LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham — ★★

Content for the sake of content is cumbersome.

LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham does what any sequel naturally should: it goes beyond the realm (quite literally) of its predecessor. However, such a move is always a gamble as it is difficult to create the same immersion and balance of all genres without looking like a repeat; unfortunately, the third entry in the LEGO Batman videogame franchise goes too far and becomes bloated with incredibly repetitive tasks (known in-game as “quests”).

LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes was, at its core, a brick version of a Rocksteady Arkham game, what with using all of Gotham as a hub area for exploration to unearth gold and red bricks, and character and vehicle tokens. Beyond Gotham, however, decides to create several smaller hubs (the Batcave, the Watchtower, the Hall of Justice), 7 smaller, motion sickness-inducing planet hubs, and 1 smaller yet hub-within-a-hub (the Hall of Doom). While this was promising on paper in terms of being able to deliver several environments for diverse content, Telltale Games clearly bit off more than they could chew as 6 of the 7 Lantern hub planets have at least 3 quests that play out the same way on all 6 planets. This is on top of the fact that aerial races are still as difficult and annoying as ever, particularly on the 7th Lantern hub planet, Oa, where you can finally utilize vehicles for said races.

That all said, it’s not all bad. Sure, the story isn’t as riveting or twisting as its predecessor’s, and it is true that nearly the entire gameplay of the main story revolves around thwarting Braniac’s plans only to have him find another way over and over until he is finally stopped…okay, maybe it is pretty bad.

In fact, I actually scrolled back up and took away a star after writing that.

However, the very heavy nod to the 1966 Batman show and era should be applauded for emphasizing how fun the game can be and look, without taking itself too seriously.

Overall, Beyond Gotham is actually more of a travesty than the original LEGO Batman game. It is part of a franchise and genre designed to be fun and puzzling/challenging, but ends up being more irritating and frustrating, particularly when trying to find up from down on those Lantern planets.

Here’s to hoping the downloadable content (separate review coming at a later time) will fare better as Traveller’s Tales is running out of original tales to tell. Bad pun.

UPDATE: Here is the review of every piece of story downloadable content for LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.