Hello everyone. I recently platinummed LEGO Batman 2 on PS VITA and would like to talk about it.
Unlike the PS3 version, the VITA version of the game is a port of the DS/3DS/iOS version of the game. So instead of an open world, Lego Batman 2 VITA is more like LEGO Batman 1 PS2 as this linear set of levels. That does mean it's a lot easier and more straightforward to platinum this game as you only have to complete the levels, find the collectibles in said levels and do some mini challenges on the side.
The game has roughly 3 kinds of trophies, Mandatory Story Trophies, The Collectibles, The Justice League Arena and the Miscellaneous ones.
The first are the standard "mandatory story trophies" you get for completing levels and the game normally. Only 65.7% of players completed the first level. Dropping down to 41.7% that beat all the main levels. Which seems relatively high so I guess nearly 1 in 2 VITA players that picked this up liked it enough to finish it.
Oh and only 6.3% of players got the platinum.
The second group of trophies are for getting all the collectibles in all the levels. In each of the 14 levels, there is 1 red brick (which unlocks cheats and additional abilities), 1 Sound Bite Token (which unlocks an audio clip of certain characters talking) and 5 minikits (which unlock more characters for use in Free Play).
Like Lego Batman 1, you have to play through levels once on Story Mode which unlocks Free Play mode. Free Play Mode allows you to replay that level but with every character you have unlocked so far in order to find all the collectibles as different characters have different abilities to solve certain puzzles and challenges. For example, in the early levels you may come across gold bricks that need to be melted to get collectibles. But you cannot do so in Story Mode as neither Batman nor Robin have any Heat Vision ability. But later on, once you unlock Superman, you can replay the level in Free Play and use Supes to melt them.
For the most part, this isn't too bad. Most of the collectibles are pretty easy to find. There are some that are pretty hidden but you can find if you scour levels more thoroughly. There were a handful I recall that were so well hidden that even when I knew where they were, I was confused on how exactly to get them at first.
Fortunately, the game does help you a bit with this. There are Red Bricks that once you find and unlock them, highlight where other Red Bricks and Minikits are once you're positioned close to them. And the game lets you know how many you've found so far in a level. There are also hints to remind you which character you can use. There isn't a Red Brick for Sound Bites for some reason. I will say it is technically a downgrade from Lego Batman 1 PS2 since in that game, the upgrade for finding collectibles actually had arrows pointing you to them from the start of the level making it more convenient. One rather odd feature here is that you technically do not need to purchase all of the unlockables you find here. Just find the collectibles. So you can technically get the trophies without actually purchasing any of the Red Brick or Sound Bite unlockables. In addition, you don't need to complete the level to save the collectibles. You can just find the collectible and quit the level which is really convenient.
There is one potentially bugged/RNG trophy/collectible. “Starter Pack - Unlock all of the Ability Packs for the character customizer”. So the way it works is that certain characters you purchase come with an ability pack for you to use with your custom character. You don’t know which characters come with ability packs and it appears to “randomize” it based on a new save file. So the recommended approach here to purchase every character which guarantees you get the ability packs.
Sidenote, but on the VITA version, you can use the NEAR app to gift and receive gifts in the form of unlockables to and from other players. In theory, you could use this to skip getting all the collectibles manually but I could not find anyone playing LEGO Batman 2 VITA and using NEAR at the same time anywhere on the planet to do this (well, you could if NEAR wasn’t discontinued years ago).
Anyway, These collectibles are mostly fun to find. But I will say I felt Lego Batman 1 PS2 made these more fun as there were more that involved more novel puzzles or minigames or combining other characters abilities. For example, I remember there were some cool sections where you had to use Mr. Freeze to Freeze some water in specific places so Batman could walk on top of it to place a bomb. Or Riddler being able to mind control some NPCs, allowing you to control that character and do tasks. In contrast, Lego Batman 2 VITA mostly sticks with "go to thing and hold O for the character to do their thing automatically". Like, there are Green objects that Green Lantern can control and shapeshift but you can't manually carry or use these creations. The game does it for you. So instead making a 100 ton weight and manually dropping it on a weak floor to open it or manually holding a feather duster and using it to tickle a robot, the game kinda does it for you. Same for other characters. For Flash, instead of using his speed to solve puzzles where you run past cameras or lasers before they see you or can respond, you just run on these random treadmills that unlocks the thing.
Another thing I noticed when comparing these 2 games is how spread out the abilities were. You'd think that since Lego Batman 2 brings most of the Justice League along, you'd have more characters that share abilities so you can bring different characters to solve puzzles. But that doesn't appear to be the case. Lex is the only character with a Deconstructor and a good chunk of the collectibles require you to have someone point the Deconstructor at them for a few seconds. Flash is the only character that has super speed (even though Superman and Wonder Woman are right there). Aquaman is the only character that can shoot water to clean away goop. Green Lantern is the only character that can manipulate Green objects. Electric Suit Batman is the only character that can deal with electricity. And since the game repeats a lot of these kinds of puzzles, you end up bringing a lot of these same characters to every level. Some abilities are repeated. There are quite a few characters that can grapple, have super strength, fly, have X-Ray vision, can hack or are acrobatics. So the puzzles that involve them can involve other characters.
In Lego Batman 1 PS2, once you selected your character from the Free Play menu, the game would give you a random party you couldn't later change but make sure everyone it selected would have all the abilities you'd need. Leading to some interesting combinations as you'd have lesser known characters with abilities you didn't know they had at first. Lego Batman 2 VITA doesn't do that. You can switch characters from your active party by using a menu but they don't "save" as you traverse areas. But the game doesn't seem to actively prioritize characters whose abilities would be useful. Leading to situations where the game gives you random Mr. Freeze goon instead of Flash or Power Suit Batman as a party member. It isn't a huge hassle to then go into a menu and swap characters but it is a bit annoying. Especially when Lego Batman 1 didn't have this issue.
The third set of trophies are for the "Justice League Mode". This is a singleplayer and solo only set of challenge missions. There are around 5 levels. In each level there are 8 waves where you must defeat all the enemies or complete the challenge. And after each wave, you swap to a different character. You get a medal based on how many times you died when completing a level. With a Gold Medal if you make it through with 4 deaths or less. To get the trophy, you need to complete all of these challenge levels with Gold Medals.
When I started doing these, I'd figured they'd be easy. After all. These are Lego Games. But no. These were actually quite challenging and require you to actually learn some of the intricacies of the combat system and how some of the characters operate. You can't even use the Red Brick cheats here.
Most characters can't heal health automatically so damage taken can persist for a while and you typically only have 4 health points. You don't have many defensive options so stray bullets and punches can end up catching up to you. These levels often throw multiple enemies at you, some of which you can't grab or instantly take out so it is possible to get surrounded. The later levels often throw stage hazards at you. Such as spinning lasers which can either deal lots of damage or outright kill you while you're fighting enemies.
So yeah, it was kinda hard. Some of the challenges even took me multiple attempts. But surprisingly, this is some of the most fun I had in this game or in a Lego game period. I had scenarios where as Batman, I had to aim my attacks when surrounded so I punch alternating enemies to lock them in a hitstun and take them all out safely. I had scenarios as Flash where I had multiple enemies firing guns and explosives at me and I had to move around quickly to both dodge them and let other enemies get hit in the crossfire. Or hit an enemy into another enemy so they get stunned, allowing me to grab and throw them into other enemies to stun them and repeat the cycle. There are even boss fights. Such as using Stealth Suit Batman to find invisible Zzazz while his invincible instakill martial arts bodyguards were protecting him. Or using Cyborg to quickly time and shoot lasers at helicopters targeting you. Or the final bossfight against Brainiac requiring you to alternate between Power Suit Batman and Superman.
These challenges are made much more intense by the challenge to get all Gold Medals. But they also seem relatively fair and balanced for the character you are assigned. For example, all of Wonder Woman's challenges throw her against flying enemies with guns. These would be painful to fight with any other character since you'd take damage trying to hit them with melee or ranged attacks. But Wonder Woman can safely deflect bullets when aiming her ranged attack at the cost of losing her aim. So the challenge becomes timing your shots to bring down these enemies without eating the damage. Flash's challenges often put him against enemies with explosives since he can move fast enough to dodge them. Superman has challenges where there is Kryptonite on certain or most of an area that can move around. So the challenge becomes one of positioning to be "safe" when approaching enemies as then Supes is invulnerable and attacking enemies in positions where Supes is safe even when weakened by Kryptonite. Green Lantern typically has longer fights involving more ranged enemies and lasers. But he has slowly regenerating health allowing him to tank hits and still make progress quickly if the player plays well.
Honestly, I kinda wish there were more of these and ones that gave you multiple characters and asked you to swap between them on the fly to really mix and match the scenarios. How about one where you need to combine Flash and Green Arrow to zoom to a place, switch and fire arrows and switch back all while dodging obstacles?
The fourth and final set of trophies are for the miscellaneous challenges. These are pretty minor stuff like glide for a few seconds as Batman, defeat Batman as Bane, defeat an enemy with Commissioner Gordon’s shotgun etc. not much a challenge here.
So yeah, Lego Batman 2 VITA is a pretty fun and easy game to Platinum. All of the trophies present feel reasonable and in-line for a game like this. There’s no obnoxious stuff like “do x thing with all the different characters in a way that’s really tedious” or “here’s a missable thing you can only do once per playthrough”. Not even a VITA specific “do this thing with the touch screen in a way that’s really annoying and if you don’t, you’ll miss the trophy” (looking at you Jak 1).
I was expecting the game to ask the player to actually purchase every unlockable. It makes sense as a way to add more playtime but wouldn’t feel too crazy given you could stack the x2, x4, x6, x8 and x10 stud multipliers. But no. In theory, you could get the platinum without purchasing any Red Bricks, Sound Bites and only a handful of the characters. I mean, I’m not complaining.
As for the game itself, I would describe it as like “a budget DLC expansion/ level pack for Lego Batman 1 PS2”. Because aside from the challenge mode, this is a similar albeit lesser version of the original. There’s fewer levels, both regular, bonus and secret. There’s certainly nothing like how Lego Batman 1 had the second campaign where you play every level from the villain’s perspective. The levels that are here aren’t as varied or large.
Of course, the biggest issue here is that this isn’t a port of the PS3 version of Lego Batman 2 but rather the DS/3DS/iOS version of the game. It’s a disappointing because while this version is a step up for the DS/3DS/iOS versions (I played a bit of the DS version back in the day), it’s below what the VITA is capable of. The VITA has open world games like The Amazing Spider Man 1, Assassin’s Creed 3 Liberation, Borderlands 2 and Gravity Rush. An open world Lego game would have been a good fit for the platform as well as being feasible given the hardware. So instead of a somewhat flawed but still ambitious port that’s the “worst” among the console versions, us VITA players got the best version of a below average game for weaker handhelds. I'm reminded of that one episode from the Simpsons where Bart Simpson gets demoted to the 3rd grade and instantly does well because he knows everything there. With the ending of the episode being that it was better for Bart to be a C- 4th grader than an A+ 3rd grader.
Still, if you like these classic Lego games, the VITA version isn’t a bad game among the lineup, albeit a bit lacking.
Moving on, one of the biggest innovations Lego Batman 2 brought upon its release was a fully voiced story where the characters would talk to each other in cutscenes. Prior to this, the Lego games relied more on pantomimes and visual gags in their cutscenes.
Lego Batman 2's cutscenes and story is certainly quite entertaining. I was chucking and smiling at a lot of the gags and jokes. Standouts being most of Vicki Vale's segments (oh, and the Arkham City reference), Superman hearing what the score was for a baseball game far away. And when Lex supposedly kills Batman, Joker is upset at who he will "play with now". Lex says that Robin will take up the mantle. I wasn't overly fond of Batman's whole arc where he's jealous of Superman and focussed on being grumpy but I suppose it does give him an arc and is an acceptable translation of Batman's paranoia in the comics. I remember finding the recent Lego Batman movie a bit too cheesy and "egotistical" for my tastes so Lego Batman 2 does a much better job keeping the characters more "restrained". But yeah, it's a huge praise to say I would be down for movies in this style (and the fact that there are now movies in this style that many people enjoy is a testament to that).
I do feel like a boomer when I say I do miss the style of the older Lego games. Since characters couldn't talk, there were more creative visual gaps to substitute for the dialogue. I remember in Lego Star Wars, since Vader couldn't say "I am your Father Luke", he pulled out a family picture of Anakin, Padme and baby Luke and Leia.
In Lego Batman 1, I feel the visual gags in some places, made them funnier than their dialogue counterparts. Stuff like Robin miming out wanting to have Ice Cream and Batman frowning at him felt funnier than Robin audibly asking for Ice Cream and Batman saying no. It also allowed characters to be less "human" and still fit the vibe. Like Catwoman acting like a literal cat and refusing to get in her cage so Batman traps her with a bowl of milk feels funnier without dialogue.
But seeing as it would be pretty hard to communicate Lego Batman 2's story and gags without audio and the fact that the voice acting is quite entertaining, I can't really complain here.
Actually, I do have a nitpick. Since the VITA version is different from the PS3 version, some of the cutscenes have suits you weren't wearing in the VITA levels.
So yeah, that's Lego Batman 2 VITA. A bit worse follow up to Lego Batman 1 PS2 made disapointing by the fact it's not a port of the PS3 version. The cutscenes, humour and charm is still intact. And it's a fun game to platinum.
Thank you all for reading. See you in 2 years when I platinum PS4 games like Saints Row 4.
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