LEGO Marvel's Avengers is the second LEGO game starring the Marvel, and it follows on from the hilarious LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. Choose from 200 superheroes and villains and explore stories from the first two phases of the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU). LEGO Marvel's Avengers is yet another LEGO game that takes its inspiration from the popular superhero movies. This little collection of stories follows events from phase one and two of the MCU: two The Avengers films, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and both Captain Americas. If you want Civil War you will have to keep your figures crossed for DLC. This breaks down into 15 fun filled levels: 12 featuring the Avengers, and three levels dedicated to the iconic Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. Being a LEGO game you can expect lots of humor that respects the plot of the movies, but ensures they appeal to all ages. The main plot of the 15 levels campaign lasts about six or seven hours of play, but it does not end there: the game has seven worlds from the MCU to explore – including the massive NYC.
Here you can experiment with any of the 200 characters you have been unlocked. These open hub world areas also offer you the opportunity to gather collectibles and recruit heroes to achieve that 100% completion. And, as with every Lego game, this is the real challenge. The game also features a superhero creator. This offers loads of options to choose from, all of which allow you create a custom character to your liking for use in the free roam area. LEGO Marvel's Avengers does nothing to really innovate on the other Traveler’s Tales LEGO games. The title has a good mix of platforming, puzzles, and combat. There is a little more focus on the fighting than in many other games in the series, which is fine as the combat mechanics have undergone a little refinement. The puzzle solving elements make good use of the character’s skills, forcing you to use their powers in combination to progress through levels. In this sense, the game comes into its own when played with a friend.
LEGO Marvel's Avengers has good graphics, the entire comic book aesthetic is well suited to the blocky universe, with voice acting and music that fits well. Nevertheless, it is not without issue, such as the camera being erratic and making some simple actions harder than they should be. LEGO Marvel Avengers is not revolutionary LEGO title, but it does have many qualities to make it worth recommending – its plots, the endless character collection, and the huge free roam areas. Unfortunately, anecdotally, many do seem to be experiencing technical problems – but we ran into none of these. 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.