Leaping LEGO Licenses, Batman!

LEGO The Lord of the Rings, as full of content as it was, didn't completely sate my appetite for open-world item collection. So I continue my journey slightly-backward through Traveller's Tales' catalog, into Gotham City. This iteration on their LEGO formula has its own flavors to it, like weaponized vehicles (Batmobile!), superpowered gadget-suits (Bat-missile launcher!), and of course, enemies from throughout DC's stable (Captain Boomerang! Wait... what the fuck is Captain Boomerang?). But, it does feel somewhat less polished than its followers, LEGO LotR and LEGO City Undercover, with a less-robust two-player experience than the former and less of a sandbox emphasis than the latter. Campaign missions proceed at a breakneck pace, with barely a hint at the open-world activities you can engage in; and as an original story based on the Batman license, rather than literally piggybacking an existing narrative (like LotR), the storytelling is a little weak.

But it's still a lot of fun to tool around, smashing stuff, and solving LEGO puzzles. What I find especially fascinating is that, although this game, LotR, and Undercover all share the concept of changing character states to use different abilities, they're all implemented in different ways: in LEGO Batman 2, Batman and Robin each have multiple costumes, unlocked at special mission points, with specific skills -- like walking up magnetic surfaces, and the aforementioned missiles. There's even a Robin suit made for cleaning up hazardous materials, which turns out to be strangely similar to Super Mario Sunshine.

So far, the only playable DC Super Hero other than Batman and Robin is Superman, who appears a few missions in and quickly demonstrates how much more powerful he is than the dynamic duo -- but he can't solve all the game's puzzles with his abilities, and so his presence doesn't completely trivialize the game. But, yeah, it sure is fun to fly around and shoot eye-lasers at stuff.

Progress: Finished mission 7.