It’s no secret that I am a fan girl when it comes to the Lego games; really, LEGO Star Wars is the best Star Wars game going right? So when Lego Marvel Super Heroes tuned up at my door I was more than excited.
The best thing about this game is that you don’t need to know anything about the Marvel Super Heroes to get sucked in. It applies to such a variety of audiences, it works fantastically for children who love the style, and adults for the game play and comedy value, the one-liners will especially appeal to Marvel fans.
Let’s break it down and start with the story. The story of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes revolves around Doctor Doom’s attempt to build Doctor Doom’s Doom Ray…OF DOOM (catchy) which will only happen once he has captured the Silver Surfer and steals his board. However, Iron Man interrupts Loki’s attempted capture of the Surfer, which results in the destruction of the board and ‘cosmic blocks scattering over New York City. They must be recovered before Dr Doom and his evil Marvel villains grab them.
For a story-line it’s rather good, but once immersed in the gameplay I often forgot the whole objective in favour of turning Mr Incredible into a teapot. That’s not to say it isn’t well written, the humour of the game is wonderful, I often found myself chortling a little too loudly while I stayed up into the small hours to complete a level. Each character almost makes fun of themselves, the best being Spiderman explaining just how angst-filled his teenage life has become and how difficult it is to be loved by a beautiful young lady.
I did often find there were audio glitches however, leaving me feeling as if I missed out on something pivotal and potentially funny, it meant I even got lost for far too long trying to find my way to a level after missing an explanation as to where I was meant to go.
This leads me on to the map layout. For the first few levels you are taken instantly from one level to the next, but soon you are let loose into New York City as you direct your way to the next level start point or go off into mini-games scattered around. The open-world aspect is great and this is the time you can take to customise characters, buy unlocks and vehicles or even re-play a level with selected characters so you can access new objects. The one problem was that the map symbols weren’t explained, you can set you marker to an area and be ignorant to what you’re about to run into.
LEGO has always done character design well, just like the structure in previous LEGO games you are given more than one character to swap and change from within each given level in order to access specific powers. This works in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes better than it has in any of the former games. The characters are divided into various classes, each with an ability that will solve a specific puzzle. The large characters such as the Hulk and The Thing will pull chunks out of walls and smash through blockades in the path. Characters such as Iron Man can blow up silver objects so you can access the next part of the game. It is vital to choose the correct characters in order to progress. The system gives you a chance to become familiar to each superhero’s strengths and gives more in way of a story as you discover what they do. I have to be honest here and say I only know of the mainstream Marvel characters, but this game opened my eyes up to some rather cool superheroes that haven’t had their chance in the spot-light.
Having this familiar structure could be seen as rather repetitive, you have the same goals, the same things to collect and similar combat controls, and characters often share the same special powers. I found that the game has so much content it didn’t matter. There are fifteen levels for you to navigate through altogether, and if you’re like me you won’t just play them once. In order to unlock everything in the level you have to go back with a character you’ve brought. The game has great replay value and you can spend days getting lost in it.
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is a fantastic game. It has so much wit and humour and offers a huge amount in terms of gameplay. There are a few glitches but they are small enough so that they don’t distract you from the objectives. The open-world is well done, characters have been well thought out with the kind of attention to detail that many other games lack.
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