Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes REVIEW

Well, if you are going to cover your ears with a cowl, you're not going to hear The Joker sneaking up, are you?

Release Date: OUT NOW!
RRP: £45.99
Format Reviewed: PS3
Also available on: Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo Wii, 3DS, DS and PS Vita
Publisher: WB Games

The Lego games hit on a successful formula way back in 2005, and have deviated little from it in the years since. Lego Batman 2 breaks new ground (sometimes quite literally) by featuring full voice acting and giving you free reign to run/drive/fly around an open-world Gotham City. If minifigures die and go to Lego heaven, we imagine it would look something like this.

It’s also a rare example of a Lego game that tells an original, and hugely entertaining, story, successfully pulling off the Pixar trick of appealing to all ages without resorting to cheap gags for the oldies. Lex Luthor and the Joker are in possession of a weapon that can tear bricks apart, it’s up to Batman, Robin and Superman to stop them. In the move to full voice acting the game loses none of its charm. If anything it’s funnier, with Batman’s dislike of Superman a constant source of humour.

Level design – from the Batcave to Arkham Asylum – is among the best of the series, the voice acting is brilliant (the Joker particularly) and combat’s been improved, with dozens of different suits and 52 different unlockable characters adding variety to the occasionally repetitive punch/grab gameplay.

Mammoth amounts of collectables and destruction are still at the heart of the game, the sense of exploration and discovery keener than ever before with the whole city at your fingertips. The result is the best Lego game yet, one as compulsively addictive as ever, and a Skyrim-sized threat to your free time.

Jordan Farley

Read our Lego Batman 2 preview right here.