3/5 ★ – Jackoooist's review of LEGO DC Super-Villains.

I've always had a fondness for the LEGO game franchise. Ever since I was a kid I've enjoyed the simplistic and pleasing gameplay along with the funny and charming humour within each entry into the series I've picked up. As time has passed though, my fondness for the series has wavered somewhat and I've become more aware of the repetitive nature some of the more modern titles are known for. LEGO DC Super Villains only reinforces this current perspective sadly. Rather that serve as an adaption of a existing piece of media, LEGO DC Super Villains chooses to tell an original narrative utilising a vast collection of the DC comic book roster. After the mysterious dissaperance of the Justice League, a new group of "super heroes" from a parallel dimension arrive on Earth called the Justice Syndicate. Pretending to be the good guys, we learn quickly enough they are responsible for the Justice League's disappearance and are working for Darkseid to find the last piece of the Anti-Life Equation. With the good guys gone, it's down to the villains of the DC universe to band together in order to stop the Justice Syndicate and Darkseid from finding the equation and destroying the planet. Your window into the world of the bad guys is your main character, known as the Rookie. The Rookie is part of the games main selling feature in which your own custom character is put at the centre of the video game's narrative. Given a huge array of customisation options to begin with, you have the ability to set up a truly unique villain who will run through the gauntlet of levels in the games main story along with other DC super villains and help the bad guys do something good for once. I can't say the narrative was anything that special in all honesty. I appreciate we're talking about a LEGO game here and not something like God of War of The Last of Us; but I honestly feel the game's narrative isn't really interested in telling a coherent story and is much more focused on running you from one location to another. It's a pattern I've noticed with a lot of the original storyline LEGO games, in which the narrative is always treat as a secondary measure. While I don't care for the storyline all that much I will give Travellers Tales credit for their consistent humour and charm that the LEGO games are so well known for. I have to admit I did chuckle a fair few times during the story cutscenes just for some of the clever gags the game pulls off. In terms of gameplay it's the same type of gameplay you can come to expect from most LEGO games at this point. Your environment consists of breakable LEGO objects, your goal is to progress through the levels breaking objects, collecting studs and solving puzzles with different characters and abilities. It's all par for the course at this point and it's a formula Travellers Tale's is all too happy to keep running with as they know it works. While I can't fault the addictive and pleasing nature of the core gameplay loop, I will argue it's hard not to feel the repetitive aspect of it starting to wear thin. A lot of that repetitive nature for me comes from the over-reliance on the same type of puzzles. There is a puzzle sequence in which you have to shrink and navigate a electric maze grid to a switch. The first issue with this puzzle is it's been used a lot in past games like Lego Dimensions and Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 and I'm really over it by this point. The other issue is this puzzle sequence is even over used in the game itself, often outweighing a lot of the other puzzle sequences throughout the story levels and the open world HUBS. It's just a heavy hitting fact that so much of this game is repeated over and over to artificially increase playtime. On a visual level I can't fault the design and quality of the game. Character models and animations are very crisp and fluid and there's a clear sense of vibrancy in the way the characters look and move. In terms of environmental design both the main levels and the HUB areas are brilliantly designed. You feel a great sense of scale in the environments and there so much life and charm embedded into the tiniest aspects of it. The HUB world is the most impressive aspect of the design for me. Being a merger of key DC locations like Gotham City, Metropolis, Smallville, Arkham Asylum etc, there's just so much attention to detail here. These places feel taken straight out of a comic book and they hold so many secrets and challenges for you to find through exploration. Again, just to reiterate LEGO DC Super Villains isn't a bad game, there's just enough here to give you a reasonably fun experience. Whether it's the humorous charm layered throughout or the impressive visual design, there's some great quality to the game in some areas. I just wish there was more innovation here, the quality moments can't wash away the fact the LEGO formula is getting incredibly repetitive at this point and it needs revitalising majorly. I can only hope with a new engine and the extended development time that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has had can provide the franchise that mush needed evolution.