LEGO® Batman™ 3: Beyond Gotham

This is probably the best Lego Batman has felt for me, having not played Legacy of the Dark Knight, but it has some of the weakest levels in the series so far. Don't get me wrong, it's still good, and there's enough to redeem it to stand with the first 2 in the series; but I am disappointed nonetheless. To start, this game has really improved upon the many heroes (and villains) approach that LBM2 had. In that game, it felt like I was always running around as Superman, while switching to Batman and Robin as needed. There was very little need to deviate from those core 3, as they had pretty much every power necessary to complete the overworld objectives, and were the only characters you play as in the story. Here, they really went out of their way to make each level have a good selection of characters that each feel unique and are necessary for progression. This really helped the game feel more alive and like everyone was contributing in their own way. Unfortunately, when you get to free play, the story is a bit different. It certainly wasn't as bad as LBM2, but instead of Batman, Superman, and Robin; you primarily play as Batman, Robin, and Green Lantern. Green Lantern is necessary for some puzzles, and can dig in the small dirt spots. You will need to use other characters at times in free play, but it is fairly rare. All of that comes down to them making Batman and Robins different suits much more diverse and useful. This is NOT a bad thing, but it does mean that you often times will use Batman's space suit, instead of Superman, or Robin's tech suit, instead of Cyborg. I could list off so many examples, but it would be too much to get into. I think it would have been much better to ditch the suit concept and, instead, given them a set of diverse powers in their base form and have them rely on others for things they cannot do. Batman has a demolition suit, when his Batarangs could have just been explosive on metallic bricks. B-button could scan when pressed and cloak when held, instead of having the sensor suit. Everything else feels rather frivolous. Batman doesn't need a diving suit or a jetpack equipped space suit; just use Superman more AND PUT AQUAMAN IN THE MAIN STORY. Let characters use abilities contextually, like electricity or hacking, rather than needing to switch to a new suit for them. Anyway, that rant is over. It just feels like these games are more cumbersome than they really need to be. I mentioned Green Lantern in the last paragraph as one of the most used characters. This IS rather fitting, considering over half the game is dedicated to the Lantern Planets and their respective corps. This is where things took a negative turn, in my opinion. While the Lantern home worlds are very interesting, it felt like a way to fill time, rather than trying to expand on the universe. The game is called Beyond Gotham, so I would've like to see more from every other heroes home turf. This could include one or more Lantern home worlds, as they are an important part of Green Lantern's lore. Instead we get one of the best few introductory levels in any Lego game, followed by a few shrunken city levels and 6 Lantern home world levels. By the way, when I say shrunken, I don't mean they are small, I mean they are literally shrunken down in the story and you are playing in a tiny version of them. This happens a few times and the level design in them is, quite frankly poor. While I did enjoy the Lantern levels, there were just so many and they made up more than a 3rd of the main levels. You may be asking yourself why I said "over half the game" earlier; well, in addition to the 3 main hub worlds, there is a 4thub world that leads to SEVEN MORE HUB WORLDS BASED ON THE LENTERN PLANETS. While this did have some of the more interesting side content, these worlds are repetitive, homogenized landscapes that have such an aggressive curve that the camera has trouble keeping a good angle at times. But hey, the extra content is fairly fun and only took a few extra hours to get through, so I can't complain too much. It feels like they should have had a Lego Green Lantern game and used these ideas there. I feel that would have made more sense, and given us more content, but maybe this was the only way they could do things, or maybe it was just convenient. Either way, it brought the whole game down from being, possibly, the greatest Lego game of all time, to being my least favorite of the first 3 LBM games. It does feel so good to play, that it is still high in the overall list; but is feels bad, because it could've been so much more.