WARNING:
There are some spoilers for the game in here. If you don’t want to
know anything about the plot points or secrets, skip to the last
paragraph.
I don’t do a
whole lot of video game reviews here because I don’t play a whole
lot of video games. I think the last piece I ever did about a game
was a sort of cursory first impression of Grand Theft Auto IV.
I’m sure I have mentioned Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham
City a few times and maybe even Skyrim, but I don’t ever
feel qualified to actually review games. I think I look for different
things out of video games than the average gamer.
The first LEGO
Batman game is a favorite in the Troublemaker household. My son
and I have played it more than any other game. The sheer variety of
levels and playable characters make it almost endlessly replayable.
It’s so much fun to play through almost every level of that game
that you really want to keep going back to unlock all the possible
rewards. All of the most notable heroes and villains of the Batman
mythos are represented and the game really feels like a kid-friendly
version of the Gotham City from the comic books. And then there’s
the fact that once you complete Batman and Robin’s storyline you
still have the villains’ story to play through. It made the game
seem twice as big – almost like two games in one.
We were very
excited about the sequel. Early on it was revealed that more
superheroes than just Batman, Robin, Nightwing, and Batgirl would be
involved. Superman was the first big reveal, followed soon after by
Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman. It looked like they would all
have representations of their respective powers, right up to Green
Lantern and Superman being able to fly. Then it was revealed that the
game took place in a huge, open Gotham City – the largest
environment Traveler’s Tales had ever produced and one that was
totally open.
In short it looked
like LEGO Batman 2 might be the greatest video game of all
time. We put our money down at GameStop and counted the days until
its release.
Before I get into
the game itself, I want to make sure you get where I am coming from
reviewing it. Probably eighty-five percent of the time I have spent
playing LEGO Batman 2 has been in two-player mode with my son.
He is very good at the LEGO games, so his skill level was not a
factor. He has finished LEGO Star Wars – the complete one –
on his own. He knows his way around a LEGO game. And yes – we let
him play video games. I firmly believe that gaming in moderation is
excellent for not only his hand-eye coordination, but also his
problem solving skills and his reading. His start in reading has come
from wanting to be able to read game menus. Lil’ Troublemaker’s
not going to be playing Grand Theft Auto any time soon and we
keep a limit on how much he is able to play. Plus, it’s time that
he and I get to spend doing something together that we both enjoy.
Okay, so we picked
up our copy of the game, took it home, and downloaded the five free
villains you get for preordering from GameStop – Captain Cold,
Gorilla Grodd, Black Adam, Bizarro, and Black Manta. Once you have
opened up Free Play they are available as playable characters.
Each portion of the
storyline is bookended by a cutscene and a news report. The voice
acting is quite good and the humor is the same as the other LEGO
games – wry but not mean-spirited. Hearing Clancy Brown do his Lex
Luthor in a more comedic fashion is pretty outstanding. It’s also
worth noting that every character you interact with has a voice. They
didn’t just record for the main ones and then leave the rest
silent. Granted, most of the villains only have a line or two due to
their peripheral involvement, but at least they don’t just gesture.
I’ll get to that peripheral involvement in a minute.
LEGO Batman 2
is noticeably different from its predecessors from the start. The
first thing that really jarred me was the new split screen.
Previously in LEGO games you had to deal with the restrictions that
come along with sharing a screen. Now there is a dynamic split screen
system that moves with the characters. If they are proximal to one
another you are actually sharing a screen, but as the two characters
move apart, the screen splits and the dividing line shifts around
depending on where they are relative to one another. For example, if
Batman is near the top of the screen moving towards the upper left
corner and Robin is near the bottom moving towards the lower right
corner, the screen will start with a horizontal line that slowly
shifts to become diagonal. As the characters move closer together
again the line will rotate and dissolve. Essentially, this system
gives the largest amount of real estate possible while characters are
in action. It takes a second to get used to, but it is easily the
best split screen system I have ever used.
Which makes it hard
to understand why the Gotham City portions of the game are a vertical
split screen at all times, regardless of the characters’ proximity.
This was the first issue I had with the game, as both of us were
having difficulty navigating through the large, open city with so
narrow a view. It got to the point where one of us was having to drop
out while the other moved through the city.
The actual story
portion of the game is a whole lot of fun and uses the new characters
in a very clever way. Things start off with Batman and Robin taking
care of business while Joker and Lex Luthor team up to conquer the
world or whatever. Gradually events escalate to the point where the
Man of Steel has to step in… er, fly in… and help out the
Dynamic Duo. Things are set up so that once you actually do get to
play as Superman it feels like a reward and a big deal. His flight,
heat vision, and freezing breath are so cool to use. And here’s the
truly genius thing about Superman as a playable character: he’s
invulnerable. That’s right – the very first game to get this
right is a friggin’ LEGO game. Superman can be repelled by
kryptonite and slowed by enemies, but he does not die. The game is
created to present different challenges to the Man of Steel rather
than just depowering him. Except that he does eventually get
depowered, but rather than feeling like a cheap way to make the game
challenging, it underlines just how great his powers are and just how
big of a deal Batman and Robin are.
Thinking about
depowered Superman makes me think of the fantastic character
animations in the game. Each character has their own walk,
mannerisms, and combat style that is very distinctive and based on
who they are. Everything Batman does is serious and efficient. Robin
is bouncy and agile. Superman moves effortlessly through the
environment, even knocking over trees and benches just by walking
into them. Joker kind of stumbles around and Lex Luthor has a tiny
little LEGO swagger. Not only that, each of the specialized suits
Batman and Robin wear has its own effect on the character’s look.
Robin adopts a strained gait while carrying his massive water blaster
and Batman clomps around slowly in his bulky Power Suit.
So anyway, the
story is a lot of fun to play through and never gets frustrating or
repetitive. There are a lot of great environments and the vehicle
scenes are vast improvements over the last game in my opinion. Now
they are more like rail shooters where you have to blast certain
points as you progress through the streets – or waterways - of
Gotham. I kind of dreaded the vehicle levels in the other LEGO games,
but actively looked forward to them in this one.
The problem with
the story mode is that half of it involves fighting this giant Joker
robot. So much of it is fighting that robot that when you finally
defeat it and the game is over you can’t believe it. I’m serious
when I say half the game. Level after level involves that one robot
to the point where it feels like it must just be the middle section
of the game, but then you defeat it and the credits roll. The story
is very short – we finished it in two nights of very casual
playing. Also a problem is the fact that the last game trained us to
expect a villain story and this one does not have that. Once you have
finished the heroes portion you’re done.
The story mode
seems much more linear than other LEGO games. There’s nowhere near
as much exploration or feeling of discovery with the levels. They are
all fairly straightforward platforming levels with a minimum of depth
and little of the sense of individual, fully realized environments
that the original game had. I’m not saying it’s bad by any means,
but it let both of us down a bit when we were done with it.
Well, not done,
obviously – this is a LEGO game, after all. There are still
hundreds of secrets to find, extras to buy, and characters to unlock.
And buy. There might not be any more mission-specific levels to
complete, but there is the whole city of Gotham to explore and it is
loaded with destructible items, hidden characters and vehicles,
obstacle courses, and villainous henchmen running wild amongst the
citizens.
Which is another
huge problem.
You will get
swarmed over and over and over again – pretty much constantly –
by the henchmen of the various villains. It’s massively annoying. We
got amazingly lucky in that the first red brick we found was
Invincibility. This makes the constant attacks tolerable. Unless, of
course, you’re in a vehicle. Then the Penguin’s damn penguins
will immediately show up to shoot it to pieces. There’s almost no
point in trying to drive around because those damned flightless
waterfowl get you every time. But then you do have Flash to run
around and that is a lot of fun once you get used to it.
Or you can use one
of the flying characters, but that presents its own problems. So far
we’ve got Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Bizarro, and Black
Adam as our fliers. I’m really hoping Killer Moth and Man-Bat can
fly as well, but all wonky like they did in the last game (we got
Man-Bat after I wrote this and he does fly!). The flying mechanics
are a little odd. You double-tap “X” to start flying. At this
point a targeting reticule appears in front of the character. You use
this target to aim your character. It works sort of okay. It’s just
difficult to go exactly where you want to go because there’s this
thing where when you’re in the open world your characters speed up
after a couple of steps. It’s meant to make traveling through
Gotham more efficient, but often it’s a pain in the ass, as you’ll
be trying to do something and all of a sudden you’re running. The
same thing happens while flying. You’ll be aimed in the right
direction and moving towards your target when all of a sudden you’re
zooming past because the speed-up kicked in. Then you’ve got to
turn around and try to find it, only you can’t just use the right
stick to look around – you have to actually aim the reticule with
the left stick, which starts you moving again. It is a ton of fun
flying over Gotham, but it is very awkward to do so with any specific
agenda.
There are a series
of obstacle courses strewn throughout Gotham City. A lot of
them. Each one is Batman or Robin-specific and involves switching
through their various specialty suits. These aren’t really puzzles;
as there’s nothing to figure out. It’s simply a matter of donning
each suit and then moving past the suit-specific path. That’s not
to say they aren’t fun. We’ve both enjoyed finding the courses
and finishing them to get the Gold Bricks at the end. There are 250
Gold Bricks in the game and many different ways to earn them, from
the obstacle courses to rescuing Citizens In Peril. You also might
find hidden characters on the obstacle courses.
This is another
thing that is new and I don’t know if I like it or not. Rather than
all of the unlockables being available from a central hub like the
Batcave, you have to first find them in the city to unlock them and
then come back when you have enough money to purchase them. It’s a
little tedious. I mean, it is more fun, but then you have to remember
where everything was because they are not marked on the map once you
locate them.
Another thing you
have to do once the story is over is track down all of the villains
that escaped from Arkham Asylum courtesy of Lex Luthor and Joker at
the beginning of the game. This sounds great until you realize that
they are just standing around Gotham and not actual new levels. Even
that doesn’t sound so bad until you find them and see that each bad
guy takes exactly three punches to defeat, with no special strategy
or boss-like battles whatsoever. Then you have to buy them, too.
I’ve also got to
wonder why some of the improvements seen in the Potter games weren’t
brought here. Stud collecting was much less of a hassle thanks to a
better range of attraction. Character switching was also much
smoother and could be done from a greater distance. Actually, now
that I think about it everything in that game (I know there are two
but I’ve only played the first) seemed a bit more polished.
Most of the
characters have special anilities or at least a bit of personality
that make them fun for one reason or another, but I want to mention
two in particular – Green Lantern and Gorilla Grodd. They kind of
suck.
GL sucks because
his abilities just are not accurately reflected. He can fly and he
can build stuff out of translucent green LEGOs that you find lying
around. That might sound kind of cool, but it isn’t. He has no ring
powers at all, not even during fighting. As a matter of fact, Green
Lantern and Superman both absolutely suck at fighting because for
some reason they both have this weird flying move they do that is
slow and awkward to use. They kind of dive at the enemies and it
takes forever.
Grodd is basically
just a Gorilla. He has no special abilities. So when you compare him
with Captain Cold’s freeze gun or Black Adam’s flight or
Bizarro’s heat vision he is kind of a let-down.
All in all LEGO
Batman 2: DC Superheroes really is a whole lot of fun and now
that we’ve realized we need to just take turns playing rather than
suffer through the co-op split screen we’re enjoying it more. I
suppose my problems revolve around some of the new things that were
implemented and the fact that they seem like they just weren’t
polished quite enough. If anybody other than Traveler’s Tales had
put this game out I would probably be singing their praises, but Tt
has set the bar incredibly high with their past releases. I
absolutely love all of the new ideas in this game, but it almost
feels like they needed a few more months before they put it out. The
animation is a bit choppy (usually because there are about a million
characters on screen at once) and there are quite a few irritating
glitches:
- Studs you can’t pick up
- Sometimes saving takes so long studs you released disappear
- Switching to characters other than Batman or Robin takes forever
- The toggle system is only available in Free Play mode when you are playing through the levels again – not in the Gotham roaming mode. Of course, countering this is the fact that you can select any character you want from the Character Select drop-down while in Free Play mode.
- If you explore Gotham a lot you are going to get stuck behind and under stuff a lot. Sometimes even switching to a flying character doesn’t help if the space is too tight.
- The game has frozen up several times while we were playing in co-op mode.
This is by no means
a bad game and I would never suggest that you shouldn’t buy it. But
be prepared for the things I have discussed above so you won’t be
disappointed. LEGO Batman 2 is one of those games where you
go, “Well, they’ll probably fix all this stuff in the next one.”
And with Traveler’s Tales’ track record I feel that they will.
I don’t want to
rate this game, because I feel like it’s a 3 out of 5, but that
just seems too low for how much effort and innovation went into it.
But yeah, it’s a
3
out of 5
Please still go
ahead and give this game a chance. It’s a lot of fun. But just be
aware that there are some flaws that you’re not used to seeing from
Traveler’s Tales. I should also mention that there are quite a few
folks on Facebook that do not agree with me. They were
actually a bit outraged when I mentioned that the game might not be
perfect. So just know that there are folks out there who don’t see
the issues I mentioned as a big deal or maybe, somehow, didn’t see
them at all.
Also, this is a
game where water kills you and Aquaman dies in the water. For real.
-Phantom
No comments:
Post a Comment