Lego Marvel Super Heroes

All platforms

Developed by: TT Games

Thor in 'Lego Marvel Super Heroes'

Gamespress

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In the last few years, Lego games have been going through the motions. The ever-popular blend of cutesy characters, puzzle-based level design and tag-team gameplay was applied to everything from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter and Batman. And while each of these games was a fairly entertaining way to kill a few hours, they lacked that sense of good-natured fun that TT Games had so successfully poked at some of pop culture’s biggest icons. The good news is that Marvel Super Heroes harkens back to the series heyday of the Star Wars games – a well-judged, tongue-in-cheek parody of the big-budget Marvel universe that doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the gameplay in order to cram in a few visual gags. Which is not to say that the game isn’t amusing. In line with Lego games’ recent tendency to use actual dialogue instead of movie soundbites (or, as they did in the Star Wars titles, no dialogue at all), Marvel Super Heroes has enlisted a prestigious voice cast, including Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson in the movies, and the ABC TV show, Agents of Shield), Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar, and a veritable who’s who of voiceover talent that includes Nolan North, Troy Baker and Fred Tatasciore. And that means that the developers can build a game with an actual plot – one that can be humorous as well as engaging.

Backed by the typically well-built game mechanics, entertaining level design and a rich cast of characters, Marvel Super Heroes’ story is good enough to stand alone in the Marvel universe, instead of being something thrown together to make a buck. There’s the usual compulsion to go back and play each level again once you’ve unlocked more of the main characters, and completionists will delight in the sheer amount of collectibles and bonus extras to unlock. But the best thing about Marvel Super Heroes is that it proves Lego games haven’t forgotten how to balance fun with function. Marvel fans have to wait until April for their next cinematic fix, with the release of the next Captain America movie. This game will do more than pass the time until then.

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