There have been so many LEGO games over the years, and so many of them follow a familiar pattern--light-hearted takes on big franchises, expressed through the medium of family-friendly platforming--that when I saw a new LEGO Batman game came out recently, I originally couldn’t have cared less.
Why would I? I had to Google this one to see it was the fourth attempt at a LEGO Batman game. I hadn't played a single one of its predecessors, because after I'd played LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Lord of the Rings, I found my patience for that formula to have pretty much worn itself out.
Turns out I have been proven, once again, to be a huge idiot. I was told quite alarmingly last week by a friend that dude, I should play the new LEGO Batman game, it's like Arkham City but cute, a sentence I simply refused to believe until I had installed the game myself and tried it out. After which I quickly found that it is indeed just like Arkham City, only cute. And it's great.
Do you need me to introduce Arkham City? A triumph of both open-world game design and hand-to-hand video game combat, it was somehow released FIFTEEN YEARS AGO yet also still looks, and plays, like it came out yesterday. It's an all-time classic, and also sadly a game that has yet to be directly succeeded or improved upon, because the market now dictates that its creators must work on middling live service games instead of brilliant singleplayer adventures.
Into this void, then, steps...a LEGO game. Which, let's be clear up front, is still very much a LEGO game. Its combat is limited, its story is built around (admittedly quite funny) physical comedy gags, and between repetitive combat and endless crate-smashing it can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore. So in some ways this is not a true, bonafide Arkham City successor.
But in many others it absolutely is, and in ways that are just as fun as the inspiration, if also coming at things from a slightly different angle. You've got a whole city to explore here in ways that are very Batman, including one of the best grappling hooks I've ever used in a video game (you can attach that bad boy almost anywhere, and from surprisingly long distances), a very forgiving gliding wing and a Batmobile whose "summon" button works so conveniently it doesn't just drive up next to you, it is built around you where you stand. Moving around this version of Arkham is effortless.
Despite the plastic aesthetic and childish presentation, this still somehow manages to feel extremely Batman. It's a joy just soaring around this version of Arkham, exploring all the funny little shopfronts, grappling through all the surprisingly detailed neighbourhoods. I know this Batman has a weird head and tiny stubby legs, but also that doesn't matter for the most part. Batman has had all kinds of different looks over the years, through comics and cartoons and movies and TV shows, so what could have been weirdly distracting here is, in the wake of all the other LEGO games and even a LEGO Batman movie, just another look for the archives.
Perhaps helping here is that, like so many other LEGO games, it has the utmost respect for its source material, which in this case is quite a bit of the Nolan trilogy, but also some other stuff, from Tim Burton's 1989 movie to the classic TV series, thrown in as well. This game loves Batman; it revels in cramming every square inch of the game with references and homages, something I know sounds annoying and pandering but in this specific context, in this game in particular, calling upon decades of history and variety in the source material, actually means something.
As I've said, or at least tried to warn you, this isn't a direct successor to Rocksteady's 2011 open world classic. But that's fine; what this is instead is an open-world playground full of excessive jokes about cops eating donuts and bats shitting on everything, and in its own way I can appreciate that just as much.
