Lego Marvel Super Heroes

Platform: PS3

Publisher: Warner Bros. Games

Developer: Traveler’s Tales

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“Avengers Assemble!”

Those two words can bring back a flood of childhood memories for any person who is an avid or casual comic book reader. Marvel characters have been in video games for decades. Some were worthwhile (X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse for the Super Nintendo) and some not so much (basically any of the movie based license games).  Then in 2013, video game company Traveler’s Tales brought their proven Lego formula to the Marvel Universe. The Lego games have, for the most part, delivered the goods when it comes to having a good time and putting a fun spin to destroying everything is sight. At first glance, this combination is a win-win. You have great characters that you care about and a widely accepted idea of gameplay. So, the question is, after a play-through, is it as good as the hype that surrounded it? Let’s find out.

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What works:

The game is gorgeous – The visuals is this game totally blew me away. The feel that I had was that these lego characters were in a more realistic world. In earlier Lego games,  I had always felt that I was in a lego universe. That’s ok, but it always left me wanting more for visuals. Lego Marvel Super Heroes ups the ante tenfold. New York City is extremely detailed (and clearly labeled whenever you enter a new part of the city). Going through the city en route to the next mission was a visual treat. Now, with that said, my absolute favorite area to play through was Astroid M. Playing through it, I felt like I was in outer space and the variety of things that happen made it really fun.

The boss fights are innovative – The thing with Lego games sometimes, is that the boss fights can feel really repetitive. It gets to the point where you feel that you want to beat the game just to be done with it and not so much to see how the story ends. But not here. Every villain is different. Even though some of the tactics to defeat the villains are used multiple times, the variety that the boss fights give you makes it a none issue.

It’s a strong comic book story –  Without spoiling too much, the story is strong in comic book terms. In a nutshell, the bad guys are out to steal intergalactic cubes that would give them world domination and the good guys are tasked with stopping them.

The final battle, in my opinion, is the best part of the story. Again, I won’t spoil it, but it is a fitting end to a strong story.

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What Doesn’t Work: 

It’s a formulaic Lego game: This isn’t really a criticism as it is a means of personal taste. There have been a lot of Lego games in the past decade. So some people may have Lego fatigue.

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To conclude, this game meets the hype and surpasses it. It’s been years since I’ve had this much fun while playing a Lego game. This is just plain fun where you don’t mind going back to get a quick play in to find that something new or to simply revisit a favorite aspect of this great game.

 

The Scarf’ s Rating: 10/10