This review is based off the Playstation 4 version.
Now, when one thinks of video games, they probably think of the triple-A titles such as Fallout or Call of Duty. There are other games that are just as good and deserve recognition. LEGO Marvel's Avengers might not get the same kind of attention, even though it deserves it.
The Avengers Tale
When I heard that this game was coming out, I was super excited, mainly because I enjoyed LEGO Marvel Superheroes quite a bit. If you are all caught up on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then the story here isn’t a big surprise. The way the story is interwoven together, however, is. It starts off with the beginning of the second Avengers movie, then flashes back to Avengers. When we meet Captain America in the first Avengers movie, where he is in the gym, we get his flashbacks to Captain America: The First Avenger in between punches. This is where the player’s experience of the story falls flat. You get to finish out the rest of Avengers, then it awkwardly transitions back so that you can play through the remainder of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
The problems with the story begins with the heavily watered down versions of The Winter Soldier, Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World. I went into them expecting to be able to play through my favorite moments from the movies, instead I got a cliff notes version from a third-party character, and only got to play through the big plot points of each movie.
Are You Ready for Some Action?
This game offers a lot of the same game mechanics as the other LEGO games, so the learning curve isn’t too steep. As with the older games, certain characters have certain abilities. For instance, Iron Man can blow up silver objects, and melt gold objects, and Black Widow can do the acrobatic things, such as the jumping on walls and twirling on poles, but with the addition of charging up electric pads with her Age of Ultron Costume.
This game, however, added the team up ability for every character. When enemies are nearby, a button prompt will pop up, and if you press it, the other character nearby will team up with you to kill all of the nearby enemies. There are also team up pads that can be built. Usually it’s either to give a character an insane boost to reach the next area, or it’s Thor hitting Cap’s shield to break nearby objects so that you can build something, and advance to the next area.
The addition of this new mechanic does add some difficulty due to some design flaws. For instance, if you are trying to pull a lever, and you hit the button to do so while surrounded by enemies, it will trigger the team-up ability first.
Iron Men, Black Widow, and Hulk, Oh My!
The cast of characters included in this game is quite impressive, from the literal dozen different Iron Man costumes, to Ant-Man, to Jessica Jones, this game does include many popular Marvel characters, minus any X-men. It is rather fun to run around Manhattan playing as Devil Dinosaur, because a giant red T-rex traversing the Tri-State area is normal. Right?
The inclusion of some characters does leave me with a “what the?” feeling, however. While I have never heard of Butterball before, but his inclusion does add some comic relief seeing as while running he does fall down quite a bit. There are some nice touches, like Squirrel Girl getting her own Hulkbuster suit.
TL;DR
Despite the disappointing story, and the sporadic cast list, this game was rather enjoyable. The ability to play as your favorite characters, and the ability to explore new, unheard of characters also adds to the experience. While this game was made for kids, a person of any age can enjoy it. After all, you are never too old for a LEGO game.
+ Beginning of story interwoven well
+ Amount and variety of characters
+ Character team-ups
- Transition between end of Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron is awkward
- Watered down story for Iron Man 3, Winter Soldier, and The Dark World
Images from: PSU, LEGO, Forbes
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