LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham DLC — ★★★★
Short and sweet.
To compare with the base game, check out my review of LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham here.
Here’s the short summary in case the three people from my social circle who are going to read this don’t want to read the individual DLC reviews: buying the season pass completely made up for the bulk of the base game being annoying, repetitive, cumbersome tasks. Seriously, the DLC for this game revitalizes and properly defines what LEGO games should be like, and reminded me of the fun I had playing LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean.
Dark Knight pack
Individual rating: ★★★★½
The first DLC is based on the chase sequence from 2008's The Dark Knight and it immediately feels very direct with the objectives. There isn’t this feeling of having to do thirty little things to get the first of three objectives done to complete the level — it moves at a fast pace. Right off the bat (ha. ha.), the DLC gets you in the feels by letting you play as the late Heath Ledger’s Joker, and it is as cinematic as the film version could possibly be in LEGO form. We then get taken to a more original “story” that is equally paced and just falls in line with being fun. However, “Alfred” narrating the whole thing falls just short of irritating.
Man of Steel pack
Individual rating: ★★★★
Following the opening (chronological) scene of 2013's Man of Steel, this piece of DLC goes the extra mile to make a very serious moment in the film extremely comedic, both in the gameplay itself and dialogue. We follow Jor-El as he tries to get back to his wife to send Kal to Earth with The Codex and end up fighting Zod and two of his lead goons, including Fiora — this is where the only gripe comes for this DLC. For whatever reason, despite all the Kryptonians still being on Krypton and thus not having their superhuman strength, Jor-El is clearly weaker than Fiora and Zod, as his weapon (why does he even need that to fight them?) needs several shots to even take out of one of their hearts. Despite that, however, the DLC continues the trend of “short and sweet” with no extra baggage.
75th Anniversary pack
Individual rating: ★★★★★
The “longest” piece of DLC thus far comes in the form of Joker and Harley Quinn crashing Batman’s 75th anniversary party and redecorating it in their own honor — yep, that’s literally all you do, and you know what? It’s great.
Arrow pack
Individual rating: ★★★★★
Stephen Amell, check. Arrow soundtrack, check. Using a bow-and-arrow with Arrow’s Green Arrow skin and finding out it also has explosive arrows, check. For whatever reason, it feels absolutely empowering (as much as possible within the LEGO videogame world, anyway) to use a mini Amell Oliver Queen/Arrow to line up targets with his bow and take them down simultaneously. The achievements for this pack are light and tasteful, as was the case with the previous three packs, but make more sense in current geek culture.
Bizarro pack
Individual rating: ★★★★½
While this DLC pack makes you replay every objective in order to gain access to all the minikit areas even in freeplay, it is short and silly enough to make up for it. It also is one of only two DLC packs (the other being The Squad pack) to provide an achievement that needs to be completed on a different hub (Moonbase).
The Squad pack
Individual rating: ★★★
Alas, Traveller’s Tales decided to round off their DLC run for LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham with an original adventure based solely off characters, and as was with the case with the base game, it just wasn’t fun. While The Squad pack does add more puzzling (aka “more to do”) challenges to unlock minikits, it once again felt like a chore to complete the level as opposed to being immersed in the story and having fun at its childishness. Instead, we get the rare minkit detector annoyance where if you don’t scope out every inch of an area before moving onto the next, you won’t get to go back to recover that minikit you found out you passed without restarting the entire level. However, there is still some sense of accomplishment after completing this final DLC pack, even if it involved having to visit Oa (ugh) one last time to get an achievement.
Overall, the season pass for LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham is worth the $15 price tag, especially if you’ve allowed your brain to turn to goop from completing all the Lantern hub planets in the base game. Aside from The Squad pack, the downloadable content is short and sweet, and embodies the basic fun element of LEGO games better than the full $50 game they were built to support. While the Rainbow Batman pack and Heroines and Villainesses pack provide characters that are solely for use by personal choice, they are at least free versus the Batman Beyond pack serving the same purpose and carrying a $1.99 price tag. If for whatever reason you opt to complete the LEGO Batman trilogy, as I so fatefully did, grab it on sale and make it worth your buck by picking up the season pass.
