Back in 2013, Warner Bros. released a new spinoff series for the highly popular LEGO franchise and it's first installment was the well-received LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. It has been over two years and the next chapter has finally arrived in LEGO Marvel's Avengers.
The game takes players through many of the memorable moments we've seen from both Avengers films, Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The entire formula makes for yet another wonderful experience. No matter the world you are battling through or story you are reliving, LEGO Marvel's Avengers delivers much in the same way as its predecessor did with entertaining and intelligent gameplay, excellent humor, and rich environments.
LEGO Marvel's Avengers has dozens and dozens and dozens of characters for you to play as, and really, it's quite an impressive list once you see it for yourself. Gameplay would be a bit repetitive if it weren't for the many different characters you can play and its quantity of side content.
Each hero has base attacks, along with the ability to perform a combination-type attack, and if the game was just starring a handful of characters, this would be a serious problem. However, this isn't an issue due to the quantity of unique characters you can play as throughout the experience. From Thor to Agent Williams to Iron Man and countless others, gameplay combat and variety are excellent because of the breadth of characters.
As I mentioned, gameplay is varied up because of the diversity and quantity of characters, but not only that, gameplay is varied by the locations and design of each mission. While there are themes to mission and level design that remain the same throughout the game, the sum of the game's ingredients is great enough to keep you coming back more and more, which is something the first game did brilliantly as well.
Veterans of the LEGO games will enjoy the returning theme of puzzle-based levels, coupled with combat and exploration. The game does a fine job of rewarding players for take the extra time to smash all of the objects within a given environment for currency, and you should make sure you take the time to do so because you can sometimes find collectibles or new characters that might not otherwise be found throughout the course of the story.
Gamers can venture off into seven different environments in LEGO Marvel's Avengers and each of them is true to the spirit of their actual locations, while still adding the essential LEGO ingredients you would expect. An environment that was a personal favorite had to be Asgard, which did a fine job of capturing the world that we've already seen in past Marvel films, though it is a bit smaller than you might like.
Speaking of past films, it was an absolute joy to play through some of the most iconic moments we've seen from the aforementioned Marvel movies. In nearly every cinematic I saw was nice LEGO-like touches that made me laugh on many, many different occasions. TT Games has done a marvelous job of adding in quite a lot of humor and it all really does fit very well.
Humor in any game can be difficult to effectively illustrate, however, TT Games has done fantastic work to provide subtle, entertaining and downright hilarious humor to many of the iconic moments we've seen from past Marvel films. Humor in this game makes it better and adds that essential light-heartedness that we expect from a LEGO game. Besides, who doesn't enjoy sipping on a milkshake?
The game's bugs have mostly been ironed out, except for a few instances where a character was momentarily stuck in a crevasse and a slight frame rate drop here or there. None of these things really impacted my experience with the game, however, there was one game breaking bug I encountered during one of Captain America's flashbacks. There was a glitch in which he continued to run in place and I could not get him to move at all. This was a singular occurrence and it didn't sour my experience with the game but was worth noting.
The biggest gripe I have with LEGO Marvel's Avengers is the voice-acting, which was subpar. The actors you see and hear in the films also voice the characters you see in the game, however, their voice-acting is uninspired and sounds more obligatory than it does convincing. It's actually a testament to the job TT Games did that, even in spite of the clear boredom the game's voice-actors exuded from start to finish, the game was still hilarious and entertaining.
The quantity and quality of gameplay experiences in LEGO Marvel's Avengers is staggering and it's a game that you will have an extremely hard time walking away from. There is so much for gamers to enjoy, just like there was in the first game, and it's evidence of how a developer can continue to improve a series by taking the time to flesh it out, without feeling obligated to hit a yearly launch pattern.
LEGO Marvel's Avengers provides a game that I will not be walking away from anytime soon, as there is still so much to discover and experience, even after the main campaign has been completed. It's a game any Marvel, LEGO or gaming fan will thoroughly enjoy, and I am still laughing at many of the excellent touches TT Games has put into this game. LEGO Marvel's Avengers is available now on just about every platform you can think of (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and PC).
Pros
- Excellent humor
- Rich environments
- Entertaining gameplay
Cons
- Dreadful voice-acting
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment provided a PS4 review code of LEGO Marvel's Avengers for the purposes of this review.