LEGO Batman Arrives

Santa kindly brought me a copy of LEGO Batman for the Wii at Christmas, thus helping cement the LEGO theme we had going in December.  I think we still have at least one unopened kit at this point.

Back in September, I was going on about my seeming lack of enthusiasm for the game.  I could not bring myself to run out and get it on day one, at least not at the list price of $50.

But now it is here and it seems that the rest of my predictions about the game rang pretty much true.

The game is a lot of fun.  It is at least as much fun as the previous LEGO titles from Traveller’s Tales.

It feels like the game has more content than LEGO Indiana Jones did, though it still falls short off all but the first LEGO Star Wars title, and that was before Travelers Tales discovered the secret sauce that makes their LEGO franchise so addictive.

As I guessed, you take on the role of Batman and Robin and run off to fight the super villains that plague Gotham City who are lead, in three separate acts, by The Riddler, The Penguin, and The Joker.  Once you have defeated the final scene in a given act, you can then go back and play from the point of view of the other side, taking on the super villain role yourself.

Being a LEGO title, you spend a lot of time breaking things, blowing things up, and collecting the little studs that are the unlock currency in the game.

The first two characters we bought were Batgirl, which my daughter wanted to play and whom can take over all of the Batman roles, and Nightwing, an alternative Robin who has a better outfit, some hair mousse, and a pair of batons with which to fight.

All in all, a solid game.

The fact that it was not based on story lines I knew well (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) turned out to be less of a problem than I had anticipated.  But then, what is there to understand when it comes to Batman?  Bad guys get out of hand, Batman, foils their plans, beats them about the head and shoulders, and hands them over to the authorities.

The main drawback is that the game does not really bring anything new to Traveler’s Tales LEGO oeuvre.

Sure, there are neat little things, Batman and Robin both have suits that do special things and there is the who boomerang/batarang thing, but those don’t really change the feel of the game.

And so, in something of a exaggerated reflection of my own views on the game, I practically have to drag my daughter kicking and screaming to get her to play LEGO Batman with me.  She asks if we can play something else, please!  She can even get a bit sulky, sitting there holding the controller while the game starts up.

And then we actually start playing the game and she doesn’t want to stop.

Because it really is a fun game.

But, as things go in the MMO world, it is difficult to judge the game on its own merits, in a vacuum.  LEGO Batman has to live in the shadow of what went before.