LEGO® Marvel™ Super Heroes

My Saturday co-op radar went off the moment I saw that LEGO Marvel Super Heroes supports two-player local drop-in/drop-out split-screen across the full campaign. That single fact does a lot of heavy lifting for a game released back in 2013, and it still holds up as one of the more reliably fun things you can load up when a friend drops by. The formula is classic Traveller's Tales platform-brawler: smash plastic scenery into studs, solve contextual puzzles by mixing and matching character abilities, and work through a 15-level campaign before diving back into Free Play to hoover up everything you missed the first time. The character roster is where this one genuinely shines. Over 100 unlockable heroes and villains means the ability variety is wide: Iron Man flies and fires unibeam blasts, Spider-Man web-slings and uses spider-sense to spot hidden objects, Hulk and the Thing punch through reinforced walls and hurl vehicles with hyper-strength, Cyclops and the Human Torch melt gold barriers, Black Widow and Iron Man hack computer terminals, Thor and Storm charge up electrical machinery. Each power set feeds directly into puzzle design, so swapping characters never feels arbitrary. The Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four all get meaningful screen time in the story, and the roster goes deep enough that obscure comic-book fans will genuinely do a double-take at some of the unlockables. The catch - and it is a recurring Traveller's Tales catch - is the locked-gate structure. Story mode assigns you a fixed roster per mission, so you will constantly see collectibles you cannot reach yet, and the hint system will cheerfully remind you that you need "web-slinging characters" or "magnetic powers" that you do not currently have. It is efficient as a replay incentive but annoying if you just want to explore freely. The open-world New York hub is a nice touch, though it functions more as an extended side-quest area than a truly open sandbox. Camera drift and occasional bugs have been reported across reviews since launch and have not been fully ironed out; nothing catastrophic, but a respawn-next-to-your-own-corpse moment will happen at some point. For the couch co-op question: yes, split-screen is here with both dynamic and vertical layout options. It is capped at two players locally, so this is not your four-player party brawler. Remote Play Together extends that two-player experience over the internet, which is a solid option for a long-distance co-op session. The game has no difficulty setting worth worrying about - you cannot technically lose a level, only burn some studs on a respawn - which makes it genuinely welcoming for mixed-skill groups, kids included. The writing leans hard on puns and slapstick, which lands more often than not, though voice-acting quality is inconsistent across the cast. For a game approaching its twelfth year on PC, the 96% positive Steam rating (nearly 30,000 reviews) tells you the warm reception has been durable.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

Be the first to comment on LEGO® Marvel™ Super Heroes.