Lego Marvel’s Avengers (SORT OF) Review

Chores, man. They are terrible. I don’t like them; I assume you don’t like them, either. Having to trudge through a task that you care little about isn’t fun for anyone. But we do them. As a child, I would do chores for cash to buy things; especially legos. I was given a sense of reward! All that hard work and it’s finally play time!

…But wait. Imagine being a child; you’ve just saved enough of your money to buy this incredible Lego set you’ve been yearning for. You spend so many hours, meticulously assembling something beautiful and imaginative. Just as you are about to dive into this world, your cousin that you don’t even really like comes into the room and says “Hey, your mom says you have to play with me. Let’s play it my way.”
Screw you, crappy cousin! You’re ruining my childhood fun! You’ve made this experience another chore!

That’s how I felt when I played. For the first time in a Lego game, I felt like I was doing just that… More chores.

I have an important disclaimer: I WILL NOT BE GIVING THIS GAME A SCORE. I did not finish. I couldn’t do it. Normally, when I get a new game, (and probably to my poor wife’s dismay,) I power through it as fast as I can. I want to see everything! This was different. Every Time I sat down to play I would walk away soon after, feeling disappointed. I’ve had the game in my hands for a number of weeks, and just now do I feel like I’ve made it through enough of the package to say something meaningful; and it’s not good.

Following up the absolutely stellar Marvel Lego Super heroes, this sequel returns to the world of supers for more stud collecting adventures. True to it’s name, Lego Marvel’s Avengers takes you through a journey of the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe in the satiric way that only Traveller’s Tales can pull off. Spanning from Iron Man 3 to the more recent Avengers: Age of Ultron, you’ll be flying through the streets of Manhattan as Iron Man (available in about 300 flavors), and swinging thunderous hammers as Thor.

Yes, Traveller’s tales has a long history of revisiting beloved cinematic franchises. Unfortunately for this one, they may have taken too much of a good thing and stretched it thin.
Granted, the game looks beautiful, but taking every movie and trying to mix them into one big effort does not pay off. Serious pacing issues and uninteresting objectives cause levels to drag. I was stricken with Boredom trying to relive these movies because the plot points are not interesting. Where Lego star wars takes the best action and throws you in the middle, Avengers tries to pretend moments of conversation and downtime are on the same level. It’s boring and just doesn\’t keep your interest.

Most likely the victim of an attempt at open world gameplay and a sense of freedom, the movies are also mixed in a way that doesn\’t make sense within the MCU timeline. Moments from specific movies are played out, followed by completely different scenes that occurred out of order. It felt like an attempt at originality that ended up being more like a blended mess of too many good things. There is a decent open world to explore, but it’s marred by repetitive side missions and and sluggish travel.

The game has a very large roster of playable characters to choose from. They’re all here… sort of. Traveller’s tales sings praises of the 200 Marvel universe characters you get to play with.
Now…I want to throw something on the table. I understand how contracts and licensing work. Other companies have rights to characters like X-Men and Spiderman. They can’t exist in this game. Unfortunately, that\’s a big part of what made the first game so special. The diversity was noticed and appreciated. That\’s now gone. Replacing comic favorite like Wolverine and Spidey with twenty variants of Iron Man feels like cheating. Playing as Pepper Potts in an Iron Man suit has charm, but if you\’re not a completionist, it offers little value. I did have fun with lesser known characters like Fin Fang Foom, but it was mostly so I could pretend I was playing a different game.

(Honestly, the most fun I had with this game.)

The biggest disappointment for me was the audio. I wish Traveller’s Tales never discovered voice overs. The best moments in the series so far have come from the voiceless characters acting out conversations in satire. That satire is still here for sure, but it comes alongside low-quality audio, ripped straight from the movies. It sounds terrible and damages the overall presentation. I’m sure kids all over will think it’s a cool thing to hear the same samples over and over, but they’re like that cousin. Go home already, cousin…

I’ve been really trying to give some reasons to dive into this game, and this is what I’ve come up with:
-You are obsessed with Lego games.
-You’re obsessed with Marvel films.
-You love being bored.

If you don’t fall into the above categories, hold off in hopes that the upcoming star wars game will fare better.