LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Review - More than the sum of its bricks

I still remember when LEGO Star Wars first released and I thought a LEGO game was a fun novelty. “A game where everything is made out of LEGO, even the characters? That sounds amusing!” I thought to myself. Well, as it turns out it was amusing enough to spawn seemingly endless amounts of LEGO-themed licensed games, with Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones and even Harry Potter joining the roster. What I’m trying to say is that if you’ve been playing every LEGO game since their inception, you are likely to have quite the collection by now…

LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham is the latest entry and it begins with several of the Lanterns of Power (save for Hal Jordan himself) being summoned and captured by the terrifying super genius Brainiac. Word soon reaches the Watch Tower (the Justice League’s orbiting centre of operations) and the heroes of the Earth are summoned. Doesn’t sound very Batman-y, does it? That’s probably because it seems “LEGO Batman” is only named as such to continue the franchise, what we have here is a LEGO DC game where Batman and Robin take up far too much dialogue in the cutscenes. But to be honest, that’s probably for the best. Why mess about with making a LEGO game for each DC hero when we can just slap all of them into a single game, just like last year’s LEGO Marvel Super Heroes?

There’s a huge cast of DC heroes and villains right here: The Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman and of course villians such as Lex Luthor, Joker, Cheetah and so on… The character roster ends with a whopping 159 playable characters (including 40 DLC characters), many of them with costumes they can change into on the fly to solve environmental puzzles – although the abilities the costumes bring end up being repeated over multiple characters. The cast is fantastic, taking cues from all over the DC universe, even including characters you may never have heard of from the most obscure DC comics. How is the gameplay? Well, it’s still just a LEGO game…

You’ll move through a world littered with bits of LEGO to collect and destructible items as far as the eye can see, with environmental puzzles usually asking you to change costumes to interact with some sort of point. It’s here that the gameplay starts to fall flat, at least in singleplayer. Singleplayer mode is sadly a bit boring and monotonous with very little challenge to be spoke of. In fact, at one point I decided to stop moving and just repeatedly press the attack button as enemies approached me. It worked fine, and the only penalty for dying is losing some of those LEGO pieces you collected, but to be honest, there were so many damn LEGO pieces that I couldn’t bring myself to care about losing a few.

But this is where everything clicked into place for me: LEGO games have never been about the singleplayer experience, it’s about absolutely anyone being able to pick up the controller and join in. I can get the youngest members of my family involved with a game and they will enjoy themselves; just seeing the joy in their faces makes me feel much better about playing it. Indeed, this game is built for not just young audiences, but all audiences. In the middle of a game your younger siblings can walk in the room and just start playing the game with you, exploring the levels and areas while being a LEGO version of their favorite DC hero. It’s a really quite lovely experience, especially when so many titles mature gamers play are simply not suitable for the young ones.

But it’s not all bad – this game can be very much enjoyable even without others, because the cutscenes and voice acting are top notch. The storyline is hardly the best or most original, however it’s still enjoyable. The characters interact humourously, in a way that – again – young gamers will probably like a lot, whilst still remaining entertaining to more mature audiences, like only the best Tom & Jerry cartoons have managed in the past. The sort of entertainment that can breach age ranges and remain enjoyable for all audiences is hard to find.

Not like it matters much, but on newer consoles (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) and PC the high frame rate and textures look brilliant – with some of the rough textured LEGO bricks actually looking like the real thing, although some more “realistic” parts of the environment contrast harshly with the stylised LEGO surroundings.