Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We go to sleep, and in the morning… there’s demos. Lots of demos. By which I mean, two. Firstly, there’s the 400Mb-and-a-few-bricks demo of the Lego Batman electronic videogametacular. Opinions are a little split internally over Lego Batman actually. Walker really likes it, liking its sheer size. I’m mildly liking it, mostly because it’s not as funny-for-grown-ups as Lego Star Wars. But maybe more on that in a verdict or something. Go download and make up your own mind. And here’s the launch trailer to explain this concept of Lego and Batchap to you…
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The Lego Batman game is nearly here: September 23rd for North America, and October 31st for the rest of the world. This means trailers: BatTrailers! This one has the vehicles in, the Batmobile and the Batcycle? Something like that. There are also magnetic boots. The word on the grapevine is that it’s better than Lego Indy. Somewhat.

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So last Tuesday I wandered down to London, city of black snot, horrible musicals and formerly of Kieron’s recently deceased beard, to see Lego Batman. Well, also to watch an early screening of The Dark Knight, but I can’t really jaff off about that here. Short answer – very much agree with Big-Face Kermode, which isn’t always the case.

I didn’t get much time at all with Lego Batman, nor did I get to interview Travellers’ Tales as hoped, but I did get to play as Mister Freeze (I feel oddly ashamed that I had to Google to check whether he was a Mister or a Doctor – or, as it happens, both. I used to know such things, damnit) and The Riddler.
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Now here’s something I managed to forget about completely until I was sitting in Phoenix Airport, lamenting my missed connecting flight. Capcom actually really quite like the PC. I spent a fair bit of time in the Capcom booth having my arse handed to me in Street Fighter IV by a team of people who apparently came to E3 already unstoppably good at the game, and I have to say – it’s absolutely superb, far far better than I thought it was going to be.
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More Lego Batman footage appears from E3. After the slight disappointment of Lego Indy (too similar to the Star Wars games, and missing the Force), it’s harder to know what to think about this one. Obviously hopes are high, and it’s not as if Lego Indy wasn’t lots of fun. But we want Lego Batman to be much more – the Lego game that makes us forget about the Star Wars games and get excited anew. Footage below – not a great deal that’s new, but the comic timing is lovely.

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We can’t resist a Lego Batman trailer! This one shows you Catwoman and Riddler jumping about on rooftops, getting up to mischief. And most of all, it shows Catwoman’s whip fighting.

Holy thanks to Gametrailers, Gametrailers.

So I’d already posted that trailer the other week. Hey, I’m getting old. To make up for it I took a listen to the recording I made of the producer talking at GDC. Annoyingly I couldn’t hear anything he said, only the hypnotic voice of the aging reporter who worked for Boy’s Life. Was there going to be a Man-Bat character? Possibly. What I could recall was there are going to be 18 heroes and 18 villains, which, given a quick scan of Batman’s past enemies, could include any number of freakish assailants. I’m going to bet Man-Bat is in there. I mean, Killer-Croc is already a given.

Beyond the jump: the trailer and a word on the way co-op works.
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I saw this game being played at GDC and it was completely charming. I love that you can play through the campaign as the cute little villains.

Quickly, to the BatTrailers!

Frankly, we know what we’re in for with Lego Indiana Jones – Lucasarts property, swinging with the whip, digging with the spade, shooting with the gun, and no damned Nazis. It’s a natural sequel to Lego Star Wars. Lego Batman, though – there’s a lot more to play with there. Bats’ supervillains offer a little more breadth than Star Wars’ guns’n'Force line-up, plus, not being based directly on a film series, it’s free to tell its own stories in its own gloriously unhinged environments. Brand new screens are beneath the cut.

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See in that cage over there? Those are our hearts. Yours too, probably. Traveller’s Tales have captured them, probably for nefarious purposes.

TT seem to somehow have time to make two games at once, when we know we’d be swimming around in the vast pools of money Warner just paid to acquire the company. £100 million. Blimey.

There’s a limit to how many times you can reel out the same idea before people start to get cynical. Fortunately, for the Lego series, there’s probably about another four hundred before they’re in trouble. What’s even better is that TT seem to have picked the two films anyone could have hoped to see recreated in Legoey gaming form: Indiana Jones and Batman.

So here’s what we know about each new game:

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