Lego Marvel Super Heroes

In the sea of gritty, incredibly complicating, strategic and demanding games that I have been playing lately I was saved by this game. Lego Marvel was this bright little thing that just came and took me away to much, much simpler world.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes, boy that a fucking mouthful, is an action-adventure game that was developed by TT Games and published by their parent company Warner Bro. Interactive back in 2013, although the game has been republished as recently as 2015 on certain platforms such as the PS4 and PS3 for the Japanese version of the game. I played the game on my PC through steam so my impressions of the game come from that version.

This was my first ever Lego game so I was surprised by a lot of things this game had to offer. What surprised me the most was simply the scale of it all. There are so many characters, over 150 if you count transformations and different costumes, the overworld map was massive and it was all fairly accurate to the game being set in Manhattan, New York. I had expected the game to be a very narrow corridor simulator like the first 50 hours of Final Fantasy thirteen, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had more than enough space to fly around with mighty Mjolnir as low or as high as I wanted and zip in and around anything I wanted. The sheer amount of fan service was also pretty substantial in my opinion, every level is set in a pretty significant part of the Marvel world meaning that no matter which heroes are your favorite be you are going to find yourself smashing your way through their world  at some point during the game. They also filled the overworld with some mini quests, although I'm sure you have already guessed they get pretty repetitive real quick, to keep you busy between the story and some bonus levels that you have to unlcok so the map does feel alive. There are some items to unlock as well which will give you something to aim for as you play the game to add some amusing features or some advantages. I was pretty entertained that Stan Lee also features pretty heavily in the game keeping up his cameo prowess even in digital formats. All in all this game definitely captured the feel of the entire Marvel universe which is an achievement in itself.

I'm pretty forgiving with any game that would let play as The Mighty Thor!

Graphically the game looks very clean, it obviously went with a blocky overall artstyle in order to capture the feel of playing with Lego pieces but the transitions and particle effect animations for attacks and beams are spot on. There are a few things I assume were custom made for the game like the large figures for characters like Hulk, the Juggernaut and so on because I don't remember seeing them as a kid when I played with Legos, but I could be wrong and those are actually now pieces in new Lego sets in which case these damn kids don't know how good they have it now. The world is also a very bright and colorful world which was a nice break from the minimalistic and gritty games I have been playing leading up to it. But the game isn't without issue, there is obviously repetition between the citizens of New York and enemies for the most part come in a single type based on the level, but this is all pretty acceptable in my opinion.

What isn't acceptable though is the number of technical faults that you can experience playing the game when it bugs out. I didn't experience enough of them personally for it to have ruined my experience playing the game, but I did see my fair share of bugs thankfully none of which forced me to restart any level. Getting caught in a tight corner was the most common bug for me and being unable to jump back out but I also had a few run ins with being able to walk on water, having switches or items straight up not being in the location they are supposed to be as well as some random teleportation during fights. Like I said before I didn't experience problems to such an extent that it had an effect on the quality of my time with the game, but I have read around about other peoples experiences and this does seem to be a common issue with some cases being significantly worse than mine.

But hey, you can't be mad at an Ironman dance party.

Leaving the whining behind, the gameplay in Lego Marvel is pretty solid. But, its pretty solid cause its a pretty simple game. Your controls for the characters are limited, you have a regular punch button, a jump button, a button to activate special powers and a button to switch between the characters you have on your team at the time. At the start it will feel pretty unique when you play which each character having distinct combat styles and abilities to get you through the levels but after a while as you start to scrape the bottom of the barrel of the marvel universe you will notice some repetition in character abilities and combat styles and also notice that some characters are significantly better than others at getting through obstacles. Hell, just moving around the map you are going realize it way more fun to blast across the city as Ironman instead of taking a cab like some kind of schmuck like Wolverine, or falling flat on your face when there are no buildings around like Spiderman. But I guess that is part of the fun of it all, no single hero can get through level on his own and mixing and matching is fun. My personal favorite team was the mighty Thor and Ironman in his heartbreak suit. But there were a few annoying things in the game I experienced playing through the levels a second time to get the collectables which you can't get on your first playthrough. I saw that the game was forcing me to play as a certain character to pull off a scripted event even though any other character, like how when you fight the Red Skull you have to use Captain America even though the Hulk could pretty much just bash the Red Skull into non-existence or how you have to use the Thing to fight the doombot when the Hulk could just easily smash it just as well, what I'm saying is that I would have liked to actually have to choice to try and get through in an organic way as opposed to a scripted manner. That is the reason despite the game being fun at the start, it definitely began to wear on me as time went on and I'm beyond sure that I won't be playing the game again as it doesn't have any replay value. 

This will be a Marvel movie one day.

I can't get to mad at this game despite all of its flaws it is at the end of the day a children's game. There is no shame in playing it alone, as it is a nice, light and happy distraction for anyone to play. But you have to remember that it is a children's game designed so that the adults playing it don't feel like smashing their faces in the floor while playing it with their kids. Its doesn't have complex controls, the puzzles aren't puzzles, the fights are mostly scripted and there is no challenge in getting through this game. That doesn't stop it from being fun though, the writing was funny enough, the characters and events cute and amusing in their behavior and appearance and the novelty of the story was good. I enjoyed myself playing the game, but having played this game it definitely cooled my excitement over other Lego games since I now know what to expect. It is a definite recommendation for anyone with kids though, the game is huge and will keep them busy for hours on end.