Lego Batman Review

Lego Batman is the fourth Lego adaptation to hit the Xbox 360. The first two were dedicated to the Star Wars universe, the second to the Indiana Jones trilogy (obviously the latest film was blatantly disregarded) and this latest edition explores the DC legend that is Gotham City.

This game was a win-win for me, because as well as being a fan of the previous lego games I'm also a big DC/Batman fan, so this has a lot of selling points for me. Lets see how it stand up to scrutiny:

I Love:

The Characters: LB offers a huge range of playable characters, and it's great to see loads of familiar faces in there. There's a nice mix of heroes and villains, and a comfortable range of abilities and quirks to make each character relatively unique to play as.

The Villain Stories: The idea of playing each storyline through from the perspective of the villains involved is a great idea. It's great fun playing as the villains because of their wide range of specific abilities, rather than having to constantly change suits like in the hero campaigns.

Combat Improvements: There have been some minor changes to the combat system, but it is always nice to see some advancement. Now we have the ability to grab and throw enemies, and some characters have very unique attacks. Bane is my personal favourite, but there are a lot of little quirks to look out for.

I Hate:

New Storylines: While the campaigns are still fun to play, it disappoints me that they are so difficult to comprehend. I understand the idea that Lego men don't speak, but surely there must be a slighter more effective way of conveying the narrative? When playing from the perspective of the villains, it is made easier my textual introductions to each mission but in the hero campaigns you are left somewhat in the dark.

The Formula: As fun as it is, the Lego franchise is undoubtedly becoming old. For an achievement guy like me, playing through all the levels in order to find every collectible becomes very tiresome really quickly, especially after playing through the other Lego games. I have a feeling this may be the last in the series.

No Online: The multiplayer mode that we saw in Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga has been curiously omitted in LB. It would of been nice to take this selection of characters online, and I'm sure the concept would have proved popular.

Overall, LB is still great fun to play despite getting the feeling that you have seen and done most of it before. Setting it in the Batman universe was a great idea and works very well with the format. Hopefully this will be the last Lego game, at least for some time, because then the developer runs the risk of simply re-skinning all their existing titles. Time will tell.

7/10

Achievement Difficulty: 4/10