Lego Batman

What drives a man to dress up as a bat and fight crime? You won’t find the answer to that psychological riddle in Lego Batman, but you will find the Riddler, Joker, Catwoman, and a rogue’s gallery of other classic Bat-villains in breakable toy form. As such, the tone is more pratfalls than pathos — imagine The Dark Knight if it starred a semi-mute Lego Adam West.

Lego Batman doesn’t deviate from the formula established in previous Lego adventures. To capture their archvillains who’ve escaped from Arkham Asylum, you guide Batman and Robin through three episodes, each containing five sub-missions. Break the Lego-constructed environment to collect Lego studs and bricks, and unlock a cornucopia of extra characters, power-ups, and bonus levels. The twist is that after you’ve completed an episode as the Caped Crusaders, you can then play the flip side of the story from the villains’ perspective. That’s a whopping 30 missions — not counting unlockable levels and freeplay mode, in which you can play any level with any two unlocked characters.

While Lego Batman is loaded with goofy charm and humor, its original storyline is paper-thin. Without classic scenes to parody, the game lacks some of the spark that made Lego Star Wars and, to a lesser extent, Lego Indiana Jones so enjoyable. We found a couple of Bat-bugs, too: the annoying finickiness of your Batarang’s targeting system and a missed event trigger before a level-ending boss battle. (It triggered correctly when we replayed the level.) The inability to play co-op over Xbox Live is a massive disappointment as well.

Are any of those complaints enough to warn off fans of Batman and Robin (or Lego fiends)? Not quite — but we would’ve liked the duo to be a little more dynamic.