Version tested: Xbox 360

I had yet to experience any of the LEGO games before, which is surprising since they cover all the geeky/nerdy movies I love, but I figured now was a good time to see what these games have to offer.

The answer is "a lot".

Traveller's Tales has built a reputation of building LEGO games accessible to all levels of gamers (maybe not the real hardcore types) with a huge amount of depth built in. They clearly have a great affection for the franchises they cover and it shows. The story is a classic tale of two super villains teaming up and requiring our hero to seek a similar team-up. It was an excellent decision to bring in other superheroes as the logical next step. However, you won't be using most of these heroes until the last few levels of the game. Superman joins in somewhat early on, but you don't unlock many of the mainstay heroes until the last quarter or so of the game. Considering the subtitle is "DC Super Heroes", I find it a little annoying it takes so long to make these characters available.

Waiting for personal favorites like Green Lantern and Flash aside, I find that the game is pretty fun to play. Gameplay is fairly simple (half of the buttons simply perform a "change character" function) but I didn't find the game got repetitive often. Batman and Robin have a variety of different suits they can use to make their way through each level and constant puzzle solving also keeps it from getting bland, as you can miss out on bonuses and opportunities if you aren't paying attention. Gameplay is usually as simple as using either attack, jump, or a special move as each character can perform their own special moves once they've reached a certain combo which makes for some cool moves that result in some bonus cash (or bricks or whatever).

As per usual nearly all of the environments are destructible and can (should) be mined for cash. These pieces can be used to unlock special characters, special cheats, and special vehicles. And if you're a completionist like me, it means lots of replay. This was very well thought out by Traveller's Tales as many goals need an unlocked character to achieve, meaning you'll be playing through these levels many times over if you plan on accomplishing it all.

As I mentioned, the story is a pretty tried and true team-up, but the writing is very good. Voice actors bring the story to life, including the same Lex Luthor who has been voicing the character in the cartoons for years now. Having voice actors really allowed for the humor to be brought out in full force. There is plenty of fun poked at the comic book world, past Batman storylines and even a few jabs at the movies. There is even a great running gag on the Batman/Superman relationship and how Bats feels about Big Blue's help.

The look of the game may not be the most brilliant or beautiful, but it isn't supposed to be and I like the look of LEGO Gotham quite nicely.

Playing with a friend is also quite a blast and definitely ups the fun level. It lessens the time you spend trying to accomplish tasks that would otherwise involve constantly switching characters and balancing costumes etc. and also relieves the pressure of having every baddie and gun aimed solely at you while your CPU sidekick watches or slowly battles enemies (it only takes one hit to beat normal enemies but if the game is controlling the character it doesn't...not really helpful).

But co-op isn't perfect. The game tries to go back and forth between split screen and fullscreen depending on how close your characters are, but it often makes it visually confusing. When your screen is constantly shrinking and expanding and changing angles it can be pretty hard to manage. The game also has trouble with aiming sometimes. When using certain abilities like Superman's heat vision I often found myself having trouble hitting the object I wanted as the game couldn't tell if I was aiming toward the foreground or background based on where Supes was standing. It isn't a huge issue, as it doesn't tend to come into play on important items just random things you'd like to blow up.

As I mentioned, this game is a completionists dream/nightmare. After beating the main story trying to accomplish what I could along the way I was rewarded with a message saying I had completed about a quarter of the game...25%! With all the goals to accomplish, pieces to collect and items to unlock I'll be playing this game for quite some time. So yes, I'll definitely be playing this game for a while in my downtime. And with a price point $10 less than the average game; it's certainly worth it.