Lego DC Super-Villains review: It feels good to be bad

Lego DC Super-Villains is a great co-op adventure for the entire family. You can finally create your own super character and place it at the center of the story.

I head to the next mission in Lego DC Super-Villains with my custom villain character. As I blaze through the streets of Gotham with my super-speed, I stop and steal candy from a baby, and then I rob a police SUV filled with lego studs.

Some of the police arrive at the scene, but they’re no match for me. I sweep one of the cops off their feet in a speed-force tornado, grab them, and launch them down from mid-air while landing with a green shockwave. I then proceed to blast the rest of the police with a golden ray of fire that comes out of my hand.

It feels good to be bad in Lego DC Super-Villains.

Calling All Villains

As the name suggests, in Lego DC Super-Villains you play as the bad guys of the DC universe. These are some of my favorite villains, and The Joker or The Riddler are among my all-time favorite characters in comics.

Lego DC Super-Villains’ story starts as the evil doppelgangers of the Justice League from Earth 3, also known as the Crime Syndicate, arrive on our earth, kidnap the Justice League and pose as new and better heroes. It falls to our favorite villains to expose their not-so-pure intentions and bring down the frauds.

Our villains go and recruit other Lego villains, and it’s fun going on different missions knowing you’ll meet new and surprising characters. Each character has a distinct personality, but they all share the greatest superpower of all – rapid-fire puns.

As you progress the story, which unlike other Lego games, is relatively linear, you will engage in fun and goofy missions with other DC characters, some friendly, some not so much.

Luckily, they’re accompanied by the most powerful super-powered character in the universe – you.

Gotta Be Strong and Gotta Be Fast

For the first time in a Lego game, Lego DC Super-Villains asks you to create a custom villain. The character builder in the game is the most detailed and most intuitive in Lego video game history – it takes you piece by piece, and you can choose the shape, color, and decal for every part.

You also get to pick the weapon your character uses and your superpowers.

It is when it comes to choosing your superpowers though, that the customizer gets truly fun to use. You get to pick not only what kind of superpowers you have, but also what they look like and what button activates them. Want an orange lightning bolt that freezes enemies on impact and comes out of the tip of a purple fish? Lego DC Super-Villains gives you the tools to make that happen.

Your custom character gains new powers as you progress through the story. Even when I was only halfway through the game, my character could already run in super-speed, shrink, grow large, jump on walls, shoot flames out of one hand and an ice beam out of the other.

Since Lego games are never built for difficulty, it feels great to be this powerful, and being able to use these tools to realize the super-villain of your dreams is incredible.

Smash Them All

Lego games have always been a cross between a beat-em-up and a collectathon, and Lego DC Super-Villains is no different. You’ll be visiting many familiar DC comics locations, break obstacles made out of Lego, and battle Lego versions of cops, evil minions, and DC characters.

Every character has their unique moves, which makes them all feel unique.

The newest addition to the Lego games’ gameplay is grabs and throws. You can now grab enemies, throw them away, or take them out with a combo. This quickly became one of my favorite ways to battle enemies in Lego DC Super-Villains.

Aside from that, the game remains consistent with the Lego game series, offering a large overworld map with many activities and collectibles, and levels that you’d want to complete more than once. Being able to do all this in split-screen co-op is the main reason that I always come back to play new Lego games.

Unfortunately, you only get to take one custom super-villain into story missions. As I was playing levels alongside my little brother, I noticed that it was always less fun when only one of us could play as a character of our own creation.

Although the game lets you create other villains, you are only allowed to take your very first one to the story missions. Other custom characters have a limited number of superpowers.

More Than Just Bricks

It not only feels good to be bad in Lego DC Super-Villains, but it looks and sounds good as well.

Every character in the game is brought to life thanks to the delicate animation that brings out their personalities. No character moves or attacks the same as another, which makes you want to try out every one of them.

The environments look great. They might not be as realistic as Red Dead Redemption 2 or God of War, but they still have lifelike colors and textures. However, they could use more lego pieces. I’d personally prefer a smaller, more contained map that is made (or at the very least looks like it is made) out of Lego bricks, than the lifelike locations in the game.

Regarding sound, the game offers an epic soundtrack, but one that isn’t as memorable as I’d hoped it would be. The voice acting is the real gem here, with voice talents of Mark Hamill who returns as an adorable version of his famous Joker, and Tara Strong who brings her hilarious Lego Harley Quinn to life.

Even John Barrowman has come by to voice his CW character, Malcolm Merlyn for a few brief cutscenes.

Lego DC Super-Villains brings new features to the long-unchanged formula of the Lego games. Being able to create your character and designing their superpower has made this one of my favorite Lego games.

All of your favorite characters from the DC universe are brought to life with fantastic animation and voice acting, and the story is just the way Lego fans like it – funny and to the point.

Lego DC Super-Villains is your new co-op go-to title.