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I bought LR1 and LR2 together in a two-pack, and played through both at the same time. I can honestly say I like LR2 more, reasons being: Overall feel and style. It's hard to put my finger on what exactly it is, but LR2 just looks and feels better, from the more stylish UI to the cutscenes. Bosses in LR1 were pretty strange. You were always racing against a boss in LR1 (who was really just somebody in a car with likings for certain power-ups, and had no personality given to them outside of a short ten second intro cutscene), and as a result, all the races in the game were basically boss races without variation in gameplay, with a couple of insignificant AI characters always trailing so far behind they never impacted the race. LR2 actually had proper bosses, with one-on-one races and more unique designs (you race against a freaking mech, 'nuff said). They also had a bit more to them than just a brief intro cutscene - both winning and losing cutscenes, and a spotlight in the final cutscene at the end of the game. The bosses simply mattered more in LR2, in LR1 they weren't as distinguished. You may fault LR2 for having less themes included, but aside from perhaps Knights Kingdom, what else could you even possibly include? LR1 was made just at the end of LEGO's multi-faction theme era, LR2 was made just when the rebooted system was being introduced. Technically, LR2 had more themes than LR1 - but had less variety in environment design because there were no longer at least two or three factions per theme. The open worlds. LR1 just felt closed off and disconnected, with hardly any cohesive plot besides a little blurb in the manual, and no connection between the various tracks, even tracks within the same theme. LR2 actually felt like you were exploring the LEGO universe, talking to its inhabitants, and seeing how it all fit together. More game modes than just plain racing. Hello battle mode and capture the flag! Oh, and you could win car upgrades from completing the bonus games, which brings me to my next point - you actually improved your vehicles as you went along. In LR1, nothing ever really changed, some car chassis might be slightly faster or turn sharper, but there was really no indication of this, if there even IS any real difference between new car unlocks. The physics in the PC version of LR2 were far from perfect, but may I point out the absolutely terrible drifting and awkward rear wheel bouncing of LR1? Yeah, I'd call it even here. The music. This is mostly up to personal taste, but I can't stand most of the music in LR1 - it's obnoxious, always sounds the same, and the synthesizers are terrible. LR2 wasn't perfect in music either - they sure liked re-using that menu theme a lot - but it's an improvement. Power-ups: LR1 had some fun power-ups. Such a shame you never had to use them, as the warp was so over-powered it's all you even really need. And without any sort of rubber banding, things like this happen. LR2 was actually more balanced with its power-ups, and honestly, I found them pretty fun, especially with the secondary uses, like riding on top of the rocket drill or dropping the blast bubble as a land mine. Which leads into my next point... ... Car destruction. Holy crud, is that ever fun. Something the developers of LR1 wanted to do, but couldn't due to technical limitations... Instead, in LR1, random bricks falling off is nothing more than an underwhelming special effect, and most power-ups do nothing but pop you into the air and slow you down. In LR2, the power-ups actually pack a punch. Not to mention that they can still be played off of each other in interesting ways - for example, if you're fast enough, you can fire a slizer disk behind you to take out an incoming homing rocket. In the end, the only places where I actually prefer LR1 are: Character and car building. Sorry ATD, but you really could have done better here. LR1 had plenty of minifigure pieces, and you unlocked more as you progressed. In LR2, there's only a small handful, which can only be combined to make a couple of actually good looking characters, and you don't unlock more. I like the addition of plates to car building, but without the ability to freely mix and match car sets, the options are limited. Track variation. The open worlds are fun to explore, but while actually racing, you just end up re-tracing the same paths several times. Veronica Voltage would have been nice.