LEGO Marvel Superheroes

There’s very little to be said about the LEGO games. For years the franchise was stale with sub-par games, to the point everyone had pretty much given up. Then came LEGO Star Wars, which completely revitalised it.

Now we’ve come to the point where the LEGO games come out all the time, and have covered many of our favourite franchises: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter & Batman/DC. Now Marvel has joined the fray, and the

I’ll start with my opinion that the LEGO games are all the same. The follow a similar recipe, and cosmetically are all the same. Every game has the same thing to do: multiple characters, each with their own unique abilities, and to complete the game you must redo each level with a selection of different characters to get every collectible.

That said, I loved LEGO Marvel. I was interested in the game obviously since I do like Marvel and the characters: moreso than I do DC, but didn’t expect a huge amount from it especially since I didn’t really enjoy LEGO Batman 2. The gameplay is still the same idea obviously, but something about Marvel just grabbed my interest. I played it non stop for about a week, even infecting my dreams with Lego characters. The voices, which I hated in Batman 2, were fantastic, and in this case quite integral to the game. I don’t think it would have come close to as enjoyable using the silent slapstick of the original games.

The level design and characters used were pretty fun within the levels, and the huge roster of characters really worked well, especially in the Deadpool missions which were just there to add small extra content and extra humor. Without these the introduction of characters such as Howard the Duck would have been almost impossible.

My favourite part by far however was the open world exploration. While this was only to collect extra characters and do small races and missions, and to solve little puzzles, it was amazingly fun, actually reminding me (although obviously on a much simpler level) of Arkham City’s Riddler collectibles. I spent hours upon hours just flying from one end of the city to another to pick up another gold brick, or unlocking characters.

As always with the LEGO games, this one is a no-brainer if you’re a fan of the series, however I’d definitely go much further on that. The Marvel lore and stories used should be enough to at least peak the interest of any True Believer, and failing that the fact that it is just an enjoyable play definitely makes it worthwhile.

9/10