Developer: Traveller’s Tales
Available on: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, macOS
The best LEGO game in my opinion is LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes. Its level design was great and, a first for LEGO games, it had an open world. You could explore all of Gotham City, which was filled to the brim with hidden goodies and stuff to do.
Its sequel, on the other hand, LEGO Batman 3, was quite disappointing. The developers took everything good about its predecessor and threw it in the trash. Levels were small and cramped, visual contrasts were terrible, and each character was given a thousand abilities as opposed to simple move sets. Worst of all though, the open world of Gotham City was scrapped in favor of the Watchtower and the various Lantern planets, none of which were as fun to explore.
Now we have the next game in the series, LEGO DC Super Villains. So have the developers learned their lessons and brought the game back to what LEGO Batman 2 was, or did we get another LEGO Batman 3?
The answer is a bit of both.
The developers were quite ambitious when it came to DC Villains. It has better visuals, it has a bigger world and it’s a lot more action-packed than in your typical LEGO game. For the most part, they pulled it all off, but mistakes were still made.
The visuals in DC Villains take full advantage of the newer hardware it’s on. Textures look great, particles are aplenty and the world is colorful and vibrant. Animations were taken to a whole new level; every character has its own set of animations, from walking to fighting, all of which capture their personality well.
Unfortunately though, DC Villains still has issues when it comes to visual contrasts. DC Villains returns to the standard where things made of LEGO can be interacted with and things that aren’t can’t be. However, between its detailed textures and its bright lights, sometimes it becomes difficult to differentiate what’s LEGO and what’s not.
The open world is back, and this time, alongside Gotham, it includes Metropolis, Arkham Asylum, the area surrounding the Legion of Doom, and more (albeit the total map size is roughly the same as in LEGO Batman 2). Like in LEGO Batman 2, it’s filled to the brim with gold bricks to find, side quests to complete, and fun races to do. Even when it turns into being just waypoint-to-waypoint, it’s still entertaining.
DC Villains’ levels are more dynamic and action-packed than usual. One minute you’ll be going through the usual motions of breaking everything, collecting studs, and solving puzzles, and the next, the game will throw you into a shooting mini-game or an arena where you have to fight a boss. These moments can be quite satisfying.
Not all of its ideas work though. Some of the bosses stretch on for a lot longer than needed. They also introduced new weapons and armor for normal enemies like riot shields, none of which turn out to be very fun to deal with. With riot shields, for example, enemies cannot be attacked from the front and instead have to be attacked from behind. It’s a common idea in games that’s typically fun, but in a LEGO game, the controls just aren’t designed for the player to handle stuff like that well.
Speaking of controls, they’re pretty rough in this game. Each character once again has lots of abilities and it often becomes a struggle trying to figure out who can do what. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were all intuitive and/or accurate towards the comics, but they often aren’t. Why can the Riddler double jump? Why does Solomon Grundy have the ability to control plants? Why can the Reverse Flash wall jump?
There are no costumes in DC Villains. Instead, characters’ abilities are all implemented as part of their basic move-set. However, because so many abilities are crammed into each character, the controls become quite finicky. Tapping a button and holding a button often do two completely different things. The game doesn’t register the difference between different actions well.
Worsening this problem is alongside their normal abilities, characters were also given several abilities that apply only to combat, like giving themselves shields or doing random spin attacks. I found myself never using these abilities, meaning they only served to make the controls more finicky than they already are.
Also worth noting is the flight controls, which are just flat-out terrible. Turning is way too sensitive. I often had a hard time making precise maneuvers, and anytime I became within 50ft of the ground, the game would instantly cancel the flight and ground me.
As for the story, well, it’s a LEGO game, so it was never gonna be anything great (though the writing is noticeably better than Lego Batman 3’s). Having the official voice actors for many of the DC characters (like Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamil as the Joker) certainly makes it more enjoyable though, even when they’re forced to deliver some truly terrible lines.
Summary
LEGO DC Villains does some things very well, and others not so well. The visuals are great, the open world is back, and the levels are more dynamic than ever. However, it suffers from finicky controls and poor visual contrasts. At the end of the day though, it’s a LEGO game, and it delivers what we all expect from it: a nice, laid-back weekend’s worth of fun.