"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."
Lego, oh boy do we love Lego in the Krusty household. So it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes leap of logic to work out that we are also fans of the Lego series of games, my stepson in particular. And it was with that in mind that I decided to enlist his help with this review. So for a change this will be two reviews. One from my perspective and one from my stepson Reece.
As I said above Lego is a big deal in our house. So the opportunity to review Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham was an instant yes. Having played a few levels of various Lego games over the years I must admit I have never stuck with them until the end. My decision to play co-op with my stepson was influenced by my past experience and this review will be based on the co-op experience alone.
The members of the Lanterns Corps have been ambushed and brainwashed by Brainiac so he can shrink the Earth to a small enough size to fit into his trophy cabinet. This call to arms see you in the shoes of Batman, Robin and even Alfred to begin with but further on you get to play as any number of the Justice League members. There are 150+ playable characters in the game. That doesn’t even include the extra 40 odd extra characters you can download. You can also create your own superhero roster if you want to.
You start the game in the sewers of Gotham City chasing down Killer Croc. This first level introduces you to the controls, character swapping and the Bat-tastic Gadget Wheel which you use to swap each characters suits to give your characters different abilities. The gameplay on offer here hasn’t changed at all. Its the same mix of collecting bricks, solving puzzles and basic combat we have seen in all the previous Lego games that have come before it. If you have played a Lego game before you will be well in your comfort zone. Puzzle solving is always achieved just by changing your outfit to suit whatever puzzle is put in front of you or building an object out of the discarded Lego bricks that you get by defeating enemies or smashing up objects.
A special mention must be made of the extremely fun but complete Resogun rip-off shooter stages that you get to play during a few missions. This mode adds some much needed light relief from all the collecting, fighting and puzzle solving. I only wish they had added more sections where you get to play in this mode or maybe different vehicle types. The humour on offer is one of the games biggest assets. Listening to Batman, Robin, Superman and Wonderwoman banter their way through cutscenes is really, really funny and some of the humour is very adult based with little nods that only us parents will get.
Adam West appears all over the place and adds a huge amount of humour. He is one of the best, if not the best collectable character I have ever come across in a game. You will hear hear his cries for help before you see him and he makes an appearance on every level. Finding and rescuing him opens up an entire 1970’s based set of Batman adventures and you will unlock Adam West as a playable character for Free Play and in the open world hub. The amount of things to do in this game is quite staggering though. When you complete the campaign you will only have finished 12% of it. And you could spend weeks or maybe even months reaching that 100% complete status.
The controls can be frustrating at times and swapping from one character to another can be very hit and miss when there are more than two of you on screen at once. Quite often I found myself swapping between two or three different characters just to get to the one I actually needed to be. The camera also struggle to keep up with you at times as well and which led to some extremely frustrating moments. I also didn’t like the fact that you can’t skip the cutscenes. Watching them once is okay but when you're going back through the levels to find hidden objects surely you should be able to skip them.
All in all I did enjoy my time playing Lego Batman: Beyond Gotham but the same old gameplay which hasn’t changed from previous Lego games is beginning to become very tiresome now. The break up in play via the vehicle gameplay is a welcome addition but more still needs to be done to expand the gameplay on offer here. I have my fingers crossed that the next game in the Lego series dares to take a few chances and switch things up a liittle.
I have liked building Lego all my life, because of that i have played a lot of Lego video games,including Lego Marvel and Lego Star wars. As a result of playing those games I decided to play and review Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.
The game has a maximum of 2 players when playing co op, Xbox live. Also you can play as over 150 characters from the DC Comics Universe once you have unlocked them. However my favorite characters are Batman (space suit) and Superman.
My favorite part is the beginning of the game where Batman and Robin have to escape from the sewers. That is my favorite part because you are starting to get used to all of the controls and equipment and I think that is most most exciting part. You switch suits and abilities with the new Bat-tastic Gadget Wheel ( Y or RT). This first level teaches you everything you need to know about how to solve the games puzzles, this level teaches you how to switch between characters and how to switch between different suits, which each have their own ability.
My least favorite part is that I don't like the fact that there is no Xbox live considering that it claims to be a co-op game. So you can only play with somebody who is in the same room as you.
In my opinion Lego Batman 3 is aimed at ages 7-12 because I think it would be to easy and childish for ages 12 and over.The reason I think this is because that the controls are not as complex as other games such as Fifa and Call Of Duty.
This was a review of Forza Horizons 2: Storm Island DLC
Review copy supplied by XCN.
Game: Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.
Genre: Action/Adventure.
Developer: Traveller's Tales.
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
Platform(s): Xbox One, Xbox 360.