‘Lego Batman: Legacy Of The Dark Knight’ review: superhero-sized block-buster

Crouched atop a blinking radio tower piercing the black clouds over his sordid city, the Dark Knight gazes out across Gotham. Beneath him, the neon metropolis crawls with thieves, brutes and villains hellbent on atrocity. There are deadly plots being hatched in its creepy zoos and fairgrounds, toxins under development in its crumbling chemical plants, killer fauna being nurtured in its abandoned botanical gardens. He lowers his head, heavy with torment. For all his billions, he craves so much he can’t buy. Revenge for the senseless death of his parents. Peace from the savage concrete jungle, the turbulent mind. Maybe some knees.

It’s for just such cinematic melodrama that Lego Batman:Legacy Of The Dark Knight strives. Yes, the fourth instalment of Lego’s caped crusader strain adheres to its tried-and-tested formula: movie and pop culture pastiche in polycarbon form, plastic pratfalling and wisecracking aplenty. But developers Traveller’s Tales have been expanding their franchise offerings into ever-richer worlds boasting depth and content far beyond their studded facades – and Legacy is arguably their most ambitious title to date. In its own cup-holder-handed little way, it aspires to a toytown Grand Theft Auto or, more pertinently, a polyethylene Arkham Trilogy.

Developers have described the game as a love letter to the Batman universe, and they don’t sell the IP short. Disconnecting our perma-growling hero from the Justice League colleagues that bloated previous Lego Batman entries to over 100 playable characters – often indistinguishable bar the tights – Legacy plays out as a full and faithful potted biography of the caped one thus far.

The prologue (one of gaming’s more compelling and narrative-driven intro levels) follows the young Bruce Wayne from an ultra-moneyed childhood idyll through his orphaning at the hands of one of mobster Carmine Falcone’s faceless goons and his extensive mountain training in the hope of joining the mysterious Ra’s Al Ghul’s League Of Shadows.

Eventually, he’s released onto Gotham’s series of swiftly accessible open-world islands in a build-your-own Batmobile – with little more than a grappling hook, upgradable Batmarangs and Batclaw. The smooth and straight-forward (at times, dare we say it, button-mashingly simple) Arkham-style combat mechanics serve to protect him against the marauding gangs of mimes, clowns and flowerpot men. In the subsequent six chapters, you’ll play out concise homages to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, Batman Returns, Batman & Robin and, at the game’s highpoint, take on Heath Ledger’s Joker in a hi-octane lorry chase.

Each section also introduces a new playable sidekick with unique powers and gadgets. A young Commissioner Gordon helps bring down The Penguin with a gum gun. A whip-toting Catwoman deploys remote controlled felines to help scupper The Joker’s plan to poison an entire carnival parade. The tech-savvy Batgirl hacks her way through Mr Freeze’s thrilling fire-and-ice chapter using drones as makeshift grapple points. And as the Bat-family builds, it also ages through the eras. Batman himself grows noticeably greyer, while Robin, an eager young acrobat when we first acquire him during Two-Face’s attack on his circus act (a highly inventive platforming segment), matures into Nightwing for later chapters. The Batcave hub evolves too, from a cavern of rubble into a hi-tech HQ packed with upgrade benches, collectible Batmobiles and costumes from every era, right back to the ‘60s.

Though the cartoonish requirements of the format mean that you’ll find yourself building huge speaker stacks to literally rock your way through locked doors, rolling around funhouses and emerging from the formative Batcave covered in Lego bat poop, the game revels in the real. Gotham, that city of eternal brooding night, is manageably large, stunningly rendered and effortless to traverse, either by gliding and grappling across its rooftops or crashing through its streets in a destructive Batmobile rampage. It’s also – as is the Lego Batman way – absolutely stuffed with side content. Batmobile races, diamond heists, Witcher-like crime scene investigations – there’s something on virtually every corner.

What flaws there are are few, but frustrating. The stealth options are poorly thought-out – where it’s possible to sneak around a bunch of thugs, you’ll often miss out on side-puzzles for WayneTech upgrade crates or red brick modifiers. The gentle humour is too reverent to be laugh-out-loud. And there’s a baffling over-focus on collecting studs, the in-game currency. Large chunks of the minimal skill trees and the Gotham-wide collectibles are devoted to gathering these many-coloured trip hazards – and it’s addictively cathartic to just run around smashing everything up to get more of them. Yet you can’t buy anything useful with them at all, just feng shui the Batcave.

Leave them for the completionists, and focus on the many pleasures here. Driving the Batmobile Tumbler from The Dark Knight. Getting caught in a supervillain riot in the depths of Arkham itself. Matt Berry’s Bane. Or just crouching on the top of a radio tower above the chaos, and taking it all in. Because this is where Lego Batman really begins.

‘Lego Batman: Legacy Of The Dark Knight’ is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2