LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

You know what you'll get with Lego games. It's a great family game with lots of humor and content, but at the same time it's more or less the same as its predecessor, complete with the same (minor) flaws. It's about time for TT Games to at least fix those flaws.

The second Lego Batman game has a lot to offer for almost every one. Some of the puzzles are a little big to hard for the younger audience that enjoyed the previous games, which is a shame.

Lego Batman 2 is packed with fun DC Universe content, tricky puzzles and compulsive collecting, but it's let down by the repetitive and often tedious combat mechanics. It's virtually impossible to fail, making the real challenge one of player interest. Combined with clunky controls, there's enough wrong to prevent this game from becoming a Lego classic.

With a little more polish, LEGO Batman 2 could have been a high point of the franchise. Instead, it's merely another enjoyable entry in the lineup of LEGO games.

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes does not betray the standards of the Lego franchise, adding a few targeted new features and presenting himself as a must buy for fans.

As a DC Comics crossover game, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes is quiet fun to play like the previous title of the IP developed by TT Games. Even if the usual weaknesses remain, the title brings interesting features like full dialogues that offer a pleasant experience in the series, sometimes to the detriment of humor. Finally, the open-world universe lets players discover Gotham City, LEGO-style, despite some problems with camera positions and characters that happen to be stuck into walls.

Side missions and hidden blocks are suitably distracting, although the use of a difficult-to-read radar over a mini-map displays a certain level of open world naivety that should probably be expected from a developer that has just been going through the motions for so long.

It's still not a full reinvention of the Lego template but it is one of the most enjoyable uses of it so far, with an open world Gotham and a cast of characters to rival Arkham City.

Although it's still as fun as ever to collect Lego bricks and watch the cutscenes, the lack of real change leads to the feeling that you've seen all this before. Batman is a meticulous self-improver; it would be nice if his Lego games had the same mentality.

Like all the Lego games, the build/collect/smash em up nature is still just as addictive and the design is both brilliant and awful in equal measures. It's heart-warming and fun, two things which most comic games (and indeed comics) lose out on when they ham-fistedly attempt to be 'mature'. It's a grind though, so I think I'll sit the next few Lego games out while I regain the stamina to go through it all again. And I will go through it again.

If the fundamentals were a little more refined or the new ideas a little more fully implemented, I'd feel better about recommending it wholeheartedly, but given the new elements in play here, you can at least take heart that Traveller's Tales isn't resting on its laurels.