Glitches Hurt...Badly
I feel like the only guy who really loved Lego Batman. True, it is the best selling of the Lego games, but it seems to be one of the most routinely bashed titles of the genre. I thought it was really good, not the best (Lego Star Wars III is likely the best) but solid. I was looking forward to the sequel once it was announced as the idea of playing the best of the DC heroes against the most prominent DC villains (well, outside of Darkseid, alas).
The game is great --- but it has significant technical flaws that cannot be ignored. You start off with Batman and Robin who deal with The Joker breaking into a Man of the Year Award ceremony between Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor. The story is endlessly silly and the addition of voice actually is great. The voice acting is terrific and the newscasts between levels are witty and well-delivered. I like all of the voices and some of the subtle touches, such as Batman's loathing of Superman while Robin is almost a fanboy of his.
The levels are longer than in the past, largely because there are fewer (from nearly 30 in most to, I believe, 16). They are much longer and rather well laid out. But the main selling point of the game, as usual, is the collectibles in the open world. And the open world is large, varied, and quite pretty in this game, I cannot fathom how they will improve the formula for the next gen (outside of the performance issues) visually.
You have the usual people associated with each other via powers (some can spray water, some can blow up things, etc). You have tons of people to find. Your cheats are no longer hidden in levels but all over Gotham. Most of your gold bricks are also located all over Gotham. The "game" takes, maybe, 6-7 hours to finish --- but to collect everything will increase that time nearly 4 times over. And it is not dull.
As much as I like this game, the bugs are hard to ignore. The game freezes (3 times in the 5 days I played it). When you pull up the map, Martian Manhunter will repeat himself most of the time. You can get stuck while sliding after a jump and that never ends. A patch would fix most of these problems, but this kind of thing should've been taken care of. Freezing once or twice is an annoyance. 3 times inside of 12 hours --- that's not acceptable).
I recommend this game. And if the patch wipes out the glitches, I'll happily give it a 4.5/5(I like it that much). But, with the bugs that it has, the review has to take notice of them.
