Lego Batman
The wonderful world of Lego is something everybody has grown up with, including you no matter how much you try to deny it. After taking on Indiana Jones, the little yellow Lego guys are now having a go at playing the role of the caped crusader in Lego Batman.
Lego Indiana Jones, released quite recently, proved a surprising success and boasted addictive gameplay at times - and not just for kids, or younger gamers as I prefer to call them. The graphics were as cartoon-like as you could have expected given the setting of the Lego universe with touches that reflected the Indiana Jones franchise quite well. Because of this surprising success, Lego Batman had actually built up a somewhat bizarre level of anticipation within the gaming industry.
Unfortunately Lego Batman does not live up to the expectation, and takes the series back down a notch to being, once again, just a rushed attempt at what was potentially great game concept. But not everything is bad in Lego Batman.
The controls are incredibly basic which is not actually a bad thing, given the simplicity of the gameplay itself. You will find yourself playing as Batman, Robin or the bad guys and battling your way through huge numbers of enemies towards the end of levels - where if playing as a good guy, you will face a classic boss fight to complete the level and move on through the game.
Playing as the bad guys actually proves more enjoyable than playing as Batman or Robin. The main reason for this is the added variety it brings to the game in the form of the attacks you can use and the different level partitions that you will need to fight your way through. When playing as the bad guys though, be it the Penguin, Joker, Cat Woman or somebody else, you will not actually be fighting Batman or Robin at any point but instead will be faced with police officer which is a bit disappointing.
Lego Batman lacks a lot of the humor which made Lego Indiana Jones a success through the parodies of well-known scenes taken from the movies. If Lego Batman had followed that road too it may have been a more worthwhile game. Instead, Lego Batman has been developed with a focus on the classic comic books.
Considering the game is a Lego title, you would probably expect very little that would impress you in terms of the game抯 graphics - and the game does not let you down on what you will be expecting, as the graphics are poor from the outset and remain so throughout the game.
Yes it抯 easy to say hey, this is Lego, what do you expect? And despite it being Lego, my answer would be something along the lines of 慳 hell of a lot more!? It is almost as if developers Travelers Tales have dismissed the need for good graphics because of the games target audience of youngsters, automatically assuming they will not mind, and they may be right - but in my opinion this is a touch disrespectful.
With all things considered Lego Batman is a poor attempt at an action adventure game, with constantly repetitive gameplay that you quickly become tired of. The terrible artificial intelligence that operates your so-called side kick throughout the game creates a lot of stress that you would not expect to get from a Lego game, particularly when you need their help solving the puzzles. It will drive you mad - and for that reason alone Lego Batman is not something I can recommend you to buy whatever your age.
