Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes

I know I said I was off Lego Games indefinitely but this one was on my shelf and despite all my previous reviews, somehow I convinced myself that it would be another quick completion. Once again I was wrong but it’s my own stupid fault isn’t it.

 

The story follows Batman and Robin as they pursue the Joker and other villains across Gotham City. Then Superman shows up, gets a blowy from Robin, and makes Batman completely redundant as a hero. As much as I hate Superman – let’s face it, he’s a cheesy bellend – all of his powers mean that you can complete levels really easily when you control him and they are a bit of a struggle (more in terms of getting around than anything else) when you play as Batman.

 

The game play structure is just irritating now. Only certain characters can do certain things and Robin and Batman can wear certain suits to give them certain abilities, which seems to be the unique mechanic the game is built around. Despite being call DC Superheroes, other than Superman, the others only really show up towards the end and you spend most of the game playing as Batman and Robin. Kind of a misleading title.

 

The most shitty aspect of the game, and this will come as a real surprise, is the vehicles. The vehicles handle like winged elephants. This is compounded by the fact that you have to use the vehicles to race through checkpoints. Trying to turn the batwing thing to face in the right direction is such a ballache that any hope of racing through checkpoints quickly evaporates into thin air.

 

Other than the vehicles, there is a freeroaming open world bit where you can fly around as Superman and other characters with flying abilities. Flying them around is the biggest pile of garbage ever. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that they learned the system they used here was balls  and rectified it by the time they got round to doing Lego Marvel Super Heroes. Basically, you have to use a direction indicator and hold down a button like an accelerator in a car. This makes collecting gold bricks – probably the main point of the open world – an episode in mind destroying frustration when every time you want to move forward an inch, your character just flies off in a different direction. That’s not even an exaggeration.

 

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 37 Achievements

 

The last achievement I unlocked was getting 100% which is pretty damn good considering all the bullshit Lego games make you go through outside of that requirement. I’ve learnt from my time in the Lego universe and simply saved my studs to buy the stud multipliers first. This essentially eradicates the needless grind for cash to unlock certain characters to do things in free play mode.

 

I know I moan about this every time but having to play boring story levels twice to get everything is stupid. It would be better if when you play in freeplay, you can simply explore the entire level from the get go without having to do all the bits to get to the next section of the level. It would make the ‘second playthrough’ a lot more bearable.

 

Aside from striving to the 100% mark, something which takes a mind numbing 30 hours to do if you are rushing, there are some really stupid customary Lego game achievements. The most notable of this is for climbing to the top of Wayne Tower as a female character on the back of a gorilla.

 

There are also the generic ‘ kill the super villain with the right super hero’ and the now a-typical ‘you can play this game with a friend so we’ve put in an achievement for doing it’ achievements. It’s all very meh by this point.

 

Downloadable Content – N/A

 

It might be that I’m fed up with Lego games but I didn’t enjoy Lego Batman 2. The open world felt more like a grind than an enjoyable exploring experience. It’s a shame really because a lot of work appears to have gone into it but the game play frustrations make it feel rushed before being fully tested. I may give some of the next gen Lego a go and will only revert back to the 360 if I get really stuck for completions.