LEGO Batman: The Videogame (Wii)

Who is Bruce Wayne behind that hard, plastic exterior?
10/3/2008 6:25 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

It's in our genetic makeup to want to build things. Clicking colored plastic pieces together not only lets a kid construct some tangible plaything, be it the house he wants to live in, the car he wants to own, or the hero he wants to be. It's about play, but it's about dreaming the so-called American dream, too, and not just yelling "USA! USA!" like a lunatic. LEGO lets you proudly shout, "I made this!" as if it were art and life that you are constructing. That's what the LEGO Batman event at the New York Museum of Natural History was about the other day: kids running around with LEGO and Batman, proudly making something.

What do you get when you put LEGO and Batman together? Can LEGO Batman: The Videogame be deep, even though it's an E10+ rated game with only "Cartoon Violence"? As in LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones, important things have been excluded. The intimacy of the written word, so essential to comics, is gone from LEGO Batman; there's no narration in blurbs. The characters don't talk in words at all (they grunt and make comic book sounds like "oof," "bam" and "riiing"), so one essential movie-like quality is gone.

The enemy and friendly artificial intelligence aren't so hot, sometimes not even as smart as lower mammals like rats. Even Batman once didn't have the smarts to climb from a wire to the ledge of a building when I was controlling Robin. (And they promised at the Game Developers Conference that this AI stuff would be completely fixed!) Batman sticks too easily to a wall, going into Stealth mode like in the debacle that was The Getaway: Black Monday from Sony. And why can Batman punch Robin and vice versa: Is that some sort of "Fight Club"-esque man love?

There's always some moaning about the Wii version of a multiplatform game, and it's usually about how poor the graphics are. Hey, I disdain the blurries and jaggies as much as you do. But believe me: These graphics are cuts above the usual Wii port of a game. The backgrounds are generally clear and detailed, although the textures on buildings still could use some work. But the shimmering water effects look just about as good to me as they do on the Xbox 360 version.

A review at one of the larger gaming sites has incorrectly reported that you don't use the Wii remote much in the game. In fact, the Wii remote has plenty of uses: You use it to aim and throw the Batarang, to build your vehicles from blocks (shake it up and down, baby), to shoot out the grappling hook (flick it up), and to punch your enemies (thrust it forward). Yes, I really wish that you could move your vehicles with the Wii remote à la Excite Truck or Mario Kart Wii, and it's a big mistake not to have this functionality. But it's not as if you're going old-school and pressing buttons (although you can choose that route if you want to).