Lego Marvel’s Avengers: First Impressions

Avengers assemble — in brick form, that is.

We’ve had just about 24 hours to spend so far with Lego Marvel’s Avengers, the latest game to turn Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into adorable minifigures courtesy of TT Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. That’s not enough yet for a full review (though you can expect one this weekend), but does speak positively about the depth of a game that covers material from six Marvel Cinematic Universe films and features more than 200 playable characters.

Cleverly, Lego Marvel’s Avengers starts with the opening scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron, pausing long enough for you to get the hang of combat and the abilities of the six on-screen Avengers: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye. Anyone who’s been playing any of TT’s Lego games will feel immediately at home with the control scheme and the need to break as much of the scenery as possible, but this game feels as slick as ever about introducing a number of concepts to newcomers in an organic way.

While jumping to other MCU movies in short order, you’ll also have a chance to experience other types of gameplay, including using Iron Man to clear the skies above Stucker’s castle in Age of Ultron and riding shotgun in a SHIELD vehicle while Maria Hill pursues the fleeing Loki and his thralls in The Avengers. Again, this is nothing new for Lego video games, but more of a refinement to elements already proven to work.

The vast number of real movie lines used to propel both the action you control and the cutscenes is pretty great, and it’s pretty awesome to hear Cobie Smulders as Hill and Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, since both actors did new voice work for the game (and in Smulders’ case, quite a bit of it). However it also proves jarring when you meet other characters and they aren’t the voices you expect. Wait until you first encounter Pepper Potts and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The typical humorous touches and attention to detail in the visuals are all there. Perhaps the best part is that it isn’t strictly a movie tie-in, but a celebration of all things Avengers. Both Marvel and TT have been promising as much prior to the game’s launch, but after unlocking Captain Universe in the first stage, it honestly seems to be the case.

Overall, Lego Marvel’s Avengers feels smaller but also tighter than Lego Marvel Super Heroes, though I’m prepared to backtrack on that first part as I play through more of it. I’ve always considered trying to collect every character in previous Lego games to be a fool’s errand, but this is one I could see myself trying to plow through at least a fair bit of the roster over the weeks to come.