It's time to forget all about blood, guts and gore and settle down in front of a family friendly game that contains all of the awesomeness of super heroes and villains. It's not often that a video game comes my way that I can comfortably play in front of my seven year old daughter, but I can always count on a good LEGO video game to fill that void. Let's play.
Firstly let's get some facts out of the way. LEGO Marvel's Avengers is available now on:
- Xbox One
- Xbox 360
- PlayStation 4
- PlayStation 3
- PlayStation Vita
- Wii U
- Nintendo 3DS
- PC.
The story takes place over the original Avengers movie and its sequel "Age of Ultron" along with other references within.
You are given reign over just about all of the most iconic and powerful super heroes from the Marvel universe, both well known and not so well known. There are over 100 different variations of super hero characters to unlock and play as, which gives a mega tonne of replay ability for those that want to unlock all of the characters and their versions.
The LEGO games have been around for a while now and they're becoming more frequently released along with iconic subject matter. I have also played my fair share of the LEGO games and I even own a few platinum trophies for them too. Allow me to explain to newcomers, what exactly is a LEGO game, and for those aware, allow me to explain what is new to this new game.
Firstly, LEGO Marvel's Avengers is a game targeted at a younger audience but is also designed to impress the hardcore fans of the Marvel universe. In a nutshell, you play through levels constructed of Lego blocks and destroy just about everything you can so that you will reveal special pieces that can be used to construct things that you will need to progress in the level. So, what I am trying to explain is that it's a 3D puzzle platformer with super heroes.
What's new for those that are coming back to Lego games? Well sadly there's not a lot that's new that will impress many people. There are finishing combo moves now that you can execute with two heroes which will give a massive area of effect (AOE) damage to defeat your enemies and there are also some other newish mini-games where you will pick small blips on a radar like screen which isn't really challenging. It's a shame that innovations such as the building mechanic used in The LEGO Movie Video Game does not appear at all in this game.
The Lego games aren't ever really that challenging, but that's not what I used to play them for. I played the Lego games because they were fun. Somehow with this game the fun has run out. At first I couldn't really put my finger on why but it slowly started to make sense.
LEGO Marvel's Avengers seems to have been rushed through the process to get the game out in a reasonable time, even though the movies were released quite some time ago now. The apparent rushed process appears so because many of the game's locations are rehashed versions of the previous Lego Marvel game. It can be pushed as "Revisiting Iconic Locations" or it could be seen as "we used the same levels as before to save time and money". This doesn't ruin the game for me or anything like that but it didn't have that buzz when the same locations were used the first time.
The game appears to be a lot more difficult than I ever remember the previous games being, but not because the puzzles are more obscure (they definitely aren't), but because there seems to be a lack of direction given to the player on what you actually need to do. I often found myself knowing what needed to be done, but with absolutely no idea on how to do it. On numerous occasions I ended up stumbling over the solution to find that it was just hidden by a poor camera angle or an unknown ability that my character had, but was never explained that it existed. The frustrations were made real by the relentless hordes of enemy waves that were never ending. Although the enemies aren't very hard to beat, they become a serious annoyance when you're stuck in a level, trying to find what needs to be done. There were occasions where I wanted to just take some time and work out what to do next, but I couldn't because the enemies were sent out in massive droves in what felt like just to annoy me. This could be blamed on me, but I couldn't help but blame it on poor level design. After all, I have played a lot of Lego games and I've not really had issue before. The biggest enjoyment of the Lego games I have played in the past was partly due to the intuitive game design that would make me feel like I accomplished something without the game totally showing me what to do. For a child's game, I feel that at very least some direction needs to be given.
There are occasions where my excitement kicked up a notch, but was only soon to be deflated back down to misery. For example, there's the scene where Hulkbuster comes together to fight The Incredible Hulk. The scene begins with the massive larger than life Iron Man suit, sizing up the big green mass of a man. I got excited. Oh my god, a massive fight. It was at this point that I was prompted to start mashing buttons on my controller. It made me cry out "Noooooo!". The fight started off as a quick time event (QTE) but even then I wasn't even sure if my button presses were actually controlling anything or making any impact on the action. The on screen characters look so awesome and inviting that I wanted to just have free control over the Hulkbuster and fight on. Soon enough though, I was given control and I was able to walk around as the Hulkbuster. Sadly, about 8 seconds later that control was removed again and a further button mashing fest ensued. This fight scene was about 97% button mashing which was sad when there was so much potential there for an amazing fight, but it just left me wanting.
I feel terrible, but there's not a lot for me to rave about here. I might be going hard on this one, but I love my Lego games and this one doesn't meet the benchmark. There are times where the game puts you into the shoes of some regular characters that are downright boring to play as. No super powers and no flashy super hero outfit. These parts of the game were dull and left me wishing the level was over.
Look, it's not all doom and gloom. The game has stunning graphics for a Lego game which has always been the case. The story follows the movies very closely and throws in the usual Lego style humour which earns its fair share of chuckles and gives it a sense of uniqueness from the movies themselves. The main game is short (about 6-8 hours), but like all Lego games, the end game content is real. There are a lot of characters to go back and unlock, and a lot of secret hidden areas within levels that you can only complete after unlocking certain characters with certain abilities.
Sadly, I must say that my overall experience with LEGO Marvel's Avengers has been my worst out of the Lego games that I have played to date. It felt rushed and this left me frustrated on many occasions which is not good for the enjoyment of a video game, especially one that is meant to be a fun relaxing game for me. The brick smashing antics are usually soothing after a hard day, however this one just caused the tension to build after I had smashed everything that could be smashes waiting to find out what was next. I must add that there were a couple of the levels that felt like the Lego games that I remember. Sadly these levels were the last few of the game. When I started playing through these levels, I actually started thinking, was this game put together by two separate teams? Is it possible that the game was constructed using two different teams? A little bit of research shows that there was another developer involved on this one...so maybe there's the difference.
Thanks for checking out my review of LEGO Marvel's Avengers. This review was based on the Playstation 4 version of the game. If you have an opinion and would like to voice it, feel free to comment below on this post, or head across to our
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Thanks
Lucas Aurelius
You are given reign over just about all of the most iconic and powerful super heroes from the Marvel universe, both well known and not so well known. There are over 100 different variations of super hero characters to unlock and play as, which gives a mega tonne of replay ability for those that want to unlock all of the characters and their versions.
There are occasions where my excitement kicked up a notch, but was only soon to be deflated back down to misery. For example, there's the scene where Hulkbuster comes together to fight The Incredible Hulk. The scene begins with the massive larger than life Iron Man suit, sizing up the big green mass of a man. I got excited. Oh my god, a massive fight. It was at this point that I was prompted to start mashing buttons on my controller. It made me cry out "Noooooo!". The fight started off as a quick time event (QTE) but even then I wasn't even sure if my button presses were actually controlling anything or making any impact on the action. The on screen characters look so awesome and inviting that I wanted to just have free control over the Hulkbuster and fight on. Soon enough though, I was given control and I was able to walk around as the Hulkbuster. Sadly, about 8 seconds later that control was removed again and a further button mashing fest ensued. This fight scene was about 97% button mashing which was sad when there was so much potential there for an amazing fight, but it just left me wanting.
