Lego Marvel Super Heroes review: There’s very little not to love

I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually given the Lego games a second glance. Lego featured very poorly in my childhood and I was never taken in by the boundless creative options a single Lego set could entail. Lego Marvel Super Heroes (Lego Marvel) however, made me wonder why I had been ignoring all the Lego games available these past years.

Lego Marvel could be said to be a three in one game. It’s a mash-up of all recently made, popular Marvel movies, it’s a great open world action-platforming videogame, and it’s made entirely out of Lego (if you couldn’t already tell from the game’s cover). Also, did we say open world action-platformer? Unlike its blocky real-life counterparts, the Lego video games are anything but static, and Lego Marvel could be one of the series’ finest.

Set in the Marvel universe’s New York City, Lego Marvel puts you in the shoes of not just the Avengers, but of every Marvel superhero who has gotten his or her own movie (that was successful), and then some. This particular video game world starts on yet another downward spiral when the (as yet) unknown Silver Surfer’s surfboard is destroyed, and falls to earth in powerful pieces known as Cosmic Blocks. Of course, the villains of the Marvel universe are keen to get their grubby hands on these Blocks, and they immediately start trying to acquire every single one.

In Lego Marvel, the story progresses in levels, with each level allowing you control of different Marvel superheroes. Sometimes it’s Iron Man and Hulk. Other times, it’s Spidey, or Thor. While the Marvel universe is almost infinite in the number of superheroes it houses, the game has chosen to go with the popular choices when it comes to actual story mode gameplay.

It’s not a bad choice. Players will find themselves making use of familiar abilities, such as Spiderman’s web-slinging and Thor’s hammer, or Iron Man’s many suits. These characters unlock as you progress through the game’s story mode, or when you fulfil certain criteria (I unlocked Power Man by beating thugs up in an alley). DLC has already been released for the PS4 version of Lego Marvel, though the same character packs for Lego Marvel on current gen platforms have no release dates.

With those selected protagonists brought to life by movies and witty scripts, the Lego Marvel scriptwriters had a lot of material to play with. The game’s dialogue is amazingly smart, and laugh out loud funny. For example: good old Spiderman breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging his angst about having been left out for the Avengers party. In this regard, Lego Marvel is anything but a game for kids. The dialogue isn’t crass, but it has a depth that only grown-up gamers will understand.

And the gameplay isn’t as easy as it seems. While it might look easy, it involves simple puzzles, lots of platforming, and the generous use of your superheroes’ abilities. Levels cannot be traversed by just beating your way through; just like in the movies, you’ve got to use your head, too (Yes, even if you’re Thor). Some gameplay specifics I really enjoyed were how certain areas could only be accessed with the right superhero’s abilities, and how you had to solve simple, intuitive puzzles to unlock doors.

The platforming gameplay is saved from getting repetitive by the different mechanics employed in each stage. This is helped along by the fact that you usually have a different team to work with each round, and you’re forced to think about how you can get past a certain obstacle using those characters’skills. Later in the game, this definitely gets easier since you’re more familiar with what your teams can do, but the constant changing of heroes helps keep gameplay fresh. Boss battles also employ unique mechanics, so you never have the feeling that you’re repeating a fight with a different enemy.

Lego Marvel is definitely not an easy game by any means. While certain elements are dumbed down to be accessible to newer gamers (you sometimes only need to hit circle to find the gameplay element you need), it asks you to be observant, and to be smart. Solutions for each area aren’t always laid out in the open, though there are features to help you along, such as blinking lights when you can use a particular hero’s power, and bouncing objects when something new can be built. Fortunately (or maybe not) for Asian gamers, the game was released almost a month ago in Western markets, and there are a slew of well-made video walkthroughs out for when you need help. I certainly did.

Still, that puzzle work can be a bit much for even the brainiest of gamers, and the developers actually have a solution for that. Whenever you need a breather from all that puzzle work, you can dive right into the open world part of Lego Marvel. That’s right. There’s an open world, right smack in the famous New York City of the Marvel universe.