Hands-On: LEGO Batman (PS2)

Apparently, no film franchise is safe from being LEGO-ified. On the heels of the popular LEGO Star Wars and recent LEGO Indiana Jones video games comes LEGO Batman, an action-adventure game sure to be filled with the LEGO series' trademark humor and charm.

In LEGO Batman, your adventures as Batman and Robin are independent of any previous movie or tv show. There's also more focus on hand-to-hand combat, which is of course what the Dark Knight is known for.

We explored Gotham City as the Dynamic Duo -- co-op play allowed one of us to control Batman and the other to control yuppie Robin. Gameplay is linear and simple as with other LEGO games; the goal is to beat up baddies along your way to track down Arkham Asylum's dangerous jailbreaks while collecting LEGO studs and powerups.

As Batman, you auto-lock onto multiple objects using a manually targeted Batarang -- stringing together combo hits on a whole group of enemies is surprisingly satisfying. Both Batman and Robin also have a number of special power suits that players will find and use to complete certain puzzle-type areas in each level. We used Batman's glide suit to fly across a chasm and build a bridge; later on, Robin's technology suit enabled him to control a small robot car. Often, parts of the level are inaccessible unless one of the characters is wearing an appropriate suit.

We chased down Catwoman during our demo level. It was a mildly frustrating battle since she kept leaping back and forth between the rooftop and the ground while we were trying to attack her, but we were able to finish her off in the end.

One problem that we encountered was that it was sometimes difficult to judge where our character was in the 3-D plane of the game. Two of us spent a good couple of minutes falling off of a building and having to restart because we were too far in front or too far behind a narrow bridge we were supposed to cross. It took a few tries before we figured out the right spot to step off the ledge and onto the bridge, which was a pain since the rest of the level had gone relatively smoothly.

For those who want to explore their villainous side a bit, LEGO Batman also features a Villain Mode, where gamers can play as the Joker, Harley Quinn, and a host of other Gotham havoc-wreakers, each of whom has their own special abilities, in lieu of special suits like Batman and Robin. Villain mode features a storyline where you and your evil cohorts have a some fun causing trouble. The storyline runs parallel to the one in Batman and Robin's. In one mission, your job is to kidnap the Commissioner - in Hero mode, you (as the Dynamic Duo) have to rescue him.

We were also able to play as Joker and Harley Quinn in the villain demo in a carnival-themed level. While our Batman and Robin levels had each of the characters working independently for longer stretches, Joker and Harley worked much more closely -- one of the most interesting parts of the level was a two-level fun house where each had to alternately activate a mechanism in order for their partner to advance and do the same for them. While this works very well in a co-op setting with two players, the back and forth switching might be as tiresome for a single player. The bright side is that for the first time in the LEGO video game franchise, swapping characters only involves a push of a button, instead of having to run up to that character and initiate the switch.

LEGO Batman will feature 15 hero levels and 15 villain levels. From what we've been able to see and demo, the game is comical and cute in the tradition of previous LEGO games, but also features unique elements such as more hand-to-hand combat, special ability suits, and the Batarang targeting system that distinguish it. Fans of the Batman franchise should get a kick out of being able to play as the Dynamic Duo as well as the more sadistic villains.