Playing A Game LEGO Marvel Super Heroes PC

Right off the bat, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is a little disappointing for its vocal presentation. Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, even Jeremy Renner -- all absent. The only voices you're going to recognize from recent Marvel media outings are Agent Coulson, and (of course) Stan Lee. In light of the incredible attachment LEGO The Lord of the Rings made with its source material - granted, using direct recordings from the movies - LEGO Marvel's comparatively-dim personalities are a bit of a letdown.

But it's pretty easy to get over, because -- look, the recent LEGO games have established a pretty solid open-world formula, with vehicles, character-specific puzzles, and a fuckton of collectibles. And LEGO Marvel cranks all of that way up. How way up? There are 150 fucking characters in this game. Jesus! Each one represents a combination of abilities, like, Wolverine can regenerate health and has claws, Beast has claws and can use computers, Jean Gray can use computers and has telekinesis, Sue Storm has telekinesis and can turn invisible, Black Widow can turn invisible and does acrobatics ... it's just outlandish. And a bunch of the characters can fly, like, fly around Manhattan. Yes! It's incredible.

The game's technical infidelity does put a slight damper on the experience, with crashes and hangs, loading lag, worse-than-expected performance, and tons of cutscene scripting errors. And, as ever, the bulk of the game's collectibles are effectively locked until the campaign is complete, and I can select arbitrary characters at will. But I can see them; I can see the collectibles. Taunting me. Waiting for me.

Yeah. One hundred and fifty characters.

Progress: 11.8%, 11/15 missions complete.

Rating: Good