LEGO Batman: The Videogame

While it might sound like licensing hell to an outsider (it's likely that it was the subject of more than a few tense meetings), the idea of combining two huge licenses into a single video game was not a stupid one. Appealing to fans of both Lego and Star Wars, a combination already proven by the Star Wars Lego kits available in toy stores, Lego Star Wars was a smash hit as a video game.

That the franchise went on to spawn a second Star Wars themed game and the recent Lego Indiana Jones would have surprised no industry commentators - this franchise prints money, while being universally recognized as not having cost much to develop (the game could be described as basic in all departments without raising many eyebrows).

So it should come as no surprise, then, that another spin off is in development. This time around, Warner Bros. Batman is getting the Lego treatment, after already having several Lego sets created in his name, and we got our grubby mitts on a preview build for the 360. With the game itself due on shelves across the nation (on nearly every platform) on October 8th, we were very keen to see what the game has on offer.

The key features for the back of the box are listed as:

• More than 21 playable characters


• Drop in, drop out multiplayer


• Co-operative play


• Puzzles that require you to use the unique abilities of each character to progress


• All-new, unlockable Villain Mode - exclusive levels for the villains to play through

Having a play of the preview build, which is unfortunately very limited as to the amount of content on offer, one thing that struck us straight away was the fact that the background / level graphics are not constructed from Legos. Instead, your lego characters interact with Lego boxes, vehicles and bad guys against a "realistic" backdrop - a marked contrast to the Star Wars titles, where almost everything was made from Lego.

The controls in Lego Batman, a game whose target audience is definitely trending towards the lower end of the age scale, are a little quirky in this current build. There are context-sensitive buttons, such as Y and B, which do different things depending on where your character is currently standing. For example, pressing Y is used to both get into vehicles and switch between your constant companion (even in single player, the AI will control a second character who is ever present). The net result of this combo is both that you cannot switch characters without your current character exiting the vehicle he's in and that sometimes you'll find yourself entering a vehicle when you were trying to switch characters and vice versa.

The level designs, while small, are pretty awkwardly laid out, with key information that is necessary to progress often hidden by the fixed camera thanks to a poor thought-out level layout. The puzzles that the player needs to resolve in order to progress are often needlessly complex and difficult - a surprising direction to take when the game is so clearly aimed at younger children.

Graphically the title is clearly suffering from a limited budget - the visuals on the 360 wouldn't appear at all out of place on a PS2 or PSP, something of a disappointment even on a title where graphics are never likely to be the focus.

Hopefully the provided build was a much earlier one than the proximity to release might otherwise lead you to expect - there's plenty of scope to improve on the title in almost every way from this current build.

Keep an eye out for our review closer to release - good or bad, we'll tell it like it is.

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