I tested Lego Batman — and it lives up to Dark Knight’s Arkham games legacy

I thought nothing would surprise me at this point. After months of mildly insecure hype over the scale of Crimson Desert, I knew to expect a map “four times the size of Skyrim” or whatever, and nowadays, even major undertakings can feel more additive than revelatory (see: Tears of the Kingdom’s Depths). But I underestimated how hard TT Games would go to make the most expansive Lego Batman game of all time — complete with a big ol’ map.

In late April, I played two hours of Legacy of the Dark Knight and got a taste of all the multitude of gameplay elements TT Games snapped together to do (vigilante) justice to every iteration of the DC Comics character. There’s clever platforming through scenes in Batman Forever. There are collectible-driven mazes and construct-a-way-out Lego puzzles inspired by The Batman. You can drive the Tumbler from Christopher Nolan’s trilogy while dressed as Frank Miller’s Batman. But most surprising, what made me exclaim like a dork, was a multi-island open-world Gotham City bursting with minifig crime. TT Games made an Arkham game — the gliding, sleuthing, and slap-happy combos — built entirely out of bricks.

Here’s a taste of Legacy of the Dark Knight gameplay

Throughout my two-hour preview, I was dropped into a handful of stages throughout the early game, when Batman is already in full hero mode. But as teased in animated cut scenes and snippets of gameplay footage I viewed on site, Legacy of the Dark Knight squeezes in the full Bruce Wayne origin story, too. How many other Lego games open with murder? This one does — and once again the death of Bruce’s parents drives the young billionaire to embark on a training world tour straight out of Batman Begins. Early on he’ll meet Ra’s Al Ghul and the Ninjago League of Shadows to become Gotham’s fingerless Lego savior.

For all the fluid and eclectic gameplay crammed into Legacy of the Dark Knight, the real feat TT Games pulls of here is threading inherent Lego humor through authentic Batman storytelling. Two decades’ worth of honed skills are all on full display in this new Batman game, which finds a happy medium between The Lego Batman Movie’s self-deprecating deconstruction of the character and an earnest tribute to the Caped Crusader. Shai Matheson’s performance as Batman makes watching Legacy of the Dark Knight nearly as fun as playing.

The animated voice spectacle didn’t seem like a crutch; the team at TT checks boxes with kid-in-a-candy-store glee, incorporating not just an array of standard Bat-gadgets, but fully unlockable skill trees for additional moves and battle tech. That goes not just for Batman but also his companions. I played my demo with three additional crime fighters: Commissioner Gordon, whose glue gun will be a necessity for both blocking bad guys and solving puzzles; Catwoman, who early on recruits Batman for a heist tailored like Split Fiction co-op; and Robin, who has multiple ranged weapons.

Testing out Robin in action

Different sections of the game will pair you with the companion characters. When you’re playing solo, they aid in fights or you can take them over to utilize their special skills. I found myself sticking to Batman for most of the fighting — while you can combo with each character’s special skills, you can only punch goons in the face while pretending you’re Batman and grimacing as Batman and screaming “I’m Batman!” in a room full of people trying to concentrate while playing as the actual Batman figure, in my extremely childish experience. (No diss to Comissioner Gordon.) But judging from what I encountered in the open-world Gotham, you’ll need every character’s skills to 100% what looks to be a dizzying amount of Riddler and Cluemaster brainteasers.

Zooming out on the map makes clear how seriously TT Games took the work to create a game that could work for all ages — a one-off mission would be perfect for kids but adults with the open-world brainworms will have plenty to plow through (and with a fleet Batmobiles to choose from). For the sake of seeing as much as possible, I didn’t even dare enter “Dark Knight” difficulty mode, which promises to up the ante for anyone who thinks they’re Too Gud to play a Batman Lego game. Talking to the creative team at TT Games after the preview, it was clear they’ve learned a lot from their minor collaborations with Rocksteady over the years and worked to live up to that franchise as much as anything else. It’s a sophisticated game.

Watch 11 minutes of me running around open-world Gotham City

Personally, an open-world experience can bring on a gut feeling of dread — I like playing a bunch and moving on. But breezing through Legacy of the Dark Knight as a 3D beat ’em trip down memory lane feels like another viable way to play. Like a Star Wars Lego game, part of the appeal comes from just seeing what iconic moment (or strange goof) the team decided to render next. To that point: the flamboyant vision of Batman and Robin that turned so many brooding fans off in 1997 has been completely vindicated now that it’s been made playable and in eye-catching Lego form. Much like how Mario Kart World pushed technical limits to mesh cartoony characters into a crisp, vivid graphical landscape, TT Games leaves no detail unetched — there is so much to look at. And I will never not be tickled by the lengths Lego animators go to to create any prop, any creature, any character out of bricks. I lost a good two to three minutes nerding out over the texture of Batman’s cape.

Having jumped around Legacy of the Dark Knight, I’ll be curious if it can all coalesce or if the end result feels more episodic — an open-world but thin game sitting on top of random platforming side quests. That’s the worst case scenario that I would be as shocked to see as I was the map because TT Games has perfected this formula. Not only is it a victory lap for the Batman character, who has been iterated on in design and story for so long that simply basking in his history feels like a multiversal roller coaster, but for a studio that knows exactly how to deliver but still sees room for ambition. Legacy of the Dark Knight is the definition of a big swing.