‘LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2’ Hands-On Impressions: Come And Get Your Brick Love

The combat in LEGO games is often a simple “punch everything until it’s broken into pieces,” you have to build stuff in order to accomplish certain puzzles, and switching between characters can be crucial. Yet it’s the personality of what goes into each video game by Travellers Tales that keeps them going, and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 may be the most personality-laden game to date.

The original title did well when it came to introducing more of the recognizable characters in the series, but the sequel is looking to expand on that with a number of new favorites, like the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Gwen, and Black Panther.

I had a chance to check out a demo at PAX West revolving around Peter Quill and company as they battle against one of Kang the Conqueror’s larger beasts within the game, a gigantic robot with a penchant for firing enormous lasers and slamming its fists into the ground. The fight can look demanding at first, but as I made my way through the demo, I discovered the many LEGO elements in play and soon found myself saving the galaxy. Again.

The stage opened up with having to get off of Peter’s ship, but not before we broke apart a few objects to collect a few LEGO bits. As with previous games, if you collect enough within a stage, you’ll be able to obtain a gold brick for your trouble. So, yeah, it pays to break your stuff this time around.

Classic Lego Play, Stylized

After flipping a couple of switches and building a larger one to open a pod on the bottom of the ship, Star-Lord, Drax, Gamora, and Rocket Raccoon dropped down to the surface, where they came face to face with the large robot in question — which had a large glowing nucleus in its chest and gigantic arms ready to crush our heroes.

With all the hustle and bustle going on in the stage, it can be tough figuring out your next objective at first. But after taking a close look at objects on the ground (which can be built into larger LEGO objects) it didn’t take long to figure out our next move; in this case, building a space fighter like one in the original Guardians of the Galaxy to blast one of the giant robot’s hands and slow its attacks.

Solving puzzles also plays a big part in the game. For instance, after destroying the robot’s hand, it laid the hand down on the surface with a switch on top. I directed one of the characters to stand on the switch while Drax, in his usual destructive fashion, hopped on a jump pad that was revealed when the switch activated. He hopped up and took out one of the power generators on the robot’s shoulders, making it susceptible to an attack from Star-Lord to finish it off once and for all.

The game has a huge emphasis on teamwork just like previous LEGO games, but it pushes its presentation to a whole new level with polish not seen before. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 looks truly impressive, whether you’re scoping out the confines of Peter’s ship or watching as the aforementioned robot fries everything with its gigantic laser beam . The frame rate slows a little bit at times, but the game’s still a work in progress, so the final product should look pretty amazing once all is said and done.

A Great Marvel Universe To Explore

Also, I like the personality of the characters. Star-Lord is a personal favorite, as he can not only shoot lasers and throw gravity-sucking bombs at everything, but, by holding down the attack button, he can throw on his headphones and jam out to some music. Granted, this doesn’t do much good when it comes to attacking people, but it’s hilarious to watch. And all the characters have a certain something like this, if not the tunes to go along with it.

We still need to play more of the game to get a general idea of what’s offered here — I can’t wait to see what Spider-Gwen and Black Panther are like — but, thus far, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 does a good job of presenting an epic scope of action implemented well into a LEGO universe. Plus, it looks to be just as fun as other games in the series, so TT Games hasn’t forgotten where it comes from. It is a LEGO world, after all.

The final game should really be something when it arrives on November 14th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.