Playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight didn't scratch my Arkham itch, but open-world Gotham has never been so charming

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight sits in an odd place for me. I haven't played much of TT Games' Lego games in a while (to the point where I still associate the studio with wordless puppet-show mimicry), and yet the three-hour preview I was given of the upcoming DC adventure game still felt very familiar. Not because of its lineage as a Lego game, but instead its clear ambitions to channel Rocksteady's Arkham series, of which I consider myself a full-fledged expert. As in an "every Riddler trophy in every game" expert. Yeah, I'm that freak.

That puts me in a tricky position. On the one hand, I know that we're probably not getting any more Arkham games any time soon, so Legacy of the Dark Knight is the best I'm going to get. But on the other hand, this is a game that's at its best when it's not trying to mimic the superhero series that defined the 2010s.

Hold on, or Lego

Stop me if this sounds familiar. There's a counter-focused melee combat system where you paradoxically charge up takedowns, an open-world Gotham where you can hookshot and glide around blocky skyscrapers, a detective mode to highlight objects, and even a selection of Batmobiles to tear about the streets in, picking up side quests and Riddler puzzles while occasionally taking a break to disassemble some purse snatchers.

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Jimmy Sedota, assistant design director for TT Games, assures me in an interview that I'm not misreading the situation. "That original Arkham Asylum game, it made you feel like Batman [...] So we absolutely looked at that as a source of inspiration, and we built that from the ground up at TT for what we thought was the best combat experience for Lego Batman."

TT Games even considered the series' VR game and what it might have to offer. "Not a lot to pull from that," Sedota adds quickly, wisely preempting my obvious follow-up. There's a throwaway mention of looking at other Batman games, but Sedota offers no specifics. The message is clear: here, the Arkham games rule supreme.

It's da freakin' bat!

Now similarities are not a bad thing, especially with Arkham Knight being over ten years old – we're well overdue for a true successor. But Arkham Asylum and City are some of the greatest superhero games of all time, and if you're going to invite comparisons, then you'll need to be worthy of them. Trouble is that Lego Batman's attempt to recreate some of these systems feels a bit stiff and clunky, which is perhaps inevitable considering it's all modelled on plastic toys with limited articulation and geometric shapes.

See, the Arkham series had a mastery of flow in all forms, which isn't quite present here. Bats doesn't so much acrobatically pounce at villains as slide over and clock somebody, the animations not always threading together. Outside of combat, traversal felt sticky, as the grapnel gun seems inclined to target every ledge except the one you're actually aiming for. I spent nearly five minutes fighting the controls while trying to ascend one building, and eventually just gave up and went to do something else. And that's to say nothing of the stealth, which is so rudimentary that there isn't even a crouch button – you just run up behind burly mooks and press a button to end them.

But fair's fair, the Arkhamizing of the Lego formula is not without its upsides. The Batmobile drives better than it ever did in Arkham Knight, and this time it doesn't overstay its welcome. The puzzles in the main story were child-friendly (i.e., could be solved by frogspawn), but some of the optional brain-teasers in the open world required at least a moment's mulling over.

The new direction has also resulted in some tweaks that prioritize depth over width. Now the traditional Lego cast of dozens has been boiled down to seven playable characters – Batman, Robin, Catwoman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Talia al Ghul and Commissioner Gordon for some reason. Each one has a couple of unique abilities – Catwoman can whip things and send cats through air vents, for example – and is also given a small, unique skill tree to work through.

"Batman doesn't do it alone," explains Sedota. "We wanted to focus on not only Batman, but the Bat family. And so we wanted to make sure that when we looked at every character, we wanted them to be the best representation, a true representation of who that character is, and we wanted that to come through in their gameplay and in their mechanics."

A comic occurrence

But while I'm not sure Lego Batman is very good at being an Arkham game, it's still perfectly good at being a Lego game – God knows TT has no shortage of practice there. The levels I'm shown are colourful and imaginative, blending recognizable DC iconography with affectionate absurdity. There's an emphasis on interactivity with everything around you, and twenty years after Lego Star Wars, there's still a simple pleasure in scooping up studs and collectibles, watching a growing collection of costumes and cars materialize back in the Batcave.

And of course, it's as reliably funny as every Lego game before it. One gag that kept catching me off guard was the citizens of Gotham seeming to genuinely perceive Batman as a large bat, even when they should be able to clearly see that he's a man in a costume from three feet away ("Where'd a giant bat learn to dance?!").

And the nyuks don't end there. Combat and stealth takedowns are usually moments for ridiculous animations (such as taking somebody out with a frying pan), Matt Berry as Bane is an inspired moment of casting, and there's a wide plethora of deep cuts from comics, games, movies and TV alike. Yes, Robin karate-juggles underpants, and yes, it's just as powerfully unnecessary as it was when Chris O'Donnell did it in 1995.

And ultimately that may be enough. Lego games have always been a testament to the power of pure charisma, and so far this one is no different, using comedy and context to elevate itself into more than the sum of its parts. I'm not sure that Legacy of the Dark Knight is going to be a major hit with older gamers, despite some familiar mechanics and the inclusion of a higher difficulty mode, but if you loved the Skywalker Saga and everything that came before, there's still smiles to be had on the smokey Gotham streets – no Joker gas required.

For more caped crusading, check out our list of the best superhero games!