LEGO Marvel’s Avengers Review

The Positives

• LEGO Marvel's Avengers does a great job at tying the major movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe together. Instead of presenting them chronologically, the game starts out with the first mission from Avengers: Age of Ultron, then flashing back to the first Avengers movie, then going back even further to the first Captain America movie and then topping it off with the rest of Avengers 2.

• Speaking of levels, I have to hand it to TT for being really clever with their level designs and ideas. There are scenes from the movies you just expect to be playable levels, but then there are a few like the party at Stark's Tower from Age of Ultron, or even the individual character flashbacks caused by Scarlet Witch, which are pleasant surprises.

• Unlike previous super hero endeavors from Traveller's Tales, Avengers uses the same formula from games like LEGO Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, where dialogue is taken directly from the movie and then slapped directly over the character animations. It's great since you're left with the actual actors, without them needing to reprise their roles for more dialogue. However, Cobie Smulders, Clark Gregg and Hayley Atwell reprise their roles for Maria Hill, Agent Coulson, and Agent Carter respectively.

• New to the LEGO games, but a staple of the Avengers, are their combo team-up attacks. When playing as the Avengers, you'll be able to pull off unique moves that can clear all the enemies around you. Also, depending on who is the initiator of the combo, will result in a different attack. For example, when playing as Hulk, you can signal Iron Man to shoot you, which will send you in a frenzy. Alternatively, as Iron Man, you can have Hulk throw you in the air as you spin and blast everything around you.

• Along the same lines, characters can also team up to solve various puzzles, though don't expect these to be headscratchers. Panels on the floor will show two icons representing the two heroes you need to solve it. Once they're both there, they'll pull off a unique combo move that will enable you to progress.

• The free roaming hubs are fun to explore, and hold a bunch of secrets to uncover and side activities to participate in. Not all are as great as Manhattan, which is clearly the biggest of the areas, but the fact that they're there is certainly appreciated.

• The selection of characters is absolutely insane with obvious heavy hitters from the movies, and even more obscure characters like Gorilla Girl, Jack of Hearts, Mantis and Butterball. And hey, for those who binged on Jessica Jones, you get to play as her too! Neat!

• The game is deceptively huge. You'll see your first credits roll after you beat the events of the first Avengers movie, but that's far from seeing everything the game has to offer. Not only do you still continue the story from Age of Ultron, there are still more free roam maps to see and tons of characters to unlock.

• I didn't think this was possible but there is such a thing as too much Stan Lee. Early on he makes a clever joke asking when he'll stop being a cameo, but be an actual character. Well, LEGO Marvel's Avengers certainly seems to answer this, as he's almost everywhere. It's gotten to the point where I cringe when I hear "Excelsior!"

• Though infrequent, I've encountered a few bugs that either completely crashed my game, or made me restart a level completely. The latter involved the game's first level, where I had to switch between Iron Man and Captain America. Iron Man flying around the building dealing with enemies in air, while Captain America dealing with enemies in the building. Upon completing the first task as Iron Man, I switched back to the Cap, only to find him upside down and clipped in rubble. No matter what I pressed, I couldn't make my way out of there.

• The character specific animations sometimes work against themselves, leading to unfortunate suicide. For example, in one level, I had to put out multiple fires with Cap's shield, but those fires were on top of hot bricks which cause damaged. Unfortunately, this move causes Cap to jump and then roll forward, which meant every time I wanted to put out a fire, it always rolled me into the hot bricks. There was literally no work around for this.