"I am Brainiac, and I have need of your power rings."
--Brainiac, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
Before he was the main villain of Injustice 2, Brainiac was the primary antagonist of Lego Batman 3. This last installment of the trilogy continues the series trend of expanding the focus to include other DC heroes besides Batman (and other villains besides Batman's traditional enemies). A much better representation of typical Lego games than PS Vita Lego titles like The Hobbit, which has a fixed overhead camera that deviates from the franchise norm on home consoles, the PS Vita version of Lego Batman 3 might not have the entirety of the game found on the PS3 or PS4 versions, but the gameplay and camera style is far closer than it is in Lego The Hobbit. It is also very well suited to the handheld platform all the same, such as by having PlayStation trophies that can all be unlocked without co-op or online components.
Production Values
The graphics and performance are strong for a 2014 Vita game of this kind. Mostly smooth animations, clear cutscenes, and even diverse and bright environments (especially late in the game) stretch from the first level to the last and to the two hub worlds in between. Lego Batman 3 was also one of the first Lego games to have voice acting included, and this definitely elevates the cutscenes to a place of having more characterization than grunts and gestures alone could ever allow for, despite the characters being lighthearted even at their worst in this take on DC icons that loosely honors their standard personalities and legacies. At times, the dialogue and its comedic aims are actually fairly clever, yet deeper character development is lacking, as one might expect from a game in this franchise.
Gameplay
Short levels that can be completed within about 5-10 minutes do not allow for quite the depth of exploration, puzzle solving, and combat. That is what Lego Batman 3 has at least on the Vita (perhaps the levels are longer on the PS3/PS4 version). Countering attacks, finishing moves, and a suit wheel for characters like Batman, Robin, and Cyborg that lets them (not every character named here can access all of these abilities) use everything from a diving suit to one that lets them dive underwater to one that illuminates dark areas helped develop/vary up the typical Lego gameplay formula at the time of release. Each level contains a handful of optional items or achievements that make additional characters or power ups available for purchase in the hubs. Between levels, either the Batcave or the Watchtower (a large space station) act as the hubs in question, with a teleporter to link them.
Trios of items unlock a new character at the Batcave or Watchtower for each one completed, and there are numerous other ways to unlock characters just in these two hubs. In the missions, though, an absence could be noticed. Minikits were nowhere to be found in any level I played, though red bricks return as collectibles that let you purchase special abilities or stud multipliers. The lack of minikits could stand out quite a bit despite the other collectibles nonetheless. The levels are fairly short and ultimately do not have the length required to hide 10 minikits around each level as was the case in the original Lego games. This is not exactly the same Lego game experience one would find on a newer console like the Switch or on older home consoles.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
The cosmic traveler and android Brainiac summons various Lantern Corps members only to mentally enslave them so that he can harness their powers from his spacecraft. Meanwhile, Batman chases Killer Croc after Joker broke them and several other DC villains out of Arkham, only for the Justice League and villains to unite against Brainiac after he tells them that he intends to shrink Earth, having once shrunk cities and collected them but moved on to larger targets.
Intellectual Content
No, there is scarcely any of the deeper ideological substance that characters like Batman or Wonder Woman are associated with besides a slight subplot about Batman coming to acknowledge his emotions to others, but that is not necessarily a horrendous oversight in a game of this type in itself--although even any work of art that works without explicit philosophical depth misses out on its full potential. There are still some collectibles for each level. Many, however, are placed so blatantly in the open that you do not need to put any effort into genuinely searching for them, but a few others are hidden well enough that they could easily get overlooked at first.
Conclusion
At least on the Vita, there might be no better Lego game than this, even if its trios of miniature levels are too abbreviated to have the more extensive secrets of other Lego games made for non-handheld systems (excluding the Switch since it can play standard console games). It provides around 8-10 hours of gameplay before a familiar player could have done everything in the game and earned a platinum trophy as a result. Lego Batman 3 also illustrates how Batman does not always need to be a somber character, though such versions of the character have been the best ones; he even has an arc of sorts in the game as he becomes more accepting of his emotionality thanks to Robin and the nature of how the Lanterns feed off of various emotions.
Content:
1. Violence: The utterly non-graphic brawling of Lego games is of course here.
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