Confessions of a Backlogged Gamer, Week 20: Legos Don’t Bleed

I’ve delved into the Lego series of games before, with both installments of Lego Star Wars, so I guess it should have come as no surprise that Lego Batman, which I began upon completing inFamous, is actually a little screwed up.  Robin’s head gets cut off!  And it lands in Batman’s hands!  If they weren’t Legos, the ESRB would be on a damn crusade right about now!  But they are, so… you know, it’s cool.  I actually get a kick out of watching everything explode into its component bits, so beating the crap out of stuff is doubly entertaining.

Aside from being subtly disturbing, Lego Batman is everything the name suggests; it’s definitely Lego, and it’s definitely Batman.  This is more the Adam West Batman than, say, the Christian Bale Batman, but it’s Batman nonetheless.  You have fun toys and cool gadgets that generally materialize in the form of special suits, and you run around each stage thwacking baddies until you hit the boss at the end of the level.  Simple.  I understand that once you complete the Hero missions, there’s a set of Villain missions as well, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet; I’m moving along at a pretty good clip, though, so I should have some impressions on that side of things by next week.

I actually started playing Lego Batman because I just wanted something different from inFamous, which I finished directly beforehand.  Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoyed inFamous, but some of the later missions were incredibly frustrating to me, probably because the game isn’t really something I’d normally expect me to be playing, and I just wanted something mindless and easy by the time I was done.  Many of the latter levels broke free of the repetitiveness from which some of the ones in the beginning and middle tended to suffer, offering things such as surprisingly intricate platforming and quirky destructo-missions that often required increasing levels of patience and accuracy (so needless to say, I’m sure the neighbors got quite an earful when I played with the windows open).  The ending, however, was pretty much fuckawesome, or at least I thought so.  That’s aside from the last boss fight being pretty nasty; the internet as a whole may judge me for this, but I confess to having to bump the difficulty level from medium to easy for that one.  If you need me, I’ll be hiding my head in shame there in the corner.

I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time this week not at home; my sister’s graduation meant that there was lots of family time involved, and during some of this, I did end up toting my DS along for the downtime.  And what was in my DS?  I’ll give you a hint: starts with “P,” ends with addiction.  Can they hide crack in video games?  I’m pretty sure that’s the only way that Peggle could suck me in this much.  I’d just start with one map, and then two hours later, I totally forgot about my laundry and the movie I put on as background noise is over.  What the fuck happened?  DAMN YOU, UNICORN!  At this rate, I’ll be out of levels soon, but I suppose there is always the Peggle Nights content after I finish up with the main set.  I think I blame Elaine for this.

Current backlog total: 103

Now playing: Lego Batman (360); Peggle: Dual Shot (DS); Crimson Gem Saga (PSP)

New games added: none

Games completed: inFamous (PS3)