Play as Gotham City's most notorious criminals
The storyline in LEGO Batman is split into two halves: Heroes and Villains. The first half sees you in the role of Batman and Robin, playing co-operatively if you wish, switching in between the two to utilise their abilities and beat up villains as you attempt the thwart the illegal activities of Gotham City’s notorious criminals who, after breaking out of Arkham Asylum, are intent on causing havoc on the streets of the city.Each episode consists of five fairly short levels, where you’re tasked with the likes of stopping Clayface from robbing a bank or chasing down Two-Face and his entourage through the streets in your Batmobile or on Robins’s motorcycle. Each of the five levels culminates in a boss battle, where you come face to face with the likes of Mr.Freeze, Penguin, Joker and many others, who amusingly use their own unique powers to try and stop you, such as the freeze gun, or Poison Ivy’s ability to lay down a river of toxic green sludge.
The levels offer enough variety in design to keep each episode feeling fresh, offering a different vehicle to use in each (Joker's ice cream and the famous batmobile included), whilst the puzzles, which range from activating a switch to using your Batarang to trigger a doorway, are made more enjoyable by the fact that you can use each character’s unique skill, plus a variety of entertaining tech suits along the way.
In each level, you’re able to construct pads that offer a variety of tech suits for both Batman and Robin to pick up. These range from Batman’s glider suit, allowing him to drift across gaps, to his heat protection suit, allowing him to walk across fire or pick up glowing red Lego pieces in order to assemble new items.
The suits aren’t restricted to puzzle solving either and there’s plenty of entertainment to be had out of Robin’s demolition, magnet and scuba suit.
It's in the second half of the game, however, when you get to use the range of villiain abilities, that LEGO Batman really steps up a gear.
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