Not to be confused with the excellent LEGO Marvel Superheroes, LEGO Marvel’s Avengers is a Marvel Cinematic Universe-specific take on the familiar LEGO game formula, which has mostly led to a game littered with obvious, unfortunate restrictions that end up making this one of the weakest of the many LEGO games. Above: Watch the first 15 minutes of the PS4 version. The plot is perhaps the most obvious problem, due to the way it frantically jumps between scenes from The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Rather than being an interesting take on the MCU chronology, it’s so mixed up and out of order it’s likely to confuse anyone who hasn’t watched all of those films fairly recently. It feels a lot more like a series of uncoordinated vignettes than the high-quality, cohesive package we’ve come to expect from LEGO games. Ignoring that mess, the occasional crashes, and a tedious puzzle minigame that pops up far too often, LEGO Marvel’s Avengers is still a fairly decent third-person action-adventure that mostly focuses on fairly light, simple combat and some environmental puzzle solving, usually using abilities from specific characters to flick switches, pull levers, and open locked doors.
If you’ve ever played a LEGO game before, you know the drill. Above: Watch the launch trailer. The one good innovation here is the cinematic team combos, showcased in the first mission, an impressive recreation of the opening scene from The Avengers. Where previously most combat in the LEGO games has been a series of mashing buttons to get through to the next, equally-blocky bad guy, LEGO Avengers introduces more involving, specifically timed QTE-like sequences. Here, an enemy will have a button prompt above their head and, if you press it at the right time (and the window is generous), you’ll execute a nicely animated combo move. Do this while you’re near a co-op partner and you’ll execute a devastating, engaging, and often fairly funny team combo move, with animations that vary depending on the two characters involved. Hulk ends up punching Thor at the end of theirs, for one. The environments in that first level, and a strange assortment of others - but not all of them - are also the most realistic looking, dense places we’ve seen so far in any LEGO game.
The various open-world ‘hubs’ - Manhattan, Asgard, Sokovia, Washington D.C., Barton’s Farm, S.H.I.E.L.D. Base and Malibu - are all remarkably well-fleshed out, familiar locations that are a delight to simply wander around, but they’re also littered with collectibles and side-quests. In any of these hubs, you can pull up a list of one of the 200+ playable characters and pick any that you’ve unlocked to traverse the environments with - Quicksilver is particularly good to use in Manhattan, for example, considering it’s so big and he’s so fast. Almost everything in LEGO Marvel’s Avengers is co-op friendly, too - even the open world and the side-quests within them can be played by two players at once, both doing totally different things (including separate side quests), with dynamic or a horizontally fixed split-screen. This means you can unlock extra characters and character variations twice as fast. Some of the story missions aren’t quite the same, though, since of the more epic battles from the films - like Hulk versus Iron Man’s Hulk Buster - has the second player doing almost nothing, waiting for the first to finish fighting the Hulk.
Because of a stubborn adherence to movie accuracy there are a surprising amount of sequences like this, where one player is almost completely useless, in a way that takes a lot of the fun out of those co-op experiences. It’s not a constant flaw, but, in comparison to previous LEGO games, it stands out. Attempts at keeping the game as close to the movies as possible also affected the audio in unfortunate ways. Lines of dialogue pulled straight from the films and mixed into the game sound really unnatural, and dull compared to some of the newly recorded lines from Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill and Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson. While on paper the idea of using the voices of actors we’ve come to know from the films sounds like it would make the game feel much more authentic, it also means a lot of awkward silences and repetition of lines - they couldn’t record new dialogue, so instead they sometimes don’t say anything at all where it seems like they should. [Note: Former IGN editor Greg Miller contributed to the making of this game.
To ensure impartiality, we selected a reviewer who joined IGN after Greg's departure.] ActionCasualDLCFightingMoveMusic & PartyPuzzle & CardsRole-PlayingShooterSimulationSportsStrategyStrategy Guides Audio & VisualBatteries & ChargersCables & AdaptorsCameras & WebcamsControllersCooling SystemsFaceplates & SkinsGame SystemsGaming FurnitureGear & ApparelHeadsets & MicsInteractive Gaming FiguresKeyboards & MiceMemoryMounts & BracketsStorage & CasesVideo & Sound Cards Usually ships in 24 hrs Pick Up At Store Important Information:If you are a LEGO fan, check out all the latest LEGO Dimensions games and accessories available for PlayStation, Xbox, and Wii U. Important Information:If you are a LEGO fan, check out all the latest LEGO Marvel's Avengers games and accessories available for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. Licensed LEGO games have been around for some time. The plastic-brick company has already covered Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Jurassic World.
This time around, the Danish company is revisiting Marvel’s bunch of superheroes. LEGO Marvel’s Avengers is developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by Warner Brothers’ entertainment division. The Avengers have been featured in previous Lego titles, but this is the first game of the type that follows the movie arc rather than that of the comic books. Story elements and set-pieces come from The Avengers, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and Captain America franchises. The story isn’t cohesive, as the game puts you in the middle of one action sequence after another with not much connecting the two. In one mission you fight Loki, next Batroc, and then Mandarin. On the bright side though, the unpredictable nature of the game makes things interesting. Like previous LEGO games, the Avengers is an action adventure game that’s primarily focused on kids. It offers swift action, light puzzles, and makes you collect lots of studs (Lego’s in-game currency). If you are not fond of platformers, don’t touch this game, even with a barge pole.
The Avengers work in a team, so most of the action is co-op. If you don’t have friends, AI accompanies you. Hawkeye works with Black Widow, Bucky will tag along with Captain America and so on. Each Avenger has a special power, ideal for certain situations. Captain America can put out fires using his shield, Nick Fury can go past guards undetected and Maria Hill can call in reinforcements, for example. However, in some important fights, only one player gets to tackle the situation. The other one has no option but to turn into a spectator. Each character has two attacking moves to fend off the baddies. You can also jump and attack for some variation and there’s a timed, special attack. Similarly, team-up moves require sweet timing. Puzzles are as simple as arranging pictures in a certain order, finding a part from some machinery or building a required tool/object using LEGO bricks. If you can’t find a way out, the easiest method is to destroy each and every object in the room, and you will find some clue.
Needless to say, the game gets repetitive very soon and this is where the movie inspired set-pieces come to the rescue. The action-packed sequences are incredibly well constructed in the LEGO universe. The developers have managed to deliver thrilling action without hurting the light nature of the game. Another breather is the open-world nature of a few levels, where you drive around freely. In fact, there are hundreds of side quests that can keep a player busy long after completing the story mode. Collecting studs is by far the most annoying aspect of the gameplay. The game is so overloaded with those coins that I cringed at the sight of every stash. It makes the game look as if Avengers are mercenaries who only care about the money. This in-game currency can be used to unlock more characters and other stuff. Speaking of which, the game has a roster of over a hundred Marvel characters to choose from. Despite the rewards though, I mostly avoided collecting in-game money. I prefer doing that in real life.
The game has quite a few bugs. For instance, if your character dies in the fire, he re-spawns at the same spot, going into a death loop until you restart from the last checkpoint. The game doesn’t makes use of ground breaking technologies, but the visual treatment is very good. The guys at Traveller’s Tales have created a vibrant world with an irresistible charm. The blocky LEGO characters are playful and often times cheeky and I love how the characters look charming, despite the limited expressions. Another good thing is that the game does not take itself too seriously. In many scenes, random Shield agents rescue chickens during an emergency, Nick Fury uses a Baseball glove to extract tesseract and Chitauri raiders taking selfies in the middle of a serious discussion. In the Helicarrier level for example, Hawkeye fires bananas instead of deadly arrows. Similarly, during a street firefight, Quicksilver gets shot by multiple ice cream cones instead of bullets. In addition to the character models, the environments are well done.
Especially New York’s streets, which are very detailed. That said, I did not like the level design. They’re too clunky and overwhelming at times. The game however, does not utilise the full potential of current gen consoles as bullet marks and debris do not last for more than a couple of seconds. Then there’s the issue with camera angles, which are very awkward in some few levels. For example, level 6 The Hydra Lab. The game’s background music and foley work is mostly competent. However, there are a few spots where the sound is a bit out of sync. The biggest issue here is the dialogue, which is mostly inaudible in game, save for the cutscenes. This is probably because the dialogue seems to be extracted right off the movie DVD. In a futile attempt to salvage the situation, the game automatically mutes all other sounds when a character is muttering famous one-liners. Unfortunately, this makes matters worse by introducing weird silences in the middle of chaotic battles. All this could have been easily avoided by hiring voice artists.