Difficulty:

Very Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

Traveler's Tales does one thing, and one thing only. They make Lego games based on movie and comic book franchises, but they don't necessarily do it all that well. Their games are full of broken gameplay mechanics and riddled with glitches, and such is the case with Lego Batman, their second Lego video game after their first hit Lego Star Wars.

Gotham has run amok with villains as Arkham Asylum just experienced a massive breakout. Three criminal masterminds, The Riddler, the Penguin and The Joker employ teams of Gotham's most feared villains including Clayface, Mad Hatter, Mr. Freeze, and Killer Croc in order to execute some of the biggest crime sprees the city has ever seen. The Dynamic Duo known as Batman and Robin must don their caped costumes and stop them at every turn, while smashing and building as many Legos as they can.

Lego Batman consists of six chapters with five episodes each. Three of these chapters are Hero-based and you play solely as Batman and Robin. Through these levels, you'll come across different suits that bestow unique powers to the heroes. Batman has suits that allow him to use bombs, glide, withstand extreme heat, etc., while Robin has suits that let him walk on metallic walls, use tech panels to control machinery, and dive underwater. The other three chapters have you controlling one mastermind and one subordinate, each with their own unique powers, such as Poison Ivy's ability to grow plants, Mr. Freeze's freeze ray gun, and the Joker's classic electric hand buzzer.

As is Traveler's Tale's tradition, after you beat a story mission, you can replay it with any of the characters you've collected using Freeplay. Once you get a large enough ensemble, you'll have a cast that's equipped to deal with every obstacle that gets in your way. Hidden in each level are 10 mini kits that when collected, complete a Lego model. There is also one power brick in each of these levels that when found and purchased will activate a cheat, such as multiplying the number of studs you collect or making you invincible. The game offers a wealth of replayability, as it takes some time to collect everything the game has to offer. The game also contains two hidden bonus levels where you collect 1,000,000 studs, but both of these levels are poorly designed and just not a lot of fun.

As with any Lego game, Lego Batman is extremely easy to play. You have four hearts, and it takes a few hits before you lose one and once you've lost all your hearts, you explode in a shower of plastic. Instantly, you're respawned into the game without interruption of progress. Your only inconvenience is losing a few thousand studs, and that is easily alleviated by unlocking the score multiplier cheats. All you really have to do is trudge though the levels and you can beat the game without worry of losing lives and using continues.

It's a good thing Lego Batman's ridiculously easy too, because the game's marred with lousy platforming, horrible collision detection, glitches and some really atrocious ally AI. There's no way you'll play the game without falling to your death by deceptive camera angles, floaty physics, or your partner nudging you off. The game has a broken auto-lock system that attacks enemies when you want to attack objects, even if you're holding the stick in the direction of the object. This means you'll even attack your own partner at times instead of hitting what you meant to hit. There are even times your partner will get stuck and lag behind, preventing you from completing the level and having to backtrack the entire way to get close enough to switch control over to him and get him out of his idiotic placement. These are all terrible flaws that would make a game that did have limited lives and continues nearly impossible to have any fun with.

There are also driving stages in just about every chapter, and just as with the Lego Star Wars games, they aren't very fun thanks to lousy controls and horrible physics. Parts of these levels require bombs being towed and swung into objects, but towing doesn't feel very natural at all and causes a great deal of frustration as you try to keep the bomb from hitting not only enemies in your path, but trying to line it up to the target you want to destroy. There are also a few glitches in some of these driving stages that can prevent you from collecting mini kits, resulting in you having to restart the level. Most of these levels are short, fortunately, so you don't have to spent much time in them.

Graphics wise, Lego Batman isn't very impressive. A lot of the levels are full of dark alleyways and murky polluted rivers. The Lego characters themselves are well-designed and animate smoothly, but the special effects just aren't very mind-blowing. Obviously since the game was made in 2008, Traveler's Tales has come a good ways since then, but the Star Wars Lego games looked better than Batman, which came afterward. The real eye catchers, however, are the many iconic Batman structures and vehicles made out of Legos. They look like you could pull them out of the screen and start playing with them right there in your room.

Audio wise, it sounds just like every previous Lego game. Explosions, punches, Lego pieces being thrown together; all of it sounds very familiar. Traveler's Tales continues to use mumbling and incoherent babbling for their voice overs, which give their Lego games a funny and whimsical sense of humor and charm. The soundtrack of the game also uses the iconic Danny Elfman theme of the pre-Nolan Batman films. This helps to instantly establish the Batman atmosphere of the game.

If you love Lego games, you'll no doubt love Lego Batman. Every important element that makes up a Lego game is here. Collecting studs, mini kits, replaying missions via Freeplay, discovering the hidden levels and laughing at the humorous cutscenes are all expected staples. Lego Batman unfortunately contains many of the Lego game's technical faults, and they are much more irritating here. Still, the game's easy enough so they won't put you off from completing the game, but you will need to exercise a bit more patience.