LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Review (Ingel Riday)
Honestly, I loved this game. It was lighthearted, whimsical, and frequently funny. The developers also clearly cared about DC's characters and settings, which led to a lot of cute Easter eggs and obscure callbacks.
Gameplay-wise, this is one of the 22+ Lego games that have come out over the past two decades. If you've played any of them before, you know what you're getting into. The movement, combat, puzzles, camera angles, and so on all work pretty well (except on a few experimental Super Mario Galaxy planetoid levels, where close quarters and the camera do NOT mix well). It's arguably designed to be a good introductory game for kids with just enough gameplay complexity, references, and risque humor to appeal to adults too... and I think it hits the mark.
As of this review, I have beaten the 16 base story missions, completed 4 of the 6 Lantern worlds, and have reached a completion percentage of 70.4% or so. It has been a ride and I still have five DLC levels, 12+ simulation challenges, and a smattering of collectibles to go. Not at all a bad amount of content for the price.
I did experience a few bugs, though. Specifically:
- Sometimes when you leave a Lantern world, the world's objects will load into the next setting and will, for lack of a better way to describe it, "superimpose" themselves upon it. So, you'll be in the Justice League Watchtower, but you'll be surrounded by the rocks, trees, and other debris of the previous Lantern planet. It's odd looking and pretty much breaks the game, but quitting to the main menu and then reloading your save solves it (with zero progress lost; the game auto-saves religiously, so I never lost anything).
- Apparently a Windows update or something glitched some of the older Lego games a while back. They stutter every now and then for a few seconds, with the game locking up and looking like it's going to crash before resuming. Sometimes the stutters come every 30 seconds, sometimes they come every three minutes, and sometimes you don't see one for an hour. I have found no rhyme or reason to it.
Running the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode as an administrator with "full screen optimizations" disabled notably reduced the frequency of stutters, but it didn't stop them. Playing the game with Steam in offline mode pretty much stopped them completely, but then you don't earn any achievements (at all. If you go back to online mode and load up the game, it won't give you credit for anything you did while offline. You'll have to redo all the achievement requirements again). So, you'll have to get used to the stutters. Considering this game came out in 2014, I wouldn't expect a patch... ever.
But I truthfully consider the above glitches relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. This is a great game and I'm genuinely grateful for the chance to have experienced it. I know the developers will never see this, but thank you for this lovely piece of fan-service. I loved it.