by Yeah, I bought a LEGO game. Yeah it was a Batman game too. Are you really gonna sit here judge me with a straight face and tell me you didn’t wish you were playing with a LEGO Batman set right now?
One day when my wife and I were looking for something to co-op, I suggested the LEGO game series. When I was a kid, I played hours of LEGO Star Wars on my family PS2 with my brothers, and while it wasn’t the most complex of games my memory banks seemed to indicate that I had experienced something called “fun” while playing them. So, jumping on Steam and asking her to pick one out, we chose LEGO Batman 2. Either I cherry-picked my memories about LEGO Star Wars, or I was extremely desperate for something to do when I was a kid. Considering that the town I lived in said “population 59” when we first moved to it might indicate the latter.
Overall, the game was just bland and had barely deviated from the titles I played over 10 years ago. I’m sure they don’t call it a “Force Bar” anymore, but your goal is to blow up the ever-living crap out of things to get enough money in each level to fill up the same exact yellow gauge at the top of the screen. Then, when you’ve unlocked more characters, you need to go back to the older levels and use them to get the same 10 little packs that build some pointless LEGO something-or-another that will sit in some display somewhere. What struck me as odd as well was how disjointed the story seemed from the gameplay. I mean, it wasn’t terrible but it just felt completely uninspired. About a week ago, my wife and I were watching the movie adds for a DVD and saw ads for LEGO Batman 2. We recognized the scenes in the trailer as ones we had seen while playing and had a bit of a chuckle about how bad the game was. Then, as if in final mockery, the end of the ad said “LEGO Batman 2–the Movie.” Yep. I’m not sure whether the chicken or the egg came first here, but the same assets, characters, plot and even the exact same cinematics were used for both the game and the movie (at the time of purchase, we didn’t even know there was a movie.) Take a tip from my wife and I–if you really want to expose yourself to anything LEGO Batman 2, just watch the movie. It will take much less time than the game to figure out it’s just not that great. As for the game, it’s Tier 3.
