You might be feverishly waiting for the launch of Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens but Lego Marvel Avengers more than just a decent game to tide you over. Play through the storylines of films including Age of Ultron with more than 100 characters. Here's our Lego Marvel Avengers review. See: Most anticipated games of 2016. Also see: Best Black Friday Games Deals Lego Marvel Avengers is the second game collaboration between Lego and Marvel and although it's based on more movies than Lego Marvel Super Heroes, released in 2013, does that make it better? As is typical with Lego franchise games, Marvel Avengers is available on a wide range of platforms including PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo 3DS. Current pricing ranges from £21 to £36 via Amazon depending on which platform you need or want. We've reviewed Lego Marvel Avengers on Xbox One. As mentioned, Marvel Avengers is set within various films from the last few years, so comic diehards might be a bit disappointed.
Although there is the use of various movies the way they are threaded together is somewhat confusing. The original audio from the films is used but it doesn't mix particularly well with the games sound and music, or the additional tracks made especially for the game. To explain a little further, the game starts out with the opening of Age of Ultron but then jumps to telling the story line of Avengers Assemble. As well as covering these two main titles, Lego Marvel Avengers also covers bits of Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier – and not in a way which makes sense. It's perhaps a little too much to fit into one title and doesn't make for the smoothest experience. While this is a downside, Lego Marvel Avengers makes up for it with good old fashioned, classic gaming fun. The game follows the formula of the many Lego game which have gone before it, although Lego Dimensions is an exception in the way offers a toy-to-life setup.
This means the familiar arrangement of elements such as the way you progress though a level solving puzzles and beating up baddies. Of course, you are able to switch characters as you collect Lego studs and spend as long as you want completing extra tasks such as finding mini-kit pieces. Click here for more games news and reviews Lego is in a difficult position where the formula works but it can then feel overly samey to previous titles. To combat this, there are new powers and abilities for you to get to grips with. That sounds great but the problem is that it takes a long time to beat up a regular thug with the normal combat moves despite there being a special QTE (quick time event) move available. This involves you pressing a single button when prompted to, for example, use Captain America's shield to take care of an enemy. The moves are cool but take next to no skill to execute and take far too long to complete. The best new addition is the ability to double team combo two characters together.
Once again it's too simple to be really rewarding to the player, although you do need a high enough combat multiplier, but some of the combos look great and are well thought out. They also suit the co-op gameplay if you're playing with someone else. One of the main draws of Lego Marvel Avengers is the chance to play as characters such as Thor, Black Widow and The Hulk. As mentioned there are over 100 characters to play as, many of which have never been in a Lego game before. Before you get too excited, that figure includes various versions of characters – ie Captain America with a different outfit. A fun addition on the character side of things is the chance to create your own using parts of the characters. For example, you can create a mashup using parts like Iron Man's head and Captain America's shield. One of the frustrations, as usual, is the need to have certain characters to unlock areas of a level or use particular items. You can't choose who you want in each level as you play through the campaign so you'll have to go back if you're keen on completing the game to 100 percent.
In fact, you'll switch between different groups of heroes during levels. The campaign is well paced and we love the humorous gags which make these Lego games fell that extra bit fun and more enjoyable. Players will also benefit from the ability to free roam Manhattan in its open world goodness, plus a bunch of smaller areas such as Hawkeye's hangout, the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier and Asgard. These are all jammed with collectible items and side-missions with the ability to quickly switch to any of the characters which you've unlocked in the game as you choose. Just flying around Manhattan as Iron Man or Thor is great fun in itself. A half-hearted recreation of some fun movies, with almost nothing to offer over its predecessor. Need to knowWhat is it? A tired Lego game version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.Expect to pay: $40/ £25Developer: TT GamesPublisher: Warner BrosReviewed on: AMD FX-6200 CPU, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7870 Multiplayer: Local co-opLink: Official siteAll Lego games are the same, except for when they’re not.
Lego Batman 2, with its open world Gotham City and brilliant videogame interpretation of Superman was far more interesting to play than its 2014 sequel, for example, which mainly focused on some boring Green Lantern space adventures—and I love me some Green Lantern, even after the much-derided 2011 movie. The light puzzles and collectable-heavy platforming remains the same in each Lego game, but for each worthwhile entry, there’s a bunch of duff ones that are worth skipping. Lego Avengers is somehow both at the same time.Avengers offers a similar deal of stud collecting and switch-hitting, this time based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, with some other bits and pieces stuck on. The basic Lego formula by itself is not too bad, but when a lot of attention has been paid to the accompanying fan service or the environments look like they’ve had a ton of work put into them, the Lego games can end up being fantastic fun, both for irritating children and hungover adults. This is TT Games on autopilot, though, and there's not a lot of passion in the results.
I’ve rarely been this bored playing through the story mode of a Lego game. The meat of the content is based on The Avengers, with other levels covering Marvel’s superior phase two films, like Age of Ultron, The Winter Soldier and Iron Man 3, sequels that all benefitted from having the bar significantly raised by Joss Whedon’s 2012 team-up flick. There’s even a (not very good) flashback level based on the first Captain America featuring Cap and Bucky. The level design for the story stuff is just uninspired, though, and the attempt to make the character dialogue feel authentic by using recordings straight from the movies ends up backfiring in an almost Return of Chef-style fashion.Problem is, they sound like they’ve been grabbed straight off the DVDs using Final Cut Pro, and have been awkwardly cut into the Lego cutscenes, with the series’ arbitrary slapstick bolted on for good measure (Thor twats a guy with a hammer, but there’s a pig there now, etc). It’s unconvincing and cheapens the game more than if they’d just kept the characters silent, like the Star Wars games did.
Worse still is when the game plays quips mid-game, so you have Cap using his ‘if you get killed...walk it off’ line from Age of Ultron but with the movie's background noise seemingly still audible—it sounds like something I knocked together in Garageband with a deadline of about ten minutes.There’s not one visually interesting or inventive puzzle in the entire Avengers section of the game, and it falls short of 2013’s colourful, location-filled Lego Marvel Super Heroes. TT Games barely conjures an illusion of this feeling like the films. This is a game for young, noisy children, sure, but even they deserve a little better than this. I yawned my way to the closing credits, which is such a shame when the source material the devs are working with is a bunch of the most fun blockbusters of the last decade.Still, there’s more to the game than that, if you know where to find it. Exit a couple of menus, and you’ll find the Manhattan open world from Lego Marvel returns with new sidequests to do, as well as a near full-size replica of Asgard, and several other locations linked to the movies.
These hubs are pretty much buried by the story mode, but wandering around them (some are better than others) with your changeable roster of characters is way more enjoyable than the main game. It's sandbox-y and less rigidly connected to the movies.I nerdily flew Captain Universe through Times Square. I had Bruce Banner changing into Hulk and running down Asgard’s rainbow bridge (which, to be fair, may happen in a movie next year). Luke Cage sent me on a sidequest around Manhattan then berated me when I got beat up by Hydra agents (“If I’d wanted to spend the day babysitting I’d have stayed at home. With my actual baby.”) It’s entertaining fan service, as usual, and the characters are wonderfully animated, but the presence of the movie stuff sadly brings nothing to it.Missing, presumably due to movie studio politics (or because I couldn't find them on the map), are Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and X-Men, which were all present in the last game. There’s some neat, nerdy choices to compensate for that like Squirrel Girl or Jessica Jones, but they might only appeal to comic book dweebs like me rather than the children that are supposed to play this stuff.