Lego Batman - Super Builder

I've been behind on my posting because that last one took so long. It was arduous, tedious, and made me hate games for a couple days. So, to get back on track I'm starting with some lighter fare. An aperitif, if you will, after a couple of days' fast. A Lego game. You know? For kids.
I have the Lego Star Wars game for Gameboy Advance and it had treated me well. So I wasn't entirely disappointed to see Lego Batman packaged with my XBox. I was just a little disappointed. Not that mindless hack-and-slash action doesn't appeal to me: on the contrary, every now and then it's just what I need. It's perfect on a handheld. But on a console, it's maybe just a little too mindless. Something about being curled up in a recliner under a blanket, eyes glazed over from having stared at the screen continuously for hours, thumb constantly slamming the A button until I notice a complex rhythm taking shape, that makes me feel like a waste of air (just like my 11th grade calculus teacher observed when he thought I was sleeping).

It seems like all kids games have inexplicably complicated interfaces. Playing this game--trying to start playing it, I should say--is bewildering sometimes. The various menus and load screens and disparate title cards and mission summaries are overwhelming and frustratingly un-intuitive and unnecessary. Worst of all it takes time and attention away from the best thing about these Lego games: their humor. The slapstick of the cut-scenes in particular is pitch perfect. Robin is the stooge, of course. And I don't think there's ever been a better-suited straight man than Batman. Whether the Boy Wonder is falling out of one his various Robin-sized vehicles, or struggling to crawl out of a hole, or tripping into crocodiles in the Gotham sewers, his Gracie Allen gaffs and Stan Laurel goofs are without exception met with Oliver Hardy furrowed brows and George Burns blank expressions from the Bat. It's so perfect one wonders why it has never been done before.

Image via Wikipedia

The achievement, Super Builder, is not a difficult one, but the majority of Lego Batman's achievements are completion and collectible achievements that, it didn't take me long to observe, are going to take for-flipping-ever. Maybe I'll revisit the game later for some of those. Probably not. The gameplay itself, as I mentioned above, is absurdly mindless at times. And when the occasional puzzles are not so immediately obvious, when you're trying to access a secret area, for instance, and to do so you'll have to traverse the entire level in one direction, get some power-up, and then back-track to the beginning again, all for a couple dozen extra studs (the primary collectible in the game; akin to Sonic's rings), you realize that the most rewarding moments this game will offer, aside from the comedy, is going to be the smashing and punching and Lego heads popping off. And the building. In a Lego universe it seems possible to de-construct nearly any object and reassemble it into something else entirely. Sort of like alchemy.

This is not taken advantage of nearly enough in this game. When it is, it turns out to be one of the same three or four objects you've built over and over again. Oh, and you don't do any of the actual building. You hold B while your character throws the pieces together. If I've ever seen any more obvious of a missed opportunity for an awesome mini-game, I can't recall it now. Seriously: as long as it's done well, building useful in-game objects out of the pieces of busted up trash cans and lamp posts and park benches and henchmen would add incredible depth to these games, not to mention make the puzzle-solving gameplay a hell of a lot more challenging.

Grind Update
As of this posting, I'm over 4,000 on my gamerscore but slowing. At this rate it may be months before I hit 10,000. That's as disappointing as Lego Batman. I need to pick up the pace.

• Lego Batman brings blocky justice to one million in UK (joystiq.com)
• Xbox 360 Elite Winter 2009 Lego Batman / Pure Bundle for $299 + FREE $50 Amazon Gift Card + Free Shipping! (lockergnome.com)
• LEGO. Stop Motion. Lightsabres. Important. (gizmodo.com.au)