It's been kind of a long time since we had a proper new Batman action game–more than a decade, in fact, since 2015's Arkham Knight was the most recent one. But that's going to change on May 22, when Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight hits digital storefronts. I had the chance recently to get about two hours of hands-on time with the newest Lego Batman epic, and it feels as much like a new Arkham game as it does a new Lego Batman game.
It didn't take long for the parallels to become obvious. My session began with a battle against Carmine Falcone's thugs at the Iceberg Lounge, and I felt immediately at home with the familiar control scheme--square to attack, triangle to counter, X to evade or jump over an enemy's head. As you play, you'll unlock gadgets and additional moves that will make each brawl more dynamic and fun, though the battles certainly aren't as difficult as they were in the Arkham games--Lego games are not generally intended to be challenging in that way, after all.
The feeling of familiarity didn't fade once I got out into the open world of Gotham City, gliding around and using Batman's grappler to zip all over the place with ease, or drifting around corners in a Lego version of Robert Pattinson's Batmobile. But it's not the aesthetic similarities between Rocksteady's games and this new Lego Batman that matter, since it's not as though there are a lot of different ways for Gotham City to look. What really matters is that Legacy of the Dark Knight sports the same sort of smooth gameplay that the Arkham games had. If you played any of the Arkham games, Legacy of the Dark Knight will fit you like a glove.
According to Jonathan Smith, head of production at longtime Lego developer TT Games, the Arkham games definitely had a major influence on the new Lego Batman experience.
"Of course we're influenced," Smith told me. "We set out to create a distinctive Lego combat system that suited Batman in co-op with gadgets telling the story we wanted to tell that had more depth and rewarded skill more than we'd ever done before. And when we look to design that, of course, we look at other games, and of course we draw upon and honor and appreciate the work of our friends and colleagues at Rocksteady, and other video games as well. But we then make our own choices to make that accessible for players of all ages and tailor it to some of the particularly unique aspects of the game that we're building here."
One of the unique aspects of the Lego games in general is that they typically don't have a fail state. That means losing a fight doesn't set you back or make you restart a sequence--your character just respawns and keeps going. But it's in this area where Legacy of the Dark Knight tries something new for a Lego game, by adding difficulty settings, with the highest setting actually letting you lose progress when you lose a fight. It's another injection of the Arkham-ness into this Lego Batman game.
There are three difficulty settings, with the bottom two making use of the traditional forgiving Lego stance on death. But at the highest setting, Dark Knight, Batman actually can die and you have to reload your game from the last checkpoint. But even this setting won't be too tough for most gamers, since the game is loaded with checkpoints, even in the middle of boss fights, so dying isn't too punishing. Even so, the shift was a big deal for the developers.
"Just the very principle that now there is a state in Lego games where if you get hit, you'll lose hearts, and if you lose lives, you'll get reset to the beginning of the mission or the challenge, is a new level above where we've ever been before," Smith said.
But there's no need to worry that TT Games might have made this Lego Batman a little too challenging, because there's always the Classic difficulty for those who just want it to be like the past Lego titles.
"Classic difficulty, you'll encounter fewer enemies, there's less variety, and they're coming with fewer weapons," Smith said. "You won't need to have the same level of tactical awareness as you do on the harder difficulty."
But even the toughest setting isn't intended to be punishing. Having spent about half my play session on the Dark Knight difficulty, I'd say the battles felt roughly on par with the standard difficulty of an Arkham game. So don't expect any sort of Elden Ring-level challenge here.
"We wanted to make Dark Knight mode genuinely challenging, but also still interesting and fun. We don't want players to ever sort of feel grounded down," Smith told me.
The result feels just about right. It's got a bit of challenge without ever feeling overwhelming, and the frequent checkpoints keep the frustration to a minimum. It's all the fun of being Batman without any of the anxiety.
We'll need to wait to play the full version of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which comes out May 22, to find out if it truly is a worthy spiritual successor to the Arkham trilogy. But after spending a couple hours with it, I've got high hopes that it actually could be the Batman game we've been waiting a decade for--or at least the closest thing a Lego game can deliver.
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It didn't take long for the parallels to become obvious. My session began with a battle against Carmine Falcone's thugs at the Iceberg Lounge, and I felt immediately at home with the familiar control scheme--square to attack, triangle to counter, X to evade or jump over an enemy's head. As you play, you'll unlock gadgets and additional moves that will make each brawl more dynamic and fun, though the battles certainly aren't as difficult as they were in the Arkham games--Lego games are not generally intended to be challenging in that way, after all.
The feeling of familiarity didn't fade once I got out into the open world of Gotham City, gliding around and using Batman's grappler to zip all over the place with ease, or drifting around corners in a Lego version of Robert Pattinson's Batmobile. But it's not the aesthetic similarities between Rocksteady's games and this new Lego Batman that matter, since it's not as though there are a lot of different ways for Gotham City to look. What really matters is that Legacy of the Dark Knight sports the same sort of smooth gameplay that the Arkham games had. If you played any of the Arkham games, Legacy of the Dark Knight will fit you like a glove.
According to Jonathan Smith, head of production at longtime Lego developer TT Games, the Arkham games definitely had a major influence on the new Lego Batman experience.
"Of course we're influenced," Smith told me. "We set out to create a distinctive Lego combat system that suited Batman in co-op with gadgets telling the story we wanted to tell that had more depth and rewarded skill more than we'd ever done before. And when we look to design that, of course, we look at other games, and of course we draw upon and honor and appreciate the work of our friends and colleagues at Rocksteady, and other video games as well. But we then make our own choices to make that accessible for players of all ages and tailor it to some of the particularly unique aspects of the game that we're building here."
Legacy of the Dark Knight is the first Lego game where you can lose
One of the unique aspects of the Lego games in general is that they typically don't have a fail state. That means losing a fight doesn't set you back or make you restart a sequence--your character just respawns and keeps going. But it's in this area where Legacy of the Dark Knight tries something new for a Lego game, by adding difficulty settings, with the highest setting actually letting you lose progress when you lose a fight. It's another injection of the Arkham-ness into this Lego Batman game.
There are three difficulty settings, with the bottom two making use of the traditional forgiving Lego stance on death. But at the highest setting, Dark Knight, Batman actually can die and you have to reload your game from the last checkpoint. But even this setting won't be too tough for most gamers, since the game is loaded with checkpoints, even in the middle of boss fights, so dying isn't too punishing. Even so, the shift was a big deal for the developers.
"Just the very principle that now there is a state in Lego games where if you get hit, you'll lose hearts, and if you lose lives, you'll get reset to the beginning of the mission or the challenge, is a new level above where we've ever been before," Smith said.
But there's no need to worry that TT Games might have made this Lego Batman a little too challenging, because there's always the Classic difficulty for those who just want it to be like the past Lego titles.
"Classic difficulty, you'll encounter fewer enemies, there's less variety, and they're coming with fewer weapons," Smith said. "You won't need to have the same level of tactical awareness as you do on the harder difficulty."
But even the toughest setting isn't intended to be punishing. Having spent about half my play session on the Dark Knight difficulty, I'd say the battles felt roughly on par with the standard difficulty of an Arkham game. So don't expect any sort of Elden Ring-level challenge here.
"We wanted to make Dark Knight mode genuinely challenging, but also still interesting and fun. We don't want players to ever sort of feel grounded down," Smith told me.
The result feels just about right. It's got a bit of challenge without ever feeling overwhelming, and the frequent checkpoints keep the frustration to a minimum. It's all the fun of being Batman without any of the anxiety.
We'll need to wait to play the full version of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which comes out May 22, to find out if it truly is a worthy spiritual successor to the Arkham trilogy. But after spending a couple hours with it, I've got high hopes that it actually could be the Batman game we've been waiting a decade for--or at least the closest thing a Lego game can deliver.
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