Operation M.A.Y.V.E.L Phase 1 (Maybe? Kinda?); Lego Marvel Superheroes 2: TT, we need to talk

I have a love-hate relationship with the Lego games. Two of my favorite games when growing up was Lego Star Wars Complete Saga, and Lego Batman 1, and motion sickness inducing camera aside, I do enjoy BIONICLE Heroes (though that's for another time). While simplistic, the games are still entertaining. However, things did change during the last generation of consoles. While it is a case by case situation, some of the changes made to the game since Lego Batman 2 turned me off of the games, and when I did try them again with Lego Dimensions, the flaws of the engine started to become really apparent to me. I got this game a few weeks ago as, encase it wasn't obvious, I've been on a marvel binge, and the game was heavily discounted. So I figured why not, and I'd even get the DLC because the two together was still cheaper than the normal retail price... See if you can guess where I'm going with this based on the title alone.

I'll start with the story. A villain known as the Beyonder has taken parts of worlds to create Battleworld and... wait, wrong story. A villain known as Kang the Conqueror (you have no idea how tempting it is to write it as Konqueror due to how many Kang puns are in this game), has parts of worlds to create Chronopolis. Sorry, I get the two confused. These locations include Ancient Egypt, Asgard during Ragnarok, Attilan, Hala (Kree planet), four versions of Manhattan, one of which is regular, one is from the 1920's, one's from the future and one has an weird thing for blimps, red octopusses, Red Skulls and Hydras (none of the for Manhattans have any hint of the Fantastic 4 or X-Men, what a coincidence), K'un Lun, Lemuria, Swamp-Thing's Swamp... wait, wrong company, Man-Thing's Swamp, Medieval England, Sakkar (that one planet that helped inspire Thor Ragnarok), the Old West, Wakanda and Xandar, Knowhere eventually being added in later. As a result of the temporal chaos Kang's doing, the Avengers set out to stop him and return the parts of Battleworld Chronopolis back to what they were. I have no major issues with the story. It's basic, but a lot of the Lego games have basic stories so it works within the context of the series, it's fine for what it is, and the character interactions are quite amusing at times. My issues come from the gameplay, and how the game was promoted.

This game is both surprisingly long, and short at the same time. Decently sized, looking at my Switch it's coming up as over 55 hours, but it doesn't feel that long. the 20 main story levels and the 10 Gwenpool missions (I'll come back to those) are extremely short, with a lot consisting of one room and then a boss fight. For the record, by room, I mean "one part of the level unhindered by transitions". The mission in Lumeria's second visit as an example is going from left to right through some small rooms before facing Atuma. Some of the areas are larger, especially earlier on, but the final story level and the Gwenpool missions are tiny. For the final level, you complete some puzzles in a very vertical room, do the first part of the Kang Battle, stuff around for a little bit in another room, then do the final part of the battle, which is just a quick time event. Granted, I complained about Dimensions' levels being too long, to the point where the game needed save points in the levels themselves, but this is an over-correction. A comparison I can give for these levels is that of Sonic Forces, where it feels like the level's just getting going before you go "Oh, that's it?". Two of the worst offenders for this are the levels in Asgard and Sakkar because they're just boss battles. Normally I'd have no issue with that, but when every level has bosses, sometimes multiple (the second level alone you fight The Presence, Atuma, The Shocker, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter and Doctor Octopus, before a mini thing in the overworld where you punch The Vulture and Green Goblin 2099. Unlike some people, I'm not saying "death to all boss battles in games", I think that's stupid too, but there needs to be some balance to it, the bosses have to be spread out, or at least feel like they're being spread out.

Combat has seen some changes, and while I respect the effort, the execution turns the combat from boring, to frustrating. Some of the enemies have gimmicks to them, such as vests that require spesific abilities to break them (which slows the pace down to a crawl while you swap to the character that can break the vest and stop to lock on to them), ranged attacks where you have to shoot them to stun them, shields you have to break before you can hurt them, to the most annoying one in the game, the sword users who can block attacks, and have a flip attack that they stay in for a long time, and you can't hurt them until they stop doing their daily gymnastics! Combine that with combination moves that, while flashy, are useless because it's faster just to keep punching and shooting the grunts, along with all the big fig characters like Hulk being frustrating to control in combat because everything's smaller then you, and you get the statement I said before. From boring to frustrating.

I'm not a fan of large hub worlds in games, especially those that use the open world map philosophy of design. It has its fans, and I have played games that, to me at least, do it perfectly, but there are also games that do it badly. This game is one of the ones that do it badly, There are hundreds of Gold bricks, hidden characters that need you to do missions for them, races, Gwenpool missions to unlock Pink bricks which activate extras (which again have many useless extras. Seriously, you give us a Helium mode but no Invincibility or Extra Hearts?) and "challenges" to do in Chronopolis, and none of them are fulfilling to complete. I'll start with the "challenges", things you do while exploring the map that get you vehicles. These include flying/ swimming through birds/ fish, jumping on ramps, finding cats, a stupid rap battle mini-game where you have to do two missions in Egypt to start it. Most of its mindless busy work for rewards that you'll never want to use. Most of the vehicles are awful to use and the ones that behave logically can be avoided BECAUSE YOU HAVE CHARACTERS THAT CAN FLY! Lego games have had issues with their vehicles for years, but these genuinely feel like the worst they've ever done, not to mention what counts as what vehicle class is open to interpretation. For example, some missions need you to use a car, but some cars aren't classified as cars, but rather vans or even planes. The vehicles themselves also behave differently when compared to other, same class vehicles (I swear Gwenpool's bike gets far more airtime then Black Widdow's does, and that police quad is so useless because it's so slow). What do you use these vehicles for aside from some races in the hub world? Nothing! No level needs them. They only exist for select races, and not for anything else. Some of the races are frustrating to no end as well, you can find the highlights on my attempts to get the Phantom Rider on my twitter account. First one is on me, the others though were from bad enemy placement and spawning, along with the mission glitching out to oblivion.

Oh yeah, the glitches! How many games are going to have these same problems TT? I've had exposure to a lot of glitches in this game, from characters being permanently stuck until I reset the level (causing Baby Groot to constantly burn to death), losing control of characters for no reason, the camera trying to go somewhere where it shouldn't have, Rocket once clipped into a puzzle in Nuvera York, the game's crashed twice on me, puzzles haven't loaded properly causing most of my issues with things like unlocking the Phantom Rider, I had Gwenpool mission 10 unlock before I'd finished the other nine missions, scripted events hadn't activated to allow me to finish missions, I think I saw faces outright dissapear on characters at some points, my progress meter's now stuck at 99.8 percent even though I've done everything there is to do in the base game, the atrocious loading screens that just make the puzzles not load in properly even more agrovating and, by far the worst glitch of all, comes back to that DLC I mentioned earlier. You remember how at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, the credits of the movie role as Baby Groot dances around the floor of the battle? Well, that's how "Awesome Mix Vol.2" starts, and should even have the music to boot. For me at least, it doesn't have the music, and I've spent hours trying to figure out how I can swap out of Baby Groot to literally any other member of the Guardians of the Galaxy so that I can finish the level. Nothing. Nothing I do lets me swap characters, including restarting the game and resetting the level, meaning that I am unable to progress any further into the level. Broken DLC at the first level. This is about as insulting to me as the corrupted save file in Dimensions keeping me from completing year 1.

I have no issue with the Lego games having DLC, even if it's unfortunately content taken out for the sake of being DLC. But the glitches have to stop TT. I'm sick of seeing them and all the other constant problems you have in these games. I'm sick of the collision issues, I'm sick of the useless, hard to control vehicles. I'm sick of the pointless overworld that exists just for the sake of hiding small puzzles. I'm sick of the useless races, dull sidequests, missing UI functions that make things like navigating your gigantic rosters far easier (things like limiting characters based on abilities, a favorites option, and more), DLC content breaking the game cause you're still using (at least it feels like it) an engine made for the PS2, Gamecube, and the original X-box! No amount of side quests, graphical upgrades based around the same model structure, and useless Selfie mode (No, I'm not kidding, that is something some of the characters have in this game! You couldn't fix the same damn glitches but you had the time for a Selfie mode?!). I had my problems going into the game, I wasn't a fan of a lot of the voices at the start, but the voice cast did eventually grow on me, but the glitches and the rushed feeling of the story, to the point where big highlighted characters that were shown off in promotional material are barely in the game. Planet Hulk costume for Hulk? Half a mission. Ego the living planet? A few cutscenes. Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Man 2099? One mission each, and both of them are missions where you have regular Spider-Man as well. Avengers like Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Falcon are relegated to side quests in the overworld, I think War Machine was a hidden collectible in a level. Giant Man you don't get until that level with Ego, before then he's just a cutscene joke. Avengers like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are no shows in the game because there are no Mutants and no members of the Fantastic Four in the game at all. But of course, we needed every single version of Spider-Man that we could, including that pig one! (Though I am glad that Spider-Gwen made it into the game). But all the glitches and constant design choices that never change, never improve, have genuinely soured my view on the Lego games so much that I'll probably never get another, which is a shame because I do think that the Switch, for me at least, is the perfect console for them. I'm just done with them now. Until they genuinely improve, I'm not getting another game from them again. See you on Sunday for the Toybox review.