Now the general story of LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, which does matter since it's an original fully-voiced CGI Justice League adventure so screw you I'm interested, follows on directly from the shocking cliffhanger (okay, I am over-exaggerating things now) of LEGO Batman 2. Brainiac, super-intelligent cybernetic enemy of Superman and "Collector of Worlds", has a plan to destroy Earth using Green Lantern rings. Batman, the Justice League, and even their worst villains must join forces and visit other worlds to stop him. And, er, that's about it. I'm sure there'll be shocking twists aplenty, like a character you thought dead is alive and actually the main villain, another character you trusted reveals they're the son/daughter of the villain you killed in the first game, or that Alfred did it.
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| Shoot things in space! |
The hands-on we got with the game takes place before all that excitement however. The worst villains in the DC universe, including Joker, Lex Luthor, and, er, Bizarro have taken over the Justice League Watchtower, their monitoring satellite orbiting the Earth. Batman and Robin lead an exciting space attack on the Watchtower to take it back, and that's where we came in. The demo consisted of two areas: a 2.5D spaceship battle and a couple of on-foot sections, and in general they were pretty damn fun - although not without some problems.
Now I'm going to go for the jugular here with my biggest criticism. No, not the one about the gameplay being the same as every LEGO game, the opposite almost. I'm going to suggest that maybe the LEGO games are getting too complicated. Every single person who sat down and played the game got stuck. There were a number of reasons why: the objectives could be ill-defined, the controls could be more complicated than they needed to be, or there were just too many characters. All three of these affected me, and I own all of TT Games' LEGO games. In their defence I'm sure things will be fine for normal players in the final game, but these titles are meant to be pick-up-and-play for a younger audience and LEGO Batman 3 is definitely not that.
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| The Fastest Thing Alive, other than Sonic the Hedgehog |
Anyway, warning over, on to the exciting space battle, which sadly was the worst part of the demo. I don't know why TT Games chose to do a 2D side-scrolling attack but it was quite boring, even with all the rockets and chattering teeth sent in my direction (love that Joker), as it was basically just "pick up and fire three rockets", cutscene, repeat five times. I don't even know why there were other power-ups, they were utterly unnecessary. It's also pretty random - if you just hold down the fire button you'll probably hit something off-screen. Something Star Fox-like would've been better here I think.
Anyway, we crash landed and got to the more interesting on-foot section, starting with a space-walk on the outside of the station. Joining Batman were the Flash and Cyborg, and right away the best thing about the LEGO "Heroes" games appeared since TT Games are really good at making each character useful. Batman is intelligent and has loads of gadgets, Flash can move and act super-fast, and Cyborg has many variant machine parts. Cyborg was the main one for me, albeit for one of the reasons I complained about it being too complicated: if you hold down the 'Change Character' button ('Y' on an Xbox pad) it'll bring up a wheel with all his accessories or costumes. If you want to move Blue Blocks you have to change to Cyborg's magnet suit, or to blow up Silver Blocks change to his rocket-launching suit... it's an inelegant solution to what should be a cool feature. Cyborg, a relatively minor Justice League character, had about seven suits available! And only three were needed really.
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| Fly through the air in Batman's fuelled-up Space Batsuit |
After an intense fight on the outside of the Watchtower we headed in for a quieter time, while Superman and Green Lantern fought off the barrage of missiles. One particular cute moment saw Wonder Woman complain that her (space-worthy apparently) Invisible Jet wasn't big enough to take on passengers, whereupon Flash grabbed a load of materials and quickly built a bigger jet around her. It really is genuinely funny in parts, and TT Games get the characters just right. One new gameplay moment in the hangar had both Batman and Cyborg load up on fuel and gain working jetpacks, which was neat. After using this to finally discover the other side of the map I opened the hangar doors and allowed the Invisible Jet in, finishing the demo.
Just to restate, my main two complaints about the hands-on playthrough are that the gameplay is getting too complicated, and also paradoxically that it's still the same ol' LEGO gameplay. The LEGO games are in need of a big overhaul, but by just adding on so many elements to that gameplay it no longer feels pick-up-and-play. Nevertheless it still manages to be fun, the graphics continue to get more amazing, and by default it could easily be the best Justice League game ever. Plus it's already got the best Season Pass ever - levels and characters from Dark Knight Trilogy, '60s series, Man of Steel, Arrow, Duck Dodgers and the Condiment King? Hell yeah. See what I mean about them quietly making the most fan-baity games ever?
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham is out 14th November and will be available on every system under the sun. Yes, even Wii U. And yes, I have preordered it.
Most Anticipated Feature/Element: Would I get lynched if I said "the Season Pass"? We'll say the story then, and how many planets you can expl-Green Loontern for pete's sake!
