As a kid, you could find me sitting on my bedroom floor surrounded with thousands of Lego's. At any random time I'd either be building a Lego house, a Lego horse, a Lego car, or a Lego boat.

My imagination could run wild in my land of Lego, and I adored it. However whipping out Lego's at my age now would raise quite a few eyebrows. I know they are so damn cool, but people are so judging, so Lego's are a no no when you are 26. I figure when I have kids, I can revive my passion for Lego building, without having people look at me like I'm immature.

Till then though, I stick to simpler means to playing with Lego's, without literately having to whip out the building blocks.

The first Lego based video game I ever got to play was Lego Indiana Jones, and I friggin loved the game, so much so that I ended up beating it in less than a week.

Once there was nothing left to do with that game, I slumped back into my melancholy Lego free reality.

That was until recently! They went and decided to grace my lego-less world with yet another Lego title. Lego Batman! Oh snap!

As soon as Lego Batman hit shelves, I didn't wait around to rent it at Blockbuster, I went straight in for the kill, slapped down my $60.00 and became the proud owner of the game.

Lego Batman follows the same type of format that the Indiana Jones one had. It contains 3 separate stories for you to conquer.

It also has pretty much the same type of straight forward game play. Basically if you die, you don't have to start a level over, you resurrect right in the spot you kicked the bucket, which makes things easy for younger gamers.

You have the option to play alone, while the CPU will have a Lego Robin follow you around, or if you have a second controller you can play with 2 players.

I actually played the game with my boyfriend which made for a lot of foul comments, and competition over 'who gets the most studs in the level'.The game though would not be the same playing it alone, so if you have a second controller definitely play with a friend or relative.

Each story contains around 4 or 5 levels. Each level will last around 20 minutes, and features a villain to beat at the end. You will run into Lego villain's such as The Penguin, Cat Woman, Moth Man, and numerous other infamous enemies of Batman. The last level of course is a battle with The Joker.

Beating the entire hero story will only require about 6 or 7 hours of game time.

Once you finish up, you can go back and collect missing pieces, or you can play the game from the bad guys point of view. In villain missions you will control the numerous bad guys, and try to get them to wreak havoc on the city. The villain missions are just as fun and entertaining as the hero missions were.

Graphics:

Nothing really has changed when it comes to the Lego console games. The environments are a mix of real objects and a mix of Lego objects. The levels though always look and feel legoish, even when there are a few things such as plants, and grass that look realistic. All in all I like the graphics, even though they are not state of the art, they are definitely in sync with what one would expect when thinking of a Lego based video game.

Sounds:

Music plays lightly in the background, and cute quirky Lego building noises are heard whenever your character is building something with Lego's. More serious batman themed music plays during big events such as a boss battle.

Game play:

The gaming is all relatively easy, and it didn't take me long to figure out how the controls were used. If you have played a Lego based game before, the controls are all the same.

Replay Value:

The reason I bought Lego Batman was because I knew it would have the same sort of replay value the Indie game had. Even after you beat a level, you will always have to go back in order to collect pieces that you missed, or could not obtain the first round.

To me the game knew exactly how to capture a fan base, and keep them coming back for more, because the re-play value is extremely high.

Overall:

It's worth the purchase. Renting this one will not do justice. You are going to want to come back to this one time and time again, and there is no way you can conquer the whole game with just a weekly rent.

Although $59.99 is a bit steep for a video game, this one is worth the splurge. Believe me, there are horrible titles with the same price tag, but this one is worth it.