Gaming Resolution Issues (screen not fitting) 4Feb 23, 2016Feb 23, 2016 Can't find your answer ? System: PS4*, PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U Release: November 11, 2014 So here’s the deal. I’m not a big fan of the LEGO franchise. These games always seemed way too generic to me. I have a lot of friends who enjoy these games, just for their sheer mindless fun, but for me they always seemed shallow and kind of repetitive. In addition, I’m not the biggest fan of Batman. I don’t really buy into the whole “Batman can beat everyone” fan craze. So when I was given LEGO Batman 3 to review, I’ll admit that I didn’t come into the experience with high hopes. But after playing the game for a while I can honestly say… it’s OK. It’s not a huge revolution for the LEGO franchise. It’s not the comic book game that you’ve been waiting for. The game starts and we are treated to a cutscene showing LEGO Batman taking down LEGO joker gang members in LEGO Gotham, while the familiar Batman the Animated Series theme plays in the background.
I gotta admit that tickled my nostalgia bone. Unfortunately, I then had to deal with the game crashing three times when I attempted to change my controls so that stopped the tickling right away. None of my PC controllers would work right and even when I tried to alter the controls of my keyboard and mouse setup the game would just freeze completely accepting no inputs whatsoever. The lack of ability to get the game running in windowed mode was also an annoyance. The PC version isn’t exactly the most stable game out there, and in the end I needed to use Joy2Key to emulate keyboard inputs, as the default keyboard layout doesn’t allow for keys that require simultaneous presses. This was needlessly frustrating and is kind of inexcusable and it took me over an hour of fiddling with the game just to make it playable. After a brief cutscene featuring numerous lanterns fighting each other in space, the game puts you in the sewer, chasing Killer Croc with Robin. Here’s when you get acquainted with the basic controls of LEGO Batman 3, which really haven’t changed much from other LEGO games.
You have a button for jumping, a button for attacking, a button for performing your special actions, and a menu button. There’s a bunch of other functions like quick tagging characters and such, but these are the basics that you will be relying on for the whole game. This intro stage gets you into the swing of what you will be doing for most of the game. You’ll grapple up to a platform, jump across a gap, pull a switch, and move onward, all while collecting tiny little LEGO studs, the “coins” of the game. At times you will have to build up the world around you by using LEGO bricks that are lying around, and to find these bricks, you usually have to attack crates and bins of LEGO that are lying around you. This short introduction also shows you the game’s suit system, whereby heroes can change into different suits each with different abilities. Here, you change Robin into a hazmat suit that allows him to suck up small LEGO pieces and deposit them into a machine which then builds a LEGO gun which lets you blast through a wall to move onward.
After you are finished with that puzzle, you move on to yet another one where you have to flood a section with water in order to make platforms float so you can jump across another gap. This is the basic pace of the entire game. You get to a section, solve a puzzle, get to another section, solve another puzzle, and so on and so forth. There are some action combat bits in the middle, which are breaths of fresh air in my opinion, but so much of the game is taken up by puzzles. My problem is that the puzzles aren’t even all that deep. They are all usually just “use ability A on object B” and most of them can be brute forced through by smashing everything around you and mashing on the ability button until something happens. There are points when you and your teammates have to split up to solve puzzles and these are kind of cool. They get you thinking about how to use your abilities in tandem in a sort of Lost Vikings sort of way. The game tries very hard to be funny and at some points it succeeds.
Perhaps the most hilarious points in the game are when people from real life cameo. In the intro stage you get to interact with Adam West as played by Adam West, and you get to rescue him from Sharks, a subtle nod to the infamous “bat shark repellant” episode of the 1960’s Batman series. Other celebrities that cameo in the game include Conan O’Brian and Kevin Smith and there’s even supposedly a cameo in the end credits for Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, the rest of the humor falls a little flat. It’s that same brand of cartoony ADHD humor that LEGO games have been known for. Characters make non-sequiturs a lot. It occupies an odd space somewhere between Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Teen Titans. Kids will like it, but the older audience will be groaning. There are some good one-liners though, like an off reference to the classic line, “I am Batman, and I can breathe in space!” The story of the game is OK. It starts as a pretty normal good guys vs. bad guys plot, with the Justice League vs. the Legion of Doom, but then Brainiac steps into the picture and takes control of the Lanterns and their rings of power in order to shrink down the planets of the universe to mini-size.
Now you must team up with your arch rivals in a fight against Brainiac for the fate of the universe. It’s pretty standard comic book faire, and it keeps the game moving, so I can’t complain too much. LEGO Batman 3’s biggest strength is its roster of playable characters. There are 150 characters in the game, coming from all corners of the DC Universe. You’ll be able to take control of several different members of the Justice League, including the Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, Super Man, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, The Flash, and more. You’ll also be able to take control of DC villains, and even minor characters like Alfred (oh boy, Alfred fans are going to jump down my throat with that one.) When you expand the game to DLC offerings, you’ll even encounter characters like Batman Beyond, or Arrow from their titular series. Each of these characters have their own unique abilities. Unfortunately, only a very small portion of these characters factor into the main campaign.