Lego Marvel Avengers Review

LEGO Marvel Avengers Review | February 7, 2013
Xbox, Windows, PlayStation, Nintendo

Lego Marvel Avengers is an open world 3D action adventure platformer and you can play it in both single player and multiplayer. It covers the storylines from the first two Avengers movies but you also get to spend some time in the other Marvel games mostly Captain America The First Avenger. We are assuming you have seen the Marvel movies leading up to this Lego Avengers games. For gamers as far as stories go battling Loki as he starts to invade New York and Ultron is about as good as it gets in gaming.

When Lego Marvel came out we were a little surprised because it did not follow the Avenger storylines it has its own concept. Here Cobie Smulders narrates the game as her Avenger character Maria Hill. You begin at the start of Avengers 2 invading Baron Wolfgang von Strucker strong hold in Sokovia but it changes to the first movie as soon as you get your hands on the Loki’s scepter. Then you start to see how the Avengers get assembled but this is where the game starts to miss opportunities in their level choices.

There are huge sections of the Marvel Phase 1 and 2 movies that get skipped over and in their place are pointless missions. We don’t remember a part in any of the movies where Black Widow has to clean up spilled oil on the deck of The SHIELD Helicarrier so a Quinjet can land. They make you play through this stupid level but completely fast forward through the conflict between Avengers when Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are trying to make Vision. We don’t need to fix a tractor and chop wood on the Barton family farm either. We would rather play through the first fight between Vision and Ultron.

Making matters worse is you get to spend some time in Ironman 3, Captain America The Winter Soldier and Thor The Dark World but each level is not part of the main story in any way they are extras and feel like filler. We get to see how Captain America became the first Avenger and play as him as part of the story but not Thor and Ironman? It frustrating because the world created in The Dark World looks amazing and is well designed. We would have been happy playing through more of Asgard especially the parts when Thor is trying to break Loki out of jail and escape back to Earth with him. Image playing the elevator and escape scene in The Winter Soldier…yeah not in the game, neither is the hostage freeing mission with Cap and Black Widow.

Despite our problems with some of the level choices, over all Lego Marvel Avengers is very good. They use dialog and voices from the movies and the puzzles are not overdone and take some thought to figure them out. They added in special Team Up moves depending what members of the Avengers you have with you and Stan Lee returns being stuck in dangerous situations. You have many open world opportunities to take on side missions but the Helicarrier and New York City are mostly the same as in Lego Marvel Super Heroes. We kind of felt like we already explored all we needed to see in these two areas already. We also really liked the Hulk vs Hulk Buster fight. It is almost everything you wanted. We say almost because we just wish there was more of it and it took place in a bigger area, it Hulk vs Hulk Buster they need a bigger playground.

Lego Marvel Avengers has a high replay value which is good because sadly it is only 9 hours long. Remember it follows the movies, many times you only have two people on your team and if you want to find do all the extra stuff then you need to play through more than once. Ironman 3, The Winter Soldier and The Dark World levels only add 2 to 3 hours of gaming. There are some small camera issues and the vehicles for some reason are hard to control. The game is worth paying $40.00 or under for. If they would have chosen better levels the score would be higher and the experience better.

8.5 Out of 10
Great Game

8.5 out of 10
Great Game

Rated
E10 for Everyone

Rated
PEGI 12