telltale - Vortainment

Hello boys and girls and welcome back to another edition of everyone’s favorite video game review, The Backlog…what? This isn’t your favorite review? Oh…well that’s embarrassing.nToday we’ll be taking a look at LEGO: Marvel Super Heroes, Telltale Games latest LEGO incarnation. I’ve been meaning to get around to writing this for a week or two now, and even now I can’t seem to write more than a bit and piece here and there. Once again, life and work get in the way of my enjoyment of video games, and thus sharing that enjoyment with both of my loyal readers.nAnyway, back on topic, as you might expect, this involves a boat load of Marvel characters, both heroes and villains. All told, there are roughly 150 playable characters in this game. Granted, there are some generic characters like Damage Control Worker, but there are more Marvel characters than I can even begin to name.nSo without further delay, let’s get to it…nnAs you would probably expect, this is a great looking game along the lines of LEGO City Undercover. There’s nothing quite like a high quality cartoon graphic game. Yes, games that look almost life like are terrific, but the hi-definition cartoon games, it’s like taking video games from when I was a kid and adding a great big extra bag of awesome.nThe audio is solid work here, but nothing to rave about in my opinion. Not a whole lot of voice work, but what is there gets the job done. Really all you can ask for or expect in a game like this.nThe Silver Surfer has been shot out of the air by Dr. Doom. Doom along with Loki and other villains from the Marvel Universe have joined forces once again in an effort to gain possession of powerful cosmic bricks from The Silver Surfer’s board and defeat the forces of good, take over the world and just plain become the rulers of the universe and all that good stuff.nNick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. obviously do not view this as a good idea, and Fury calls on all the heroes from the Marvel universe to help stop this super evil alliance. This leads to battles in many iconic locations such as Grand Central Station, the Baxter Building, Oscorp, the Raft, Stark Tower, Asgard and others.nPretty straight forward stuff here. A jump button, a couple of attacks(one you hold to aim), and a button to switch characters. Each character has their own unique attacks that fall in line with their comic book abilities. Each character also has a special ability, for instance, Ironman can power up a charged blast, while Hulk can transform back into Bruce Banner. Super sized characters like Hulk and Abomination can also hoist large objects and toss them as weapons.nFor the Wii U, I thought they could have made better use of the Gamepad like LEGO City Undercover did. But I can see why they didn’t go that route since LEGO Marvel was not a Wii U exlcusive like LCU was. While it would have been nice, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to develop something for the Gamepad when none of the other systems would have a second screen. This would have either made the Wii U edition worlds better than the others, or incredibly buggy and awkward.nStill though, how awesome would a LEGO City Undercover-like Gamepad feature have been like when using Ironman? Classic.nnThis is a pretty solid game. Lot of fun to play and an easy way to lose an hour or two at a time. The graphics are really good, the story is good and right out of a Marvel comic, and the game play is simple enough to pick up and play, but still manages to capture unique characteristics of individual heroes.nAs I said very solid game all around.nNot so much bad with this game as it would be ‘not exactly awesome’. The audio aspects could be better in some areas but are not bad by any stretch. Basically, saying anything in this game is bad would be just nit picking. At the same time though, the overall feel of the game just didn’t jump out to me as being being exceptional. It’s good, it’s very good, but something just holds it back from being great and unfortunately, I can’t quite put my finger on what that is.nAs I just stated in the prior section, this is a very good game, but there is an intangible or two that is keeping it the game from being great. Perhaps it is the lack of utilization of the Gamepad that I outlined in the game play section, and perhaps if the audio had been a little better overall.nYou’ll have a lot of fun with this game if you find yourself playing it, and it is well worth adding to your collection of choice if you are a fan of the LEGO series or of previous Marvel games. You won’t regret it, but I can’t say you’ll be blown away either.nLEGO Marvel Superheroes gets a three out of five: GOOD.nnAuthorsnnnn Life Itself Reviewn nn Planes, Trains, & Automobiles Review

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