The Lego Games of yonder year have developed a sense of game play that borders between puzzle and platformer and Lego Batman doesn’t vary from this style. Lego Batman plays like any other Lego game of the past, you have a home area where you are able to access the levels of the game at your leisure, you are also able to access an items screen where you are able to buy characters, new upgrades, cheats and hints.
Lego Batman captures the feel of Gotham extremely well within the Lego universe, the city seems dark and dank, the villains of Gotham truly come across as nothing less than mental and the adaptation of Danny Elfmans original score from the first Batman film to the game helps to make the player feel as if they truly are Batman.
The main problem with this game is that it is a Lego game; but in the same way this is its saving grace. Problems arise from the fact that it is simply “the same old, same old” the game really doesn’t offer the player anything new and if you are a veteran of the Lego Star Wars and Lego Indianan Jones games you will know what to expect from the very start.
In saying this however the game offers far more content than the previous games by the fact there are now twice as many levels, this is due to the aspect that you are able to play thought the game as the villains aswell as the Gotham heroes. There are more upgrades available aswell as a new unlockable feature known as Data which gives the player an insight into the history of Batman and other playable characters.
One of the biggest problems with Lego Indianan Jones is that the game got very stale, very quickly due to the aspect that more often than not you play mainly as Indianan Jones and if we learnt anything from Lego Star Wars its that one of the better aspects of the games was being able to play as multiply characters for different effects.
The way Lego Batman gets round this is by giving Batman several suits and upgrades to constantly keep it fresh and interesting.The suits offer a great insight into Batman’s world aswell as keeping the challenging aspect of the game open i.e you may need one suit for one task, and a totally different one for another.
The best aspect of the game for me is playing as the villains, this offers alot more in terms of game play than just playing as Batman and Robin in the hero missions. In the hero missions Batman and Robin use suits to keep the gameplay challenging and fun which is fine and I understand that that is a suitable solution to the two man problem.
However the villains have their own superpowers to a certain degree and I found them to be far more interesting and more enjoyable to play as, for instance playing as the riddler or bane gives you the option to; as the riddler control people and as bane lift objects normal characters couldn’t with super strength. In making this point it does seem to be that most of the well known villains have unique powers while everyone else just has super strength, this is kinda upsetting as I feel they could of really ran with the superpower aspect.
Overall the game is fun, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and the characters are made of Lego, what more do you want?, however I do think that its time the team hanged up the ol’ blocks and perhaps tried their hand at something else. If this was the first Lego game then I would give this a 10 but because this is the third in the series I cant, its all become a bit too familiar.
If you haven’t played a Lego game before then I strongly recommend going out and getting this game, if you have played the past games then maybe its just worth renting it out because its not really going to challenge and thrill you. As a final note in terms of the graphics an gameplay they are both equally good but nothing special but then if you are expecting amazing visuals from a Lego game, you’ve got a serious shock coming. The game is good honest fun even if now it is a bit backdated.
OVERALL: 7.5
p.s Why not make a Lego Racing RPG…wouldn’t that be mental?