Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight review

Hey, you! You’ve been complaining that not enough games use Arkham combat? Here’s a game that does exactly that, and it’s still got Batman in it. You just need to look past the fact this version of him is Lego-shaped, because it’s the most Arkham game since the last Arkham game. I will dangle you off a ledge to prove this point if I have to.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight has the counters and acrobatic free-flow moves, the shielded enemies you have to dodge over and thwack from behind and the ones with electric batons who are just annoying, and it has the gadgets—though fewer of them. You can still batarang a thug in the face or hookshot them like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, which is what matters.

It even has the vent-crawling, the grapple-gliding (only more forgiving since you’re covering more ground), and some bits where you perch on a gargoyle and drop onto a goon then zip back up and do it again. Hell, it even has the spray-on explosive Batman uses to doodle his own symbol like the obsessive nutbar he is. This is an Arkham game in all but name. In some ways, the fact it’s Lego makes it better.

For starters, you can properly hoon around Gotham in the Batmobile this time. (You start with Robert Pattinson’s, but can unlock everything from Adam West’s sweet ride to Christian Bale’s tumbler to the talking monster truck from the Dark Knights: Metal comic.) Fortunately, you don’t have to turn the Batmobile into a tank for endless samey drone battles. It’s for pressing the boost button to hare along at top speed while Commissioner Gordon, riding shotgun, shits himself.

If you hit another car they bounce off and if you mount the sidewalk pedestrians either cartwheel aside or phase through as if they aren’t there. Instead of coming up with another daft explanation why there are no civilians around to get in your way, Legacy of the Dark Knight puts them everywhere and says, whatever, they’re made of Lego. Of course you can’t run them over.

Whether you drive or fly across Gotham, you’re doing so to get to the next story mission: hysterical mash-ups of cool bits from various movies, gleefully smooshed together like a kid’s sandwich. The prologue opens with young Bruce learning why we fall like in Batman Begins, followed by the full dance with the devil in the pale moonlight Crime Alley scene from Tim Burton’s Batman, then back to Batman Begins in time for ninja training with the League of Shadows.

The delight with which it hops back and forth between Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan, with a touch of Joel Schumacher and Matt Reeves as well as playful references to the ’60s version and even Batman vs. Superman thrown in, is incredible. Jack Nicholson’s gallery-defacing Smilex Joker gets beaten, comes back all twisted as Heath Ledger’s Joker, is beaten again, then recreates the opening of Arkham Asylum as he’s locked away. It’s a greatest hits album.

One area it’s restrained is the cast of playable characters. Legacy of the Dark Knight only has seven. Lego Batman 3 had over 100, but a lot of them felt the same. Here, everyone has their own upgradable gadgets, alternate suits, and vehicles. Batgirl is the one who hacks computers, and she’s got a drone you can park in the air to use as a mobile grapple point. Catwoman’s whip spins objects around and her cats fit in vents too small for anyone else. Their gadgets can be used to stun in combat, or distract in stealth. Even Robin and Nightwing feel meaningfully different from each other.

Those wonderful toys

The characters look super shiny and in close-ups you can see textures mimicking plastic and raised Lego trademarks. It’s usually raining in Gotham and droplets slide down your cowl realistically. There’s an absurd degree of unnecessary detail. I turned several options down from epic to high to get a decent framerate, and even then some of the quicktime-event boss takedowns were a slideshow. I’d make a joke about how this is clearly a clever reference to the state of Arkham Knight’s PC port, but I know how humorless performance dudes are. It’s weird to have a Lego game push my rig to its limits, that’s all I’m saying.

One flaw worth highlighting is the drop in quality between the excellent story levels and the open-world collectathon. After rolling credits on the final mission I was excited to dress Batman up as a vampire or rainbow and explore more of Gotham. But mostly it’s rote stuff. Hack a tower with Batgirl and your map fills with icons, most of which are chests to open. Even the stuff that initially seems like it’s had more effort put into it, like a string of Catwoman heists, has the thinnest framing—just a few lines of dialogue as a reward.

The side missions are noticeably buggier as well. One criminal got stuck in a pole until the prompt came up to counter his attack, after which he finally teleported out. An escaped bird I had to put a tracker on got stuck next to its perch where I couldn’t interact with it. I was rewarded for stopping crimes I hadn’t seen, fell through a floor into a blue void, and fruitlessly pursued a fragment of a wanted poster through the sky with the prompt to grab it never arriving.

Even when the side stuff’s not glitchy it’s undercooked and repetitive. When you’re crossing Gotham to get to the next story mission the open world seems impressive, but once it stops being background and becomes the only thing left to engage with, it becomes cardboard set dressing.

For completionists that’s a nightmare, but for everyone else it’s easy to overlook. Stick to the story missions, maybe replaying them to chase down WayneTech you missed, and you’ll have a great time for 20 hours or so. You may not feel as much like Batman when you’re inhabiting this plastic incarnation of him, but when the Prince song Partyman blasts while a Lego Joker vandalizes an art gallery, you’ll feel like all those hours spent watching hit-and-miss Batman movies were worthwhile after all.