Simon Cardy
Guest
Traveler’s Tales is once again bringing a boatload of brick-breaking battles with bat-baddies to the streets of Gotham City. For 20 years, the studio has largely followed the beloved and established formula of adapting some of the biggest media franchises in the world and turning them into level-based action-adventures. But this time, TT looks to be finding inspiration outside of its own walls, but elsewhere inside its Warner Bros. family, giving the people what they want: a new Batman Arkham game in all but name.
Legacy of the Dark Knight is structured slightly differently from previous LEGO games. Not quite an original story, TT Games has immersed itself in the world of the Bat by taking different strands of the hero’s most famous stories from across comics and films to craft a narrative on its own. You’ll get a young Bruce Wayne origin story, which appears to take inspiration from Batman Begins, if the trailer is anything to go by, but later meet a Joker born in a vat of corrosive materials before later morphing into a version of Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal for a chapter or two.
I got to play through a full mission from early in the story, which took me to Ace Chemicals, a version styled heavily on the factory’s look from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. However, the story taking place inside those neo-gothic walls takes a leaf straight from the pages of Ed Brubaker’s one-shot comic The Man Who Laughs, as Batman is sent to investigate Red Hood. The context is set up through familiar slapstick LEGO silliness as the Bat is asked to track down three separate shipments of teddy bears in order to find what nefarious use Hood has for them.
This opening takes place outside of the plant’s walls and allowed me to experiment with the instantly recognisable combat suite. I punched grunts a few times until their plastic legs broke free from their torsos and countered whenever they dared flash that little attack signal over the top of their head. Fans of the Batman: Arkham games will know exactly what I’m talking about here (as well as anyone who played the many, many action games Rocksteady’s system inspired), but from the little I experienced, I can’t see it getting much more mechanically complex from here.
You can't think about being Batman in a video game without appreciating the achievements of our friends and colleagues at Rocksteady.
That obvious Arkham inspiration and desire to bring it to an even wider audience is something that Jonathan Smith, Head of Production and Strategic Director at TT Games, willfully admitted to me: “You can't think about being Batman in a video game without appreciating the achievements of our friends and colleagues at Rocksteady”, Smith said. “So as we start to think about what a rich, deep Batman combat experience is going to be like, of course, we use that as an inspiration, but then we also have new approaches that we bring to that in terms of accessibility”.
The punches, kicks, and throws may well be rooted in the moveset first established in 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, but this is a TT LEGO game appealing to players of all ages, so I can’t see intricate button combos becoming a key aspect. Slow-motion finishers add a sense of style to proceedings, further adding to that familiar Arkham flow. All in all, brawling felt good, if not as wholly satisfying as in Asylum and its sequels, perhaps due to the fact that making contact against the synthetic shine of LEGO bricks never fully delivers the meaty sensation that pounding flesh can (yes, I did mean to phrase it like that).
Of course, as much as the Caped Crusader enjoys shattering cheekbones with his blunt fists and padded knees, stealth has also been a big part of his games. Again, while it doesn’t feel as robust in its design as the Arkham games, Legacy of the Dark Knight does cater to the sneakier option. High structures and perches loom ominously above enemies, which can be zipped to with ease. From there, you can use a version of detective mode that acts more like an area of effect pulse than a toggleable X-ray vision to pick out enemies below. Stealth takedowns can then be performed on your chosen prey and are animated with trademark LEGO humour; instead of a swift knockout blow, Batman will land on them with a minifig-shattering thud of his arse.
While the combat is heavily Arkham-coded, the remainder of the mission plays out like a classic TT adventure. Platforming is integrated through moving platforms and swinging hooks, as are puzzles that require you to switch between characters (or get help from your co-op partner) to utlise their specific skills. On this mission, I was joined by Jim Gordon, who comes packed with a foam-spraying gun that can fire blobs of goo to help you past obstacles. For example, Ace Chemicals is unsurprisingly full of hazardous chemicals, some of which can be seen spurting out of broken pipes and halting you in your path. A quick blast of the Commissioner’s cannon can soon dispose of this mess, as when it hardens, it blocks up the hole in the pipe. Past that, a door may be locked, but thanks to an obvious grappling point, it can be yanked down using Batman’s hook. It’s this swapping between batfriends and their skills that has formed the basis of LEGO games since the first Star Wars adaptation back in 2005, and still holds a certain level of charm.
It does beg the question of how varied missions will be this time around, though, and the range of puzzles we’ll be faced with. When making my way through Ace Chemicals, I didn’t quite get the same “metroidvania-esque” feeling I often associate with LEGO games — knowing there’ll be many secret areas inaccessible on a first-playthrough as they require abilities you’ve not yet unlocked. This might be due to the fact that only seven characters will be playable in Legacy of The Dark Knight, and thus the variety of powers and gadgets is vastly reduced — especially compared to The Skywalker Saga’s roster of around 400. That treasure-hunting replayability factor is a huge draw for some, so I fear a little if this is the case, but perhaps that portion of the experience is being reserved mainly for its open world.
I only got to spend around 10 minutes in a small outdoor section of Gotham City, but found no shortage of things to get up to. That Arkham muscle-memory kicked in as I grapple-hooked onto a nearby roof and launched into the air before spreading my Batwings and assessing the crime-ridden alleys for activity. In my short time, I prevented a crime in progress by thumping a few goons, completed a Riddler trophy puzzle, and attempted a time trial in a Batmobile of my choosing — The Dark Knight’s Tumbler, 2022’s muscle-car like monster from The Batman, and accompanying Batcycle were on offer. Character outfits are customisable, from golden age comic interpretations to modern movie looks. How these are unlocked is yet unclear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if spending time collecting treasures dotted around the open world plays into this.
Initial impressions that Legacy of The Dark Knight is an Arkham game in a LEGO wrapping are fairly spot-on, then. I settled snugly into the middle-ground between dynamic combat and collectathon puzzling the series has rooted itself so successfully in for years. I’m left very hopeful from the hour or so I’ve spent with it so far, and think it could be the perfect thing to tide Arkham fans over until Rocksteady (or somebody else willing to take up the mantle) answers the call of the Batsignal.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.