Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 Preview – We’re Out of Time

Here’s a truism: Lego is awesome. For decades it has been one of the best toys ever created. Curiously, sometime in the last decade Lego decided to start creating video games and, perhaps inevitably, they turned out to be a ton of fun too, poking good-natured fun at popular franchises, like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings. We also got several comic book-related games, the latest in the batch is the upcoming Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, at which we are going to take a closer look.

Chronopolis

If you know your Marvel, the name of Kang the Conqueror probably already gives you an idea what LMSH2 is going to be about. For everyone else, a quick rundown. Kang the Conqueror is a guy from the distant future, possessing technology allowing him to mess around with time itself. He tried multiple times to conquer Earth and was up to many spacetime shenanigans, the latest of which, apparently, involves creating a metropolis out of several Marvel continuities and locations, merging in a temporal limbo.

During our adventures in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 we will get to visit such classic places as Iron Fist’s K’un Lun, Wakanda, New York Noir, where 1930s version of your favourite characters live, we’ll even take a trip to Xandar, although one wonders whether it will be a comic book or movie version.

Overall it’s said that there will be 18 locations total, all probably accessible without much issue at any time for exploration and unlocking secrets.

Legendary roster

You can’t have a world-merging adventure smashing together multiple universes and locations without a suitably massive roster of heroes to populate the world. Thankfully the roster of LMSH2 is going to be impressive even if we decided to ignore alternative versions of famous characters for some inscrutable reason.

This new outing into the wacky world of Marvel is going to have a roster going easily over 200 characters and variants, all of them with unique abilities and iconic special actions. Pick Peter Quill AKA Star-Lord as for your team, and blasting at your foes dancing to your Walkman’s irresistibly funky tunes is going to be just a single button press away. Black Panther can snikt his claws in and out as he pleases, while Spider-Gwen can perform a killer drum solo. There are going to be plenty more of such treats, and that doesn’t even begin to cover hero-specific interactions in the game world.

As is typical of Traveller’s Tales Lego games, the maps are going to be riddled with hidden extra bricks and other goodies. To get them, you’ll need, for instance, the Hulk to smash an extra hard wall, or spot them in the first place using Spider-Man’s Spider-sense. As a result running individual missions multiple times with different squads is going to be well-justified, especially if you’re a completionist by nature.

Time manipulation

It wouldn’t be a proper Kang-plot, if time mischief was limited only to an usual setting. Thankfully, it’s going to play into much more than that, being a vital part of many missions, and letting you mess around with characters. One level described in multiple reports involves the Guardians of the Galaxy fighting against Eson the Searcher, a mighty Celestial. During the battle the level would be warp in time, reconstructing itself or breaking down, all dynamically, in a visually appealing way.

At least some characters will be able to trigger the change in themselves, too. For instance Groot is going to be able to shift from its baby Groot form into a fully grown one. Spider-Man, on the other hand, can switch between his Noir version and 2099. We try not to think too hard on how the switch to Spider-Man 2099 could work.

Conclusions

Over all Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 is shaping up to be as entertaining a game as all other Lego productions, and with a holistic approach to the Marvel universe it may offer one of the most diverse superhero experiences yet. And all in a family-friendly way! A roster of over 200 characters, heroes and villains alike, multiple iconic locations, and a time-jumping, reality-smashing adventure await you in LMSH.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 launches on November 14 this year, so there’s still a lot of time left to read up a little more about it and grab a preorder.