It was a Lego weekend at my house! Lego Marvel's Avengers is the second Lego game set in the Marvel universe, although it's definitely not a sequel to the sublime Lego Marvel Super Heroes, my personal favorite game in the series. The game follows, quite directly, the plots from the first two Avengers films, and also includes side missions based on other films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The approach is mostly the same as always, although the game does add on a few new wrinkles. These may have been added between Lego Batman 3 and Lego Marvel's Avengers, as I haven't played the other games in between as of yet. The single biggest change was a new focus on special attacks for the characters. In older games, you mostly wander around mashing a single attack button, but you can now press "o" to trigger a special attack, killing an enemy in a more cinematic style. This is cool at first, but quickly becomes a crutch making combat too easy. It also is constantly irritating, as the "o" button does a ton of other stuff, which means you'll frequently trigger special attacks when you'd rather pull a lever, or vice versa. They should have assigned it to a different button, or better yet, have unlocked this ability once you've killed several guys in a row or built up a meter of some sort. It'd be like if the arcade game X-Men had and unlimited amount of super moves-it completely breaks the game's difficulty level.
The other big change is that they now are using audio samples from the films themselves, rather than original voice acting, as in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, or the mumbling from the earliest Lego games. If I prefer the mumbling to the original voice acting, the audio samples are exploring the 7th circle of hell. It completely saps all of the charm and originality from the game, and is basically just like watching the movie, along with pretty pathetic attempts at humor. It seems that every joke in the game revolves around the characters drinking smoothies at inopportune times. Haha. Bring back the old style! The direct copying of the films in mission form also makes the game's plot feel stale and predictable, which is lame.
So I really didn't care for any of the new additions. The missions themselves are also more cinematic and focused on big boss battles than on the simple puzzle solving of the earlier games, which just doesn't make much sense to me. But that's the direction they're going, and have been for a while, so I guess I just have to deal with it.
The music is very good, having been taken from the excellent scores of the first two movies.
They thankfully brought back big hub worlds, and this time they've taken the approach of having several of them, rather than one big one. I like the one big world approach better, but this does give you the chance to explore some cool areas from the films and Marvel Universe, including Asgard and Sokovia.
I feel like a broke record, but these bugs. Holy cow. This one may have been the buggiest one yet, which drives me insane in an error where you can patch things up post-launch.
In short, don't play this one unless you're a huge fan of the films, Marvel comics, or Lego games in general. There are much better selections from the catalogue for you to enjoy. I'll give it a 7.0/10.
I think I'll be splitting my time between two games from here on out, as platforms become available, so here are two teasers. Older games I've already teased may trickle in here, too.
-TRO
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