Games I Beat: Lego Marvel Super Heroes

Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Comic Book Action! KAPOW!
1-2 Players
System: PSN
Developer: TT Games
Year of Release: 2013
Beaten: July 27th, 2014

There are several factors that detracted from my overall enjoyment of this game. Though it is a good game and I easily recommend picking it up on the cheap to any Marvel comics fan. Though I'd also warn them to not bother trying to get 100%. For reasons unbeknownst to me I'm pressing forward with that goal and boy do these flaws just get more glaringly obvious the further in you delve. Or maybe they're just harder to forgive the further you subject yourself to them?
To be honest I've never been a massive fan of the Lego games, I picked up one of the Star Wars titles a while ago and it just felt repetitive and more like a chore after a while. When you get right down to it not a whole lot has changed between then and now. Yeah there is a pretty nifty open world Marvel version of Manhattan Island, and holy crap are you serious there's over 150 characters to play as? But after a while the veneer wears away and you realize it's just another big empty play ground and a lot of the characters are ultimately useless (though I nonetheless appreciate the massive character roster). Before I forget, is it just me or does it feel like a massively wasted opportunity to not have the entire game world comprised of Lego's? I guess it makes it easier to figure out what you can mess around with, but honestly I'd prefer a strictly (or nearly so) Lego setting.

Playing through it fresh is a great experience. These guys have been making these games long enough to know the sort of humor they're going for and how to make it work. There were some legitimately funny bits throughout the story, but aside from some chuckles there's nothing really to the plot. I mean it's Lego's, I didn't expect much aside from randomly assorted villains are working together so randomly assorted heroes need to go beat them up. And it delivers on that pretty well.

I understand why, but I can't help but feel a little frustrated with how much they focused on movie characters. Pretty much all the well known heroes are used over and over when I was really hoping they would have incorporated some of the lesser known characters better. They do show up from time to time to be fair, and there are Deadpool sponsored missions that while much shorter are, in my opinion, much more interesting. The set up is that Deadpool is writing comics that you get to play through. Mundane tasks like Coulson and Doc Ock having to clean up the Daily Bugle after Doc Ock's last crime spree. Or trying to liven up Iron Man's dull party. It fits with Deadpool's irreverent style or humor and the usually strange goals feel more in spirit with how the game should have felt throughout, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The biggest problem with the missions though is being forced to repeat them. You play through it in story mode once, then unlock free play mode and have to play through it after obtaining characters with all the proper powers. I mean I get it, you want to throw in some replayability, and you don't want us to just immediately be able to unlock everything, it just feels frustrating to me. Especially since sometimes cut scenes wouldn't let me skip them so having to sit through them wore thin really quickly.

Really though, past the simplicity, past the forced repetition, past the squandered opportunities for more unique (or maybe more classic) team ups/stories, is the worst problem of all. Bugs. I would be embarrassed to release this game in it's current state. I played through the downloadable version from PSN, so maybe other versions don't have as many but, oh man. Let me tell you. Missions sometimes wouldn't activate, or would but I couldn't interact with them any longer until a restart. The floor would give out and lead to oblivion. Sometimes my character would randomly switch with no real rhyme or reason, though this was exceedingly rare. There were numerous other little problems like these, that all added up to a fairly annoying experience.

All of these take away from the game, but none of them drag it down as much as this one. Freezing runs rampant in this game (and according to a Google search it seems fairly common on all versions of the games). Often times it wasn't up to me when I stopped playing because the game would freeze up long before I got tired of playing. Luckily the game saves constantly so you don't really lose data unless you're midway through a mission. It was kind of frustrating early on, but I just took the opportunity to take a break from the game and do something else for a while. Not too big of a deal. But when you're going back trying to finish everything up and the game has frozen half way through a mission multiple times on you? That's just cruel. Obviously these freezes weren't intentional or anything, but how the hell does something like this seriously get through Q&A? This happened almost every single time I played. This should really just be inexcusable by now.

All in all, this game has some definite problems (I didn't even mention some of the wonky controls, or just how brain dead stupid some of the missions can be, minor complaints though really) but I still stand by my initial recommendation, especially to comic book fans. There are some really nice nods that I certainly appreciated, and like I said the humor is really great especially the first time around. Just don't get really hardcore into getting everything or you'll eventually become jaded and focus much more heavily on it's flaws than the positives like having 150 SUPERHEROES TO PLAY AS!