Taking place after all the Marvel movies (they are all referenced) and managing to pay homage to the comic continuity at the same time, Lego Marvel sees our heroes gathered together to square off against Loki and Dr Doom, and Dr Doom’s Doom Ray of Doom. The game takes a slightly comedic tone, never taking itself seriously at all. Each of the characters is somewhat self-satirical, especially Tony Stark/Iron Man and Dr Doom, whose over the top performance forced me to laugh on more than a few occasions. In some ways this game makes me miss the camp of the comics.
As the story progresses, the heroes learn of an even greater
threat threatening to destroy the entire earth. They must set aside their differences
with the villainous Magneto, Abomination, Venom, and even Dr Doom himself, to
save the planet from Galactus.
The game has a mostly destructible environment which allows
players to tear down the Lego constructs, then rebuild some of them to create
useful tools for completing the level. The gameplay is split into two styles,
an open world, Grand Theft Auto style city, where instead of beating and
looting like the aforementioned GTA, you find people to help and earn gold
blocks, which can be used to unlock bonus stages, secret characters, etc. The
map on the game is pretty small in total scale, but it is pretty neat
nonetheless. Especially since Stan Lee himself manages to keep getting himself
into trouble that the heroes have to save him from. Then there are actual structured levels where the story of our heroes takes place.
And there are many heroes. I never unlocked them all in my
play through. The incentives to do so are mixed. Getting to play as the Beetle
is no different from playing as Iron Man. Jean Grey performs very similarly to
Invisible Woman, which is shocking considering how different the two characters
are. Wolverine, Sabretooth and Beast are all functionally the same. As a result
I found myself playing through freeplay mode dominantly as Iron Man mark 42,
Captain America, Wolverine (no surprise there), Spider-Man, Thor, Jean Grey and
Magneto. Rotating between these characters will ensure that you have a
character for every situation. Nobody else is needed, but the challenge of
unlocking all 100 + characters is appealing, except that unlocking the character
isn’t enough. Once unlocked you have to spend exorbitant amounts of in game
currency, hundreds of thousands of Lego studs. The good news is that this
challenge is a good one to have a friend to help you along. The two of you can
split up and work together to unlock the goodies. I am hoping my brother will
take on the racing quests because I am terrible at them, especially those races
which require flying. This portion of the game was meant to be played
multi-player.
The meat of the game, however, is the main story. You will
not be able to complete everything in the main story on a single play through,
you will have to play through at least twice, depending on when you decide to
take on free play mode. I wish the developers had allowed for free play (the
ability to switch between characters at will) through the initial play through,
but the story is enjoyable enough that it doesn’t feel too tedious.
All in all, it’s quite an enjoyable game. Sometimes your
character can get stuck on the scenery, and the controls for the flying
characters isn’t particularly tight. Poor controls combined with jarring camera shifts make racing in this game a chore. There are also too many
characters who play far too similarly to make it worth unlocking them all.
Still, despite these problems, I highly recommend this game. Also, get it on
the PS4, as switching between characters takes but a moment, whereas on the PS3
and Xbox 360 there is a little bit of loading. The graphics are also best on
the PS4, running at full 1080p without a hitch, with vastly superior lighting
than the competing consoles. Though it's art style makes it so that only the keenest eyes will notice the differences.
An 8 out of 10
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