Another Star Wars and an Indiana Jones LEGO game later, we’re looking at the approach of the latest contender, LEGO Batman. Batman marks a change of pace for Traveller’s Tales, and again, perhaps a shift in expectations. After successfully parodying and paying homage to two of Hollywood’s most well-known franchises in Star Wars and Indiana Jones, you’d expect that Batman would take The Dark Knight, a film fast becoming a phenomenon of pop culture in its own right, as material. Not so. Batman marks Traveller’s Tales first attempt at an original storyline within the LEGO series, if not an original setting. According to Warner Bros, who were kind enough to give us a hands-on look at the game this week, the plot of LEGO Batman was worked out in tandem with DC Comics. The look of the game is a mixture of the comic books and the Animated TV Series, though Danny Elfman’s scores to Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns are used copiously.
Let's put a smile on that face.
The basics are that the Rogue’s Gallery, the regular cast of Batman villains such as The Joker, Two-Face, Poison Ivy and Catwoman, have escaped from Arkham Asylum and are on the rampage. The game, unusually, is split in two — you play through one half of the game as the heroes (Batman, Robin, Commissioner Gordon and more) and the other half as the villains. As such, each alignment of characters have their own base — the heroes at the Wayne Mansion and the villains at Arkham Asylum.
Gameplay wise, the game seems to mark a simple evolution of the basic LEGO gameplay. Players can now manually move a symbol across the screen in order to target over distances, while each hero can also change suits in order to receive power upgrades. Batman, for example, can change into his glider suit to fly, while Robin can receive magnetic boots to walk up walls. Gameplay has also been added to — players can still button-bash, but they’ll receive rewards for having the patience to figure out pre-set combos. The potential for vehicles to cause destruction and damage is another welcome addition to the LEGO universe as well.
Improved graphical quality might be a selling point, but does it make a better game?
Visually, the game represents a noticeable step-up from the quality level of prior LEGO games, and the Warner Bros representative noted that Batman has a tweaked engine, rather than the simple reskinning of prior iterations. It shows as well — Batman and co. move more smoothly and more interestingly than their older LEGO counterparts, and there are plenty of background touches to make the environments interesting and creative. It’s not a vital move, as the LEGO games were always more about style than pixel counts, but it’s a welcome addition nonetheless.
If we’re starting to sound a little bit like a broken record in recounting the details that set LEGO Batman apart from other LEGO games, it’s for a purpose. Our biggest complaint with LEGO Indiana Jones (and admittedly, it wasn’t a huge one) was that it stuck too close to the proven formula of LEGO Star Wars. Batman seems to be making some steps in the right direction to be a more unique experience, but we aren’t sold yet. We’d like nothing more than to see Traveller’s Tales prove themselves by providing an experience with a little more unique traits than a parody of an already successful franchise. And in this sense, LEGO Batman presents a challenge. There will be fewer moments with scene-for-scene parodies and in-jokes to gloss over the little niggles that the LEGO series has always had — if anything, LEGO Batman forces Traveller’s Tales to prove that they can make a great game that stands the test of being at least partially disconnected with its associated franchise.
When LEGO Batman hits store shelves, we hope we can say it’s a game that not only removes the small annoyances of previous games (idiotic allies, ambiguous puzzles, poor depth perception) but that also does something more than perfecting a proven formula. Traveller’s Tales — surprise us. Surprise us like you did in 2005 with the original LEGO Star Wars title.
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