Ragnablock
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
As I’ve gotten older it’s gotten
harder and harder for the Lego games
to impress me. They all have an undeniable charm and a great sense of humour,
but oftentimes the gameplay is either weak and repetitive or completely broken.
For example, earlier this year I had the displeasure of playing Lego Worlds, a shameless attempt to ape
the popularity of Minecraft that
ended up feeling like an even glitchier version of No Man’s Sky.
On the other hand, the licensed games
haven’t been faring too bad lately. I enjoyed last year’s Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens so much that it ended up on my
Top 10 Best Games of the Year list. While I didn’t find it quite as impressive
as that installment, there’s no denying that Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 follows closely in her footsteps.
The Avengers have teamed up with the
Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and other Marvel heroes to
stop the time-twisting warlord Kang the Conqueror, who’s messed up the world so
that other universes have crossed over to create a weird alternate Manhattan.
It’s a cool concept, especially since it allows us to explore some of the best
alternate realities used in the comics, such as Marvel 1602 and Spider-Gwen. It’s
clear that the people working on the game were huge fans of both the comics and
the MCU movies, as there’s a lot of fun secrets and in-jokes here for true
believers.
The dialogue is…less impressive. It’s
very obvious this was written with young kids in mind, and there’s nothing
wrong with that. It’s just that the jokes often feel drawn out and painfully awkward,
and for some reason the characters have random catchphrases they shout out sometimes
after they kill an enemy. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud the first time I
killed a robot as Star-Lord only to hear him shout to literally nobody “Star-Lord!
Legendary outlaw!” It’s so awkward and out of place that it makes me giggle
every time he says it. Fortunately for us adults, there’s still plenty of that
great Lego charm and some really funny slapstick that keep the cutscenes from
being underwhelming.
Onto the gameplay, I was pleasantly
surprised to find how much fun I had exploring the game’s overworld. Similar to
Manhattan from the original game, Lego
Marvel Super Heroes 2 allows you to explore Chronopolis, a large city made
up from fragments of other places or dimensions from the Marvel Universe.
Everything from Wakanda to K’un Lun to the Wild West and even New York 2099 is
here and open for you to explore. This is unfortunately not unlocked until you
make a bit of progress in the game, and before that everything is gated off by
these ugly green walls. But once it’s opened up, it’s a pleasant little place
to run around in, and it’s full of little collectibles for those completionists
out there.
You take control of a number of Marvel
heroes over the course of the campaign, with plenty of others available for
Free Play after you unlock them. While some characters have similar powers to
each other, each one feels unique enough that it’s worth trying all of them
out. I especially liked how each level gave you a new character to mess around
with alongside the main heroes the story was focused on. They really do pull
out some obscure ones for this game too, so if you’ve ever dreamed of playing
as a Lego version of Cowboy Captain America, I’ve got the game for you.
Unfortunately, the gameplay feels
pretty cookie-cutter. Each level feels more or less the same, regardless of how
cool it is to explore these unique Marvel worlds. You solve a few puzzles, beat
up a bunch of cannon fodder bad guys, and then fight the boss at the end. While
the levels are by no means identical, things do start to get stale by the
halfway point as you feel like the game is throwing the same levels at you,
just with the puzzles and bosses changed.
Speaking of the puzzles and bosses, I
found them to be pretty hit or miss. Sometimes you’d find a really clever
puzzle that put all of the abilities of the different characters to the test. I
especially liked the Sanctum Sanctorum level that was filled with awesome
Doctor Strange-themed puzzles. But other times they just boiled down to “break
the right object and then build something that allows you to progress to the
next area”. Similarly, some of the bosses are tons of fun to fight, but others
feel incredibly monotonous. I found the battle against Kingpin to be a lot of
fun, especially with the hilarious solution the heroes figure out to beat him.
But on the other hand, the fight against Surtur was long, tedious, and
spotlighted the game’s biggest weakness: unreliable controls.
By that I don’t mean the controls are
terrible. The heroes all run, fight, fly, web swing and so on as well as they
always have in this franchise. But sometimes I found certain commands just didn’t
want to work. The issue that happened most often was when I was trying to get a
character to get into a car, turret or similar thing. The command to jump into vehicle
is (at least on PS4) triangle, but that’s also the button to switch characters.
Despite the button being shown onscreen while I was standing next to a vehicle,
I would often end up cycling through characters instead of jumping in the car.
This was easily the most common error, but I found others too. In the
previously mentioned Surtur fight, you’re supposed to damage him by throwing
barrels of water at him. However, despite targeting him using the reticle, the
barrel would occasionally fly above him for no apparent reason. I think a little
more polish would’ve gone a long way here.
By the time I was finished with Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, it was clear
to me that this is a game clearly targeted at young kids. But despite that, I
really enjoyed my time with it. While the humour was kinda hit-or-miss at
times, you can’t deny how charming the licensed Lego games can be. The overworld had a great design, and I loved
all the unusual Marvel characters the designers allowed me to play as during the
campaign, instead of just relying on a cycle of the usual Avengers. Despite
that, the repetitive gameplay did get tiring after a while, and while there
wasn’t anything that made the game unplayable by any stretch of the
imagination, there were a couple of control issues that made the game a bit
more frustrating.
At the end of the day, I think that a
young kid who loves the Marvel comics or movies will adore this game. It’s got
everything they could possibly want out of a fun Marvel game for their age
group. As for adults, I’d say there’s enough here that’s worth a look over a weekend
rental. If you’re looking for a game with a more relaxed pace to chill out with
over the holiday season, this one is definitely worth a shot.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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