LEGO Batman: The Videogame (DS)

Who is Bruce Wayne behind that hard, plastic exterior?
9/29/2008 5:56 PM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

Because the gameplay is condensed, it seems that most of what you're doing is picking up things, smashing things, and, more often than in the console versions, making things like switches and ladders. If these tasks were accomplished via the touch-screen, they might be more engaging. But pressing the buttons over and over again becomes monotonous.

So, knowing all this, how can LEGO Batman: The Videogame stay true to both Batman and LEGO and, even more, popular gaming culture as we know it today? It begins with the game box art. There, Batman and Robin are swinging through the demon night, bats behind them and an evil, looming moon behind the winged creatures. The Dynamic Duo have that look of grim determination on their faces. You know this is about Batman's inner turmoil raging to explode. Batman is full of sorrow and vengeance that goes back almost 70 years. Below Batman, on the tar-patched rooftops of Gotham, are the evildoers, The Joker and Catwoman, crazier-looking and sneering, ready to perform every sort of insanity upon the buffed heroes who hover above.

Most every console and handheld game released is about heroism or antiheroism, about saving someone or something. The reason LEGO Batman works on the DS -- even with its coding challenges -- is the same reason that Batman as a character works. There's the heroic aspect of Batman, someone to look up to in times of trouble. We all want to be lauded as heroes; after all we've been through, don't we deserve it, just for a little while? There's also the antihero, the part of Batman that doesn't want to be social, the delinquent who's outside of society. We all want to be bad, don't we, to be wicked and selfish just to get our way, to break all the commandments and jump criminally into that good night? Here, as the tagline says, "Gotham City is falling to pieces." Sure, they mean LEGO pieces as much as they mean that Gotham is going down to the criminally unstable. But still, a hero you are, and a hero you enjoy being.

Some very cool heroism manifests in gameplay in ways that aren't unique if you know the LEGO Star Wars series and LEGO Indiana Jones. You're still hunting down tens of thousands of LEGO pieces and picking up hearts for lives. And you're still making vehicles of LEGO pieces you find, too.

But there are new twists that make your missions more than palatable. Two shorter games are included: As a brief respite from missions, you can play Villain Hunt, in which you'll get a few characters in an effort to hunt down an enemy lurking and hiding within a level. There's also Checkpoint Race, in which you jump into rad vehicles, shoot through levels, and try to come in first. The soundtrack, even in the DS version, uses clips of the great Danny Elfman's music from the Tim Burton movies "Batman" and "Batman Returns," and it definitely keeps the excitement level high when you're bored with picking up the LEGO studs that allow you to purchase accoutrements and new characters via your store (which resides within the Batcomputer).