Following the huge success of LEGO Dimensions comes the next traditional style game from WB Games and Travellers Tales, LEGO MARVEL Avengers. Joining other cinematic adaptations such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and Jurassic World, LEGO MARVEL Avengers brings together the big screen MARVEL universe of the Avengers. As a huge fan of LEGO games and MARVEL I was interested to see how this would play out, I was not disappointed:
I loved how the MARVEL universe was first brought together in LEGO MARVEL Superheroes back in 2013, featuring every hero and villain across the MARVEL comic book range. It had the freedom to use all the popular characters that long-term fans knew and loved as well as feed the passion in new fans that the big screen MARVEL films had made. It was purely a matter of time before that cinematic universe would be the inspiration for its own LEGO game and here we finally are.
The main story telling campaign of the game focused on the two Avenger films, Avenger’s Assemble and Age of Ultron. The levels are based on key moments in both films and brilliantly bring the full LEGO magic to bring the levels to life with humour, fun and great little details that fans of the films will love. The game uses the actual dialogue from the films to great effect both in cut scenes and in clever random moments as you play through LEGO MARVEL Avengers. I really loved the humour injected by Traveller’s Tales as they always do when they adapt a popular film series and you really see the affection they have for the source material with the little touches thrown in.
Gameplay has been updated since Superheroes with new Avenger Team up combos now between characters that can take out multiple enemies at once. These will be different depending on the characters being used but they can be visually stunning when triggered and trying out different characters to see their team up moves is great fun, personal favourite is teaming Black Widow with Hulk!
LEGO MARVEL Avenger’s also features storylines from four other films in the form of story levels can be played outside of the main campaign. Captain America: The First Avenger is integrated into the main story campaign but Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier can be accessed from the central mission hub area access by going to space. These are around twenty to twenty-five minutes long in standard play but as with all LEGO games there is Freeplay mode.
Free play mode for me has always been the highlight of LEGO games which is unlocked once that level has been completed normally. Freeplay allows the player to pick any character unlocked on the roster in any level to help collect mini kits, red bricks and new characters. As you play through each level normally you can see puzzles that will require a certain power or skill only particular characters will have. A returning feature from LEGO MARVEL Superheroes is the ‘Rescue Stan Lee’ from each level, adding a nice element to Freeplay. In fact the inside joke of MARVEL films having a Stan Lee cameo is used to great effect in the game, perhaps a little overused, but still a nice touch.
The open world side that allows players to explored hub locations taken from the featured MARVEL films such as Asgard, Sokovia, South Africa, Barton’s farm, Malibu and Washington DC are full of side missions to complete, races, gold bricks to find and new characters to collect. There are even crimes to stop as well adding even more gameplay as you strive to fill the roster and find every collectible for the full 100%. There really is an abundance of things to do that will keep fans busy for hours on end.
That being said however, as a result of now focusing on the MARVEL cinematic universe for level content, I felt that LEGO MARVEL Avengers was limited in the choice of films as it focused on the Avengers. It would have been amazing to have had a Guardians of the Galaxy story level to enjoy but as they have yet to feature with the Avengers it simply was not an option, for now. With so potential with the next batch of Avenger films introducing more characters and bringing them all together for Infinity War, I sense that a sequel to LEGO MARVEL Avengers will organically be focused on Infinity War. What a prospect that is!
Overall I really enjoyed LEGO MARVEL Avengers as both a fan of LEGO games and MARVEL. Travellers Tales has once again successfully blended their style with a cinematic series to deliver a superb game experience. A nice surprise was discovering that the season pass is priced at a very reasonable £7.99 adding 40 new characters and five new story levels featuring Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Captain MARVEL and Masters of Evil.
This game serves as a brilliant experience for fans of the MARVEL films and MARVEL comic books. Full of content with a door left open to follow-up with more Avenger films in the future. The wait has been worth it and yet again Traveller’s Tales has built upon previous work with MARVEL to deliver an experience that compliments the film universe well and provides the foundation to continue when the next group of Avenger films are released.
The Collector and Thanos will be most eager to grab this game!
