If you are new to children's games for the Wii or XBox, the Lego series of games are a pretty safe bet. We've played most of them and not come across a bad one yet.
Recently my son finished playing the first Lego Batman game, so it was great timing to be offered Lego Batman 2 by Warner Bros to review.
This time round, Batman is joined by a cast of DC superheroes and villains, including Superman, Green Lantern and Lex Luthor.
This game has an age rating of 7 which feels about right to me. Children any younger would probably struggle to play it. My son has just turned 9 and he kept getting stuck at bits - not so much that it put him off, but it was definitely a challenge.
- This is the first Lego video game where the characters speak - previously all they did was vague euromumbling. So added dialogue means that there's more of a plot.
Junior Games Master, age 9 says:
"The first Lego Batman game was very good, and this one is a little bit better. There are extra bits to the suits - Robin has a magnetic suit and a magnet that he uses to make things come towards him. But it's not a two part story so it doesn't matter if you haven't played the first one.
I liked that it has different superheroes in it, and there is more to explore. I like that the minifigures can talk, because they sound quite funny. The only bit I would change is the driving - this is very hard to do because the steering is not too good and I wasn't too sure where I was going.
It is quite a hard game but you can work it out. There is a bit of punching but not much violence - it's more about working out how you can get through the levels. What I really like about Lego video games is that everything in the world is made of Lego. I wish the real world was like that."
Holy glitches, Batman!
However, after we'd been playing it a while we did hit a snag in that the game repeatedly froze towards the end of one of the levels. A quick glance at the Amazon reviews reveals that we're not the only ones to have experienced problems. We reported this to Warner Bros, who said they'd look into it. In the meantime, we left the game for a bit, and when we came back to it again the glitch had magically restored itself and the game was back to playing just fine. Phew, that's a relief.
But all in all this one gets a big thumbs up from us - just remember to hang on to your receipt in case you hit a glitch, and even if this does happen don't panic because sometimes they do seem to just fix themselves. That's the power of superheroes for you.
UPDATE - 19th JULY 2012
Well alas the game froze again "right at a good bit" as my son reports. So we had a look online and Warner Bros have now issued some pointers to help. Here's the link to tell you what to do if your Lego Batman 2 game crashes. We followed these instructions and our game is now working well again.
Lego Batman 2 DC Superheroes is out now on all major games formats, priced from £17.99 - some special edition packs come with Lex Luthor minifigure.
I was over at a co-worker’s house the other day from Dish, and saw his kids playing Lego Batman 2 and can’t believe that this one was released without knowing about it! Recently I’ve been playing the first Lego Batman with my kids and we’ve had a blast. I’m a huge fan of these types of games so I added it to my queue using the Blockbuster@Home. I wish I had the money to just buy it, but I’ve found it’s more economical to save money by renting games, instead of buying.
Posted by: Bob Smith | July 18, 2012 at 07:15 PM
These are some cartoon characters that populare amongst children like batman , ben ten etc. i like this.
Posted by: High School Diploma | October 05, 2012 at 10:40 AM