Call of Duty or Fifa are licenses often cited for their lack of innovation and the multiplication of episodes. A parallel could be made with the Lego games, which have been offering the most famous franchises in the world since 2005, including Batman, which is already in its third episode. Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Is it yet another Lego episode or does it bring the breath of fresh air long awaited by some players?
Lego Justice League
To define the context of this third opus, it is actually enough to look at the previous episodes. If the first game released in 2008 offered us an adventure featuring Batman and Robin against Gotham’s most famous bat-villains, the second, cleverly subtitled DC Super Heroes, allowed Superman to take pride of place alongside our tandem while allowing other heroes from DC Comics to introduce themselves. It is therefore only natural to see the Justice League take an even larger place in this opus. A place so large, moreover, that Batman and Robin end up no longer being the stars of the game, but rather members of the Justice League in the same way as Cyborg, Martian Manhunter or Flash, our two heroes not being more present than the latter on the screen. This point that we are highlighting is not a criticism, since it allows us to bring a lot of new blood to Lego Batman and thus to vary the characters and therefore the powers. We can easily deduce that this game could be called Lego Justice League, but this title would necessarily speak to much fewer people outside the United States than Lego Batman (or Avengers to talk about the competition with Marvel).
It is therefore only natural to see the Justice League take an even larger place in this opus.
As we suspect with the title of the game, Beyond Gotham, the adventure will not take place in the city of our dark knight, at least not entirely. The scenario focuses on Brainiac (basically an enemy of Superman), a collector who wants to reduce entire cities. Faced with this threat, heroes and villains of DC Comics will have to ally themselves, giving rise to improbable teams, and once again highlighting the excellent Joker who will have more than one joke up his sleeve. The references to comics are numerous and are a real strong point of the game, what a treat! Fly away with Wonder Woman and you will hear the credits of the cult television series, search a little and find a bonus level entirely devoted to the 60s Batman series (definitely very fashionable these days) with the costumes of the era as well as the onomatopoeias typical of the series. The actor who played Batman in the latter, Adam West, also appears as a real guest since he replaces the citizen who had to be rescued in the previous opuses, and is also unlockable among the 147 characters to unlock! In short, substantial content and references that follow one another, DC Comics fans will be in heaven. In addition to focusing on Brainiac, the plot also focuses on the different Lantern Corps. Here again, we feel a real desire to emancipate ourselves from the restricted framework of Batman to tackle all the characters of DC Comics, Green Lantern constituting one of the most appreciated comics since the work of screenwriter Geoff Johns on the series (which is also entitled to its Lego in the game, pure fan service!).
Little bricks, little bricks, always little bricks
If this Lego episode once again draws its strength from its references and its humor, the gameplay mechanics hardly change. We thus find the same faults, such as imprecise jumps and the fact of moving forward mainly by breaking all the objects around us and then rebuilding them behind. The first levels covered, out of a total of 15, are also very dull, until we reach the third of the game and the developers finally offer us more visual diversity, thanks in particular to different planets that we will have to explore . The multiplication of playable characters with the Justice League and some of the villains also allows for a greater variety of powers and costumes available, which takes us away from the now classic Batman and Robin duo. Once the game is finished, there are, as usual, a lot of things to do. Between the different places to explore with a lot of secondary objectives (and here again the fan service will be present, but we won’t tell you more!) and the levels to redo to unlock characters and vehicles, the game fortunately gets a second breath, since the main adventure will end quickly, in around 8 hours.
the gameplay mechanics hardly change
Lego with shoot’em up sauce
Like previous Lego games, this new episode attempts to bring some new features. In this case, these are Resogun-style shoot’em up phases which are present in the adventure. Unfortunately, these gameplay sequences prove to be too rare and repetitive to offer anything new that is remarkable enough to bring real added value to the game. In fact, this little grain of humor so frequent in the series is missing, and we are content to destroy the enemies before throwing a few rockets at the mini-bosses present.
These phases are in fact the very example of the criticism that can be made of Lego games, always offering little new features here and there, without trying to really innovate. The interest of Lego Batman 3 therefore lies where it was in the previous games: a cult Lego-style saga with omnipresent fan service.
Most :
- The many characters of DC Comics
- The omnipresent fan service
- Substantial content
The lessers :
- Few new things
- The unfortunately useless shoot’em up
- Repetitive and little variety
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham TEST REVIEW
14
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham follows the path blazed by previous Traveler’s Tales games. Do not expect to find here an opus which will change the now classic formula of the series, but which will once again offer rich content to fans of DC Comics and Lego games in general. For those who are allergic to it, Lego Batman 3 will certainly not make you reconnect with the license.
