sports an electric bolt symbol, and along with the blue lightning erupting from the rear exhausts indicates that this is no petrol-powered vehicle! Not visible below, but there's also a small 1x1 round tile printed with the EV charging symbol beneath the rear assembly, which is a nice touch.
Together, all three vehicles look fantastic. The bright primary colours are very appealing, and not particularly childish—they suit the vehicles very well. They're all built to a good scale.
Customisation
One of the main features of the video game is the ability for players to customise their vehicles. As I understand it, within reason they can build anything like out of the parts available and race them on the provided tracks and open world. LEGO have tried to bring this aspect of the game into the sets too, without simply providing a daunting pile of bricks as a starting point.
The front and rear assemblies of each vehicle are attached using a pair of clips, connecting to a Brick1X2, Rounded, W/ 3.2 Shaft positioned in roughly the same position on each car. This is a fairly interesting part, introduced last year, and new to these sets in black. You can see it nestled in the centre of the SUV below, with the rear assembly connecting via orange clips and the front via blue.
The upshot of this consistency is that the front and rear of each vehicle can be mixed and matched with the others, creating a variety of different weird and unusual combinations! There are a couple suggested in the back of the instruction booklets, which I've reproduced below, but it's up to you. Some fit quite well, some just look downright wacky. But I suspect that's fairly representative of what players will come up with in the actual game!
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that the same 2-bar rounded brick is also visible on the two sides of each vehicle, around about where the driver sits. This is intentional, and the standardised design is something that is shared with the other two sets in the range. You'll have to wait for my upcoming reviews of 60396 Modified Race Cars and 60397 Monster Truck Race to find out why LEGO has included these!
Conclusion
The three vehicles provided in this set are excellent. They're not highly detailed, or using the latest clever LEGO techniques—but they are solid, look great, and feel fantastic to drive around and race. The minifigures also suit the set perfectly—my only complaint would be that some leg printing would have been nice.
The customisability afforded by the modular connection design provides some additional play value beyond the usual "here's a small race car" sets, and combined with the other two sets in the range there's a lot of creativity and play that can be had even for the less adventurous builders out there.
As for the tie-in with the 2K Drive video game, well—it doesn't really go beyond the picture on the outside of the box, and I'm not sure it was necessary. There's no QR code to scan in-game to unlock additional content, and there's no mention of the game at all once you've opened and thrown away the box. In a way, I'm glad—these are great little vehicles and it's good that they're not tied heavily to a video game that many children won't have. That said, if you do have the game, I'm sure it'll be fun to find the cars depicted here and race them in the game itself as well as around your kitchen table.
60395 Combo Race Pack will be available at LEGO.com from August 1st for $29.99, £24.99, 29.99€.
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37 comments on this article
Revisit the minifigs section I'm pretty sure RM isn't in minecraft.
Fun looking sets, they could be from an 80's/90's cartoon series like Pole Position or M.A.S.K.
I'm not sure I'll be wanting the Monster Truck set, but the other two of this mini subtheme look amazing!
It's too bad they didn't do a yellow helmet and went for black. It breaks the symmetry and it is quite annoying to the eye.
Speed boat looks great, the rest looks a little bland...
This is a really great and affordable set. I can this being a big hit with kids and even some AFOL city fans. The yellow truck is the least "realistic" but even it could be easily repurposed into a construction vehicle.
Love that azure hairpiece, too!
Really want to see the modified race car set next. These 2k sets aren’t actually that bad, and have a nice “classic” city feel, as if they jumped out of 2008. Love em
I'm getting Con-nect-ables -vibes again! Only down part is, you don't get musch stuff to swap out with in the set, especially for the boat. Might help to own the most recent tuning "garage".
But 30 bucks for three vehicles seems like a good deal.
60389, while completely unrelated to 2K Drive (other than having cars), has a modular system for the front and rear ends that would probably be compatible. I wasn't really interested in this set before reading the review, but that feature has me wanting this set, as well as 60396. I'm not as interested in 60397, although I do like its theming.
@SolidState: 21137 also doesn't have any hair pieces, also being Minecraft.
@Ridgeheart said: " I can't say I'm a huge fan of the concept if the end-results look like something a rodeo-clown would drive to work."
Of course, that'd be right up some people's alley, and a good number of those people are in the target demographic.
@SolidState said:
"Revisit the minifigs section I'm pretty sure RM isn't in minecraft."
Haha, I don't think the red fluffy hairpiece was around back in 2017 either. They probably meant to type 21337 and 21339
I probably won’t get these sets for budgetary reasons, but I think this is a wonderful line for kids. It’s very imaginative and really well done models. We AFOLs might prefer Speed Champios-grade designs, but these cars are perfect for the kids they’re intended for. The simple modularity is fantastic. Well done, LEGO.
“Barely related to the video game” - this is a positive rather than a negative. ??
@Brick_387 said:
" @SolidState said:
"Revisit the minifigs section I'm pretty sure RM isn't in minecraft."
Haha, I don't think the red fluffy hairpiece was around back in 2017 either. They probably meant to type 21337 and 21339"
ChatGPT having a bit of a moment!
@TheOtherMike said:
"60389, while completely unrelated to 2K Drive (other than having cars), has a modular system for the front and rear ends that would probably be compatible. I wasn't really interested in this set before reading the review, but that feature has me wanting this set, as well as 60396. I'm not as interested in 60397, although I do like its theming."
It looks like they'll be *mostly* compatible. The cars in 60389 each have a hood that overhangs the clip attachment point with only two plates of height in between, and it appears all the front ends from 60395 all extend three plates up from the clips, so you'll only be able to use the 2K front ends with 60389's orange car (where the swappable engine is in the front so the hood is removable), and going either direction will look slightly odd. They'd look odd anyway because of the color difference, though, and the rear ends in 60389 already aren't especially height-matched to the bodies so one more plate's difference shouldn't cause an issue.
What I want to know is how well the 2K cars can use components from 60371, 60374, and 40580. What kind of absurd monstrosity can we make here?
Everything in the set uses red-blue-yellow but specifically the helmet of one of the figs isn't yellow... I'm in serious need for yellow minifig helmets for some Futuron and Unitron figs I own and this set could have been a good opportunity for me to get them easily since it has been years since Lego last made a set with helmets in this color. Why Lego hates yellow helmets now?
@benbacardi
What color is the helmet for the racer on the right? I can’t decide between Pearl dark gray or dark bluish gray, both of which haven’t been seen since 2011 and 2008, respectively.
@Hotdog said:
" @benbacardi
What color is the helmet for the racer on the right? I can’t decide between Pearl dark gray or dark bluish gray, both of which haven’t been seen since 2011 and 2008, respectively. "
He said that "our final driver opted for an all-black look", so black. You can also see tha on official images of this set.
This set is probably the best thing to come out of this 2K racing debacle. So glad the set isn't filled with microtransactions..
Is a code included to unlock these in game?
These 3 vehicles are fantastic. I didn’t have high high expectations at first, but these are cool. Thanks for the review! I’m very interested in these now.
I can’t not see the remixed car as having giant blue murder-prongs, designed to help funnel pedestrians into the impact zone.
@Modeltrainman said:
"Is a code included to unlock these in game?
"
The review specifically calls out there is nothing to connect to the game in the box…
Color. Coordinated. Hair...*non-sarcastic clapping*
Seriously, I do like this set: Great vehicles (really like the boat, but the other two aren't bad either), the colors (PRIMARIES...now we need a follow-up w/Green, Orange, and Purple...), and the drivers...and as soon as those uniforms show in B.A.P. (or Bricklink), I may get some for a 'not-Trek' extension on my Space stuff...
(Edit): Think I'll order this later today; after I get done some other things first.
“ How these vehicles race each other I'm not sure”
Clearly never seen that episode of Top Gear when Hammond cycles, May drives, Clarkson power boats and Stig tubes haha!
@PurpleDave said:
"I can’t not see the remixed car as having giant blue murder-prongs, designed to help funnel pedestrians into the impact zone."
Can't believe LEGO picked up the DEATHRACE 2000 license...
@Terreneflame said:
" @Modeltrainman said:
"Is a code included to unlock these in game?
"
The review specifically calls out there is nothing to connect to the game in the box…"
Huh. I missed that.
"There's space in the middle for a single driver, using some of LEGO's oldest moulds of the steering wheel and windscreen pieces."
Um... what? The windscreen of the car being reviewed in that section debuted in 2007. And that was not even in this color! It debuted in 2064, 7945, 7942 and 7993 btw, all in trans. medium blue.
I've not got the game yet, but when I do, I can't wait to attempt recreating the Ecto-1, Batmobile, Mystery Machine and etc!
@Binnekamp said:
""There's space in the middle for a single driver, using some of LEGO's oldest moulds of the steering wheel and windscreen pieces."
Um... what? The windscreen of the car being reviewed in that section debuted in 2007. And that was not even in this color! It debuted in 2064, 7945, 7942 and 7993 btw, all in trans. medium blue."
Guessing he got his wires crossed and was thinking of the windshield on the yellow one.
I actually really love this set, I think the three vehicles are really gorgeous. I just hope the set isn't an exclusive or one of those hard-to-find things that you can only get from Lego stores.
@Andrusi said:
" @Binnekamp said:
""There's space in the middle for a single driver, using some of LEGO's oldest moulds of the steering wheel and windscreen pieces."
Um... what? The windscreen of the car being reviewed in that section debuted in 2007. And that was not even in this color! It debuted in 2064 , 7945 , 7942 and 7993 btw, all in trans. medium blue."
Guessing he got his wires crossed and was thinking of the windshield on the yellow one."
Even so, that's from 1987, when Classic Space made way for Futuron and Blacktron. Not exactly one of the oldest. The standard visored helmet is from the same year!
Compare that to the steering wheel from 1978 (when minifigs appeared).
Neither would even be in Vintage Set of the Week picks! (Although I'd count the steering wheel as one of the oldest regardless, being on the edge).
Stuff like the 2x4 brick or standard plates however...
Sorry if I'm a bit pedantic in this XD
Another confirmation making bigger vechicles in City is a mistake.
These are perfect!
Looks like a nod to the Extreme Team line.
They're six wide, not eight wide.
The switching of panels is like in Lego Universe, but worse. At least in LU you could build a vehicle out of 6 panels + Wheels and a center block. These are just 2 attachment points per vehicle.
LEGO: Why does the last driver have a black helmet?! Why not yellow?
As Ao_ka stated, I too need plain yellow helmets for Futuron and Unitron figs!
Maybe we will see them in an upcoming set from this line (fingers crossed). Maybe an unannounced polybag or something like that?
The LEGO Racers and the LEGO Speed Champions deserves to have their very own cartoon/anime series for Cartoon Network or Boomerang!
These vehicles have just been added to the LEGO 2K Drive game for in-game purchase.