It’s been four years since Lego games dived into the Marvel comics foray and while the first game gave fans who have been wanting to see The Avengers, Xmen and Fantastic Four all interact together a chance to see it without pesky film studios owning different properties, it went on to become one of the best Lego games made to date and with so many characters and things to do and collect along with so much replayability it is still on my PS4 and I do load it up when I find myself wanting some mindless fun. Finally we have the follow up Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 and while the Xmen and Fantastic Four are nowhere to be seen, we have the addition of the Inhumans, a full roster of Avengers and the Spiderman universe. While I did miss these characters the new addition of locations like Wakanda and a focus on the upcoming Black Panther movie and Thor Ragnarok, it is a solid sequel that changes the formula and unlocks new Marvel worlds that will no doubt become another massive hit.
The story revolves around the time travelling villain Kang who has created a city called Kronopolis by travelling through time and pulling various Marvel locations into the one area like Wakanda, Medieval England, New York and Khun Lun. You then get a random assortment of characters to team up and play your way through 20 story missions before heading into the open world part of this game once Kang has been destroyed. By using the element of time you can bring things in and out of the world with certain characters and cycling Groot through time from baby groot to adult Groot is a phenomenal power.
Speaking of Groot, the Guardians Of The Galaxy are a major focus of this game and while there are characters that are quite forgettable like Gamora and Drax, others like Groot, Rocket and Star Lord are beautifully animated and have some great quirks that will have you scrolling back to these characters over and over. In particular Star Lord has a mode in which he puts his Sony Walkman and plays a random song that will rope in any heroes or villains around you into dancing along. Other characters you may not now with the likes of Ms.Marvel who can shrink down, grow to the a giant and turn herself into a ball, you can randomly mash buttons and watch her destroy any bad guys around you is incredibly satisfying.
A highlight from the first game were the Deadpool missions along with his room and computer used for cheats and unlocking red bricks has been switched up in the game to the Avengers mansion and we now get Gwenpool taking the reigns. For a DC fanboy like me, exploring all of these Marvel characters that I have never encountered before added something more to this game for me. Having the added element of time brings in a lot of different Spiderverse characters from different times and dimensions which kept Spiderman feeling fresh when you can switch to Spiderman 2099 who moves differently and has a different skill set for flying across the city.
Visually this is the best looking Lego game made to date. I reviewed this game on the Nintendo Switch and the visuals in both handheld and docked mode are spectacular. The constantly changing environments through space and the beauty of Wakanda and the grit of Marvel Noire. The response when playing with the pro controller was always on point and I didn’t experience any lag. The only drop was when the level was finished and the game fades to a comic book collector card. There were quite a few times when this happened the lag made me press the Home button a few times to make sure the system hadn’t frozen. It is a minor annoyance and did get worse as the game went on, it would be interesting to see if the same thing happens in the PS4 and Xbox One version (seriously if you know please get in touch!)
Now that Lego Dimensions has met its timely death among the rest of the toys to life video games, it seems that Travellers Tale now can get back to bringing us great games like Lego Batman 3 and now this absolute gem that shows that games like this have a place in the gaming world in which multiplayer and online shooters are crowding the marketplace.
If you are a fan of Marvel and open world adventure games, this is definitely worth your time, having it on the go with the Nintendo Switch platform only adds to the amount of hours I will be putting into this game. With a fun and engaging story with a twist to the beautiful graphics and character collection Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 exceeds the vision of the first game and gives us something to play over the Christmas break. Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 is available on Playstation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
Review by Alaisdair Leith
