Even though he’s typically the most serious member of the Justice League, Batman is, as we’ve seen over the years, pretty silly. Adam West climbing up buildings and thwacking and thwocking his way through bad guys? Silly. Val Kilmer in a batsuit with nipples? Silly. Ben Affleck having a shouting match with Superman about the name Martha? Very silly.
We shouldn’t be surprised then that Batman has regularly made the transition to Lego so undeniably easy, from the early Traveller’s Tales games through to the exceptional big-screen LEGO Batman outing. Whatever era or iteration of Batman you ascribe to, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight unites all of them in one place, with adoration, reflection and reverence at the heart of what is often a hugely irreverent take on the caped crusader. It’s also one of the best Lego games of all time.
Legacy is the key to Lego Batman. Years of comic book heritage, cinematic releases and video game entries have been pored over, selected from, and then shoved, rammed and squeezed into every second of Legacy of the Dark Knight. The different movie franchises form the backbone of everything here, but for every moment that’s familiar, calling back to Tim Burton’s genre-defining original film, through to the most recent Robert Pattinson turn in The Batman, there’s also changes and alterations to the overarching storyline that ensure longtime fans of Batman are well served.
From the earliest days of Detective Comics through to the most recent modern storylines, there’s something here for pretty much everyone, and I loved playing co-op with my son and explaining all of the enemies that he didn’t know and the little visual nods. If you’ve been into Batman at any point in your life, you practically owe it to yourself to play Legacy of the Dark Knight, with reference after reference adorning every corner of this Gotham City.
What’s particularly wonderful about Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, though, is how funny it is. Comedy in games is hard to pull off, but where many of the other Lego games might raise a smirk or a polite smile, Lego Batman had me chuckling away throughout its runtime.
Like some of the visual callbacks, I had to explain to my son what they were. It did feel as though the welcoming combat and open world are aimed at a younger audience, while the deep cuts are for the over-30s. I don’t want to ruin too many – though if you’re chronically online, you will have probably caught a bunch of them – but an early favourite sees Ra’s Al Ghul training Bruce Wayne, taking inspiration from Batman Begins where Liam Neeson plays Ra’s. I absolutely loved Ra’s then quoting a phrase from Taken, one of Neeson’s most famous and most memed, roles. Heck, there’s even references to Sir Michael Caine’s twitter typos and a wild pun-based Limmy reference.
For all that I’ve called out Batman for its more comedic and sillier moments, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight plays a seriously good game of Batman. There’s the core trappings of any Lego game, smashing apart the scenery to reward yourself with a cascade of studs, building useful items from the wreckage and solving an abundance of light puzzles, but Legacy of the Dark Knight takes ultimate inspiration from Rocksteady’s Arkham games.
Now, this is Arkham-lite for sure. My 9-year-old co-op partner had just as much success with the game’s combat as I did, but it once again steps the brawling up a notch from what we’ve come to expect from Lego games in the past twenty years. The key here is countering and dodging, with clear button markers appearing when you’re about to get clobbered or a badnik is lining you up in their sights. It’s very forgiving – those markers appear a good second or two before you’re going to get hit – but it’s consistently just a good time.
That extends to the Arkham-style stealth. Stealth is a wholly viable option here, and you can pull all of your favourite tricks of grappling to the highest point, methodically taking out each of the bad guys one by one, leaping down and elbow dropping them, tapping them on the shoulder and scaring them out cold, or dragging them up and out of the action. You won’t fail if you get this wrong, though being discovered does normally see a huge crowd of enemies appear for you to punch your way out of. It just feels great, and while younger players might still prefer to wallop everybody, it’s great to have the option and the variety to take your own approach.
There’s the city to explore and glide around too, and this once again feels like a brick-based retread of Arkham City and Arkham Knight. You can either take to the skies, using updrafts to glide and get about, or call in the Batmobile and other character-specific road vehicles. One of the greatest inclusions here is your garage, containing a full suite of Batmobiles from across the ages, starting with the Adam West era, all the way through to The Batman’s modified Plymouth Barracuda. The driving is simple but speedy, and there’s no real nuance to it, but… it’s the Batmobile(s)!
When you’re not making your way through Legacy of the Dark Knight’s retelling of Batman lore and string of main missions, there’s a very cool aside to be found in customising the Batcave. You can expand this area and add in your own level furniture, letting you build out the Batcave of your dreams, where you can make some cool flourishes like customising the appearance of the Batman logos on the walls. There’s very little of this that you’re forced to engage with, but it’s a nice change of pace from the open world, and gives the hardcore Lego players – that’s my 9-year-old again – something to do once everything else has been seen and done ten times over.
Some might bemoan the reliance on nostalgia here. They’ll tell you there’s nothing new, that it’s all rehashed content we’ve seen before, but that’s to miss the point of Legacy of the Dark Knight. There’s real warmth and a genuine affection for Batman, which, after multiple playthroughs of its predecessor, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, wasn’t as apparent last time out. It’s also the best Arkham game we’re likely to get in the near future, bringing a new level of challenge and interaction to Lego games in the process.
