LEGO® Batman™: Legacy of the Dark Knight

I am Batman

good game

[h1]Holy Franchise Tribute, Batman![/h1] [i]LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight[/i] is a huge, beautiful game covering Batman's origins and into the prime of his career. There's some new difficulty settings. Classic is basically "easy" mode, and is generally the level that the older games were at. Caped Crusader is "normal" or "balanced" and Dark Knight is "hardest." But these differences are minor and mainly mean how many enemies spawn in a location and how many of the more advanced henchfolk spawn. Dark Knight also gives you a limited number of lives in a mission before you fail it. The game doesn't have the long opening cutscenes of older LEGO games, but instead quickly throws you into a foray in Wayne Manor's back garden in preparation for a certain fateful trip to the movies. This serves as a tutorial for basic movement. A few cutscenes and 10-15 years later, young Bruce is ready for revenge. He is quickly recruited into the League of Shadows, but needs to prove himself by finding a certain rare flower near the League's temple base on Nanda Parbat. This serves as a further tutorial, including using the grapple gun to get around. The League's training teaches combat mechanics, which includes maxing out a Focus meter to gain a quick takedown attack and some (mostly optional) stealth moves, including sneaking up on henchfolk and dropping from above. Once you're finished with the League of Shadows, your work as Batman ... begins. Home base, is, of course, the Batcave. All the vehicles and suits you collect will be on display here. The Batcomputer is where you can replay missions if needed to find all the collectibles within. Scattered across the cave are LEGO plates on which you can place various items of decor and such to customize your Batcave. Most of these have been pre-loaded with decor (that can be removed), though. You eventually get an empty free zone to build on, but it doesn't feel large enough to house all the items you can eventually buy or earn. Some of the decor items - posters, paintings, objets d'art - wouldn't look out of place in a room in Wayne Manor. Too bad you don't get a gallery room in the manor to use. Gotham is ginormous! Here, it's four islands. Central Island alone, this Gotham's equivalent to Manhattan with a stock market and major skyscrapers, is about the size of Manhattan in the Marvel LEGO games. Only the combined galaxy of Skywalker Saga rivals this map in size. But traveling is relatively easy. You get a grapple gun and a Batmobile right away, then, later, gain the ability to glide and unlock fast travel points. After the prologue, the story is divided into chapters. Each gives Batman a new ally, and is centered around one main villain. As usual, the games use two characters at a time, to facilitate co-op play, and to allow solo players to easily switch off and use another character's abilities to solve puzzles. However, unlike every other TT Games LEGO game before it, you only get seven characters to play as: Batman (duh!), Jim Gordon, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman, and Talia Al Ghul. Actually, make that [i][b]six,[/b][/i] as ♥♥♥♥ Grayson is both Robin and Nightwing. There's usually a headscratcher regarding what skills they went with or how well it's implemented. Jim Gordon gets weird ones here, a gum/gunk/foam gun that can plug up leaking pipes and is useful for some puzzles, and a gun with a bouncy projectile that can hit several enemies or destroy lots of stuff quickly. Talia also suffers somewhat here, as she is the last ally to join. Her skills are a knockout dart and a ninja dash. The dart is barely used. The ninja dash is effectively a short-distance teleport through small gaps, and it is difficult to spot places where it can be used and hard to set up the destination. The grapple gun and gliding are so important that EVERYONE gets those abilities. Batman gets UV and infrared vision in his cowl to solve some puzzles. He and Gordon get the ability to piece together a torn wanted poster and find the suspect in Gotham. Batman also gets a grabby Bat-claw to pull down stuff. Catwoman gets some cat burglar skills, a cute kitty summon to use, and her whip that spins axles and enemies. Batgirl doesn't become Oracle in this story, but she does have a hacking ability, and can control a drone. ♥♥♥♥ Grayson gets a quick-fire Batarang trick to hit three targets in quick succession. He can also connect two points and either make a balancing wire or pull two things together. He already has the escrima sticks of Nightwing, and can put them together into a staff for leverage. As Nightwing, these all gain electrification. Collectibles are numerous, and scattered within specific mission and across Gotham. Certain missions have five examples of a Batcave trophy to find and hit, which earns you that or a related trophy to place in your Batcave. Those missions also include a Red Brick. In games past, they gave you legal cheats like money multipliers or increased power, or silly effects. Here, they're ... just color effects for suits and vehicles. Boring, and unnecessary, since there's plenty of variety in the suits and vehicles for everyone. Finishing missions and collections earn you Gold Bricks, which can be invested in global skill upgrades for either everyone's combat or exploration, such as extra hearts, faster Focus meters, or money multipliers. Each character's gadgets get upgrades by spending WayneTech chips found in stashes all over Gotham. Some have to be powered up through solving a wiring puzzle before you can get the chip. There are also safes for Catwoman to raid, monster plants to destroy, and puzzle masters to defeat. Yes, puzzle [i]masters,[/i] plural. Riddler has competition here! Sometimes, though, this means that there are puzzles on top of puzzles. The game map shows you locations of stuff that is unlocked, and you'll need Batgirl to hack certain antenna towers to see everything in a district. But there are so many landmarks, I wish the game map had a layer of labels beyond the various districts. Certain buildings are placed on the map, but are not labeled. If game maps get any larger, they'll need traditional labels like street names and points of interest. The game is [i]gorgeous.[/i] Folks who speed-run the game in 15 to 20 hours are missing out on a lot of Easter eggs and details. Gotham is in eternal night, rains half the time, and is splashed with neon and shadows. And the attention to detail! Gotham changes slightly with each chapter. Newspapers change. Pedestrian reactions to Batman change. Graffiti accumulates. The only thing that does not change is the skyline. Years pass, and construction projects remain unfinished. Cars and cafes blare radio stations with instrumentals mixed with various promos. I wish there was an easy way to trigger and listen to the lovely audio work here. Plus, there's a TON of Easter eggs. Your favorite iteration of the Batman franchise is bound to be referenced here. Rocksteady, the devs behind the Arkham trilogy, are credited as co-developers here. Apparently, they contributed to the combat system of prompts for advanced combos and the freewheeling grapple gun vertical traversals. These worked well within the game. I'd love to see the vertical traversal adapted for, say, a Spider-Man-focused game. Except for the races. Here, a handful of traversal races are included. This means grappling and gliding. It's one thing to hit all the gates in a vehicle race; quite another to hit all the gates in wider 3D, especially with a sometimes finicky grapple target. But you have generous times to finish. [i]Legacy of the Dark Knight[/i] is both a beautiful and fun LEGO game and a great celebration of the Batman franchise.

A lot more fun than it any skeptics would believe, not just another LEGO game!

very good game and even better when you script it. when i played it i thougt you would get bruce as a character but i didnt so i scripted it now i have thomas, bruce, young bruce. lucius and alfred

peak

Lego + Batman + open world. Just buy it