Lego Marvel Super Heroes is an action game that reunites about a hundred and fifty Marvel heroes and villains from various Marvel franchises, with the player controlling the good ones to save the Earth from a team of the vicious (led by Galactus, also known as The Devourer of Worlds); all in the blocky cartoonish visual style and gameplay of LEGO adventures.
The game universe consists of Manhattan as an explorable open world. The game’s hub — containing well-known Marvel locations such as the Marvel HQ — and a series of self-contained story mode stages set beyond Earth in Asgard, Bifrost, and Asteroid M. You can enter Marvel-related buildings in New York. Each one has a plot narrated by Deadpool.
At first, the only playable characters are Iron Man and Hulk, who Spider-Man eventually joins. Other characters become accessible as you progress through the game, and others as you gather Gold Bricks. Gold bricks can be obtained while exploring Manhattan, completing side missions and story mode levels, unlocking extra characters and bonus levels, and collecting Characters and Vehicles to gain different costumes and cars in Manhattankens. Minikits and Deadpool bricks (which provide power-ups and additional functionality) are also collectibles. Some characters can be obtained by purchasing the Super Pack and Asgard Pack DLCs (the former, drawn from Marvel’s film Thor: The Dark World, was also available as a pre-order incentive), available on Xbox LIVE, PS Store, and PC. There are over 150 playable characters, with over 100 more having to be unlocked. They all have their own Super Powers, allowing them to interact with the environment, and Super Moves, enabling them to defeat foes.
A cast of 27 people voices all of the in-game lines. The game is playable without a television on the Wii U, thanks to the GamePad off-tv play capability. In two-player mode, one player can use the GamePad’s display while the other uses the show, avoiding a split screen.
