Oddly one of the best batman games to date.
The lego games combined with a popular theme do manage to sum up some imature, harmless and rather silly entertainment. Lego star wars achieved what it planned to do with garnering many different types of gamers to enjoy its adorable atmosphere and some lighthearted gameplay mixed with a slight parody of its overall story.
Then came the Indiana Jones game, which I myself haven't even had the disc in my ps3..so i can't judge all that well wether it managed to continue on travellers tales strong trend of lego-izing immortal franchises.
Lego Indiana Jones was an obvious pick and doesn't really stray too from its Star Wars roots what with it being the other popular film franchise handled by that dodgy duo Speilberg n Lucas. Lego Batman however is certaintly quite a detour and definatly shows just were TT's may decide to take their lego transforming skills next.
So lego batman..Well first of it should come to no surprise that it could be seen as a sort of sequel to the other lego games, what with its gameplay being fundamentally mirrored sept now instead of lightsabers you get kung-fu karate destruction. Instead of noble robes you have deformed crocodile/human hybrids n a guy walking around a purple suit with a face full of talcum powder.
Besides the obvious change with the characters, lego batman is exactly what everyone has seen before i'm afraid. Its of course a fun 20+ hours or so for anyone new to the franchise of lego-games, but anyone who found themselves force pushing droids n swinging from tree's with a whip won't find much to keep them stuck with lego batman.
With that typed, the gameplay to anyone whos played any other lego games is predictable enough. You traverse through a number of enviroments, mixed with lego and real-time backgrounds, destroying lego objects and fighting off goons (and eventually gothams finest) in a 3rd person view. The main focus of Lego Batman is usually figuring out puzzles to carry on your journey through the linear path you'll follow. Puzzles range from your simple 'build switch..then activite switch' to more complex puzzles that will usually require a character specific ability, such as walking through toxic waste as Two-Face or throwing your batarang across some hard to reach bad mo-fos with the 'Grey' night himself.
You'll always at least have two different characters to play as amidst your stud collecting, lego bashing stay in Gotham. In the story mode you'll only have the two characters, while in freeplay (an unlockable mode which lets you return with any choosen character) you will be given a selection of characters to skim through at will amidst gameplay.
Throughout lego batman you'll aquire a charming number of characters to play as, while around 30+ characters to unlock they all fall into a smaller number of catagorys. You'll have the super strong characters which can lift n pull heavy objects, the toxic resistance characters who can walk through tox waste, the athletic characters who can do a double jump and ect. Theres a good variety of characters overall from the batman universe and all fit nicely into their catagorys. Most characters too will usually have more than just one perk too so its always a nice change when switching to a different character.
The combat of lego batman doesn't have as much strength as the puzzles n exploration, but is certaintly engaged often enough. You'll fight your through limitless badguys in some levels and while your characters will have a decent amount of fighting animations to fight of their foes with, the rather easy difficulty when facing the goons n gimps could very easily turn into a DW simulation with u just pounding the square button to fight off everything that keeps respawning in front of you.
The combat is still fun and with the many boss' you'll encounter usually has alot of puzzles to accompany them.
So yes, much like all other lego games lego batman is of course pretty easy and won't cause you to be ordering any new gamepads with your others dumped in the recycle bin as heaps of plastic. Which does at least guarantee
some casual gaming but will turn off anyone who goes in looking to purposly blow off some steam, unless you happen to have some grudge against someone who happens to be made of lego :P
The replay value, again like the past lego games, is rich with reason to come back to the levels. You'll have initially the 15 story levels as batman and robin 'then' you are able to play through another 15 levels as the villians, all split up to match batman and robins escapades. But with free play mode to go through and plenty of minikits to find and 'super hero/villian' status' to aim for theres plenty to keep you occupied before you reach that satisfying 100% goal.
Everything else with Lego Batman does give off very high quality. The graphics for one are very well done, full of colour and do literally look like little lego toys that have sprung to life. All the animations of the characters too are fluid and always a pleasure to admire. The sound is mainly consisted off the epic score off Tim Burtons 1989 Batman movie. That doesn't mean its connected in anyway to Tim Burtons Batman storywise mind you. Lego batman has an 'original' story of villians escaping the madhouse...annnd batman rounding em all back up in their little lego cells. Not like that matters too much, it offers many more characters to play as instead of limiting you to the characters from only the first 3 batman movies. Back to sound though, well the sound effects too are all practically recycled from past lego games, their is no dialoque still of course, but the grunts and crys of the characters all are still humorous enough and the body language the characters all have to show moves the story along well.
Lego Batman is, like i constantly keep typin :P, a re-hash of past lego games just with different characters and enviroments. Take from that what you will, if you enjoyed the past lego games and still would like to try some more but this time with a square bat helmet then lego batman will deliver. Anyone after something new and innovating with the lego series will be sorely dissapointed.
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