When I began playing Lego Batman 3 this week, I figured it had been long enough since the game ate my save when it was new (nine years) that I'd no longer be upset at having to replay the campaign. It turns out yes, I've forgotten basically everything other than "there was a DLC level about this then-new show called Arrow".
Also forgotten: Adam West was in every level and hub of this game, voicing himself, and that there was a full 60s Batman bonus level. He's not the only person to have passed since this came out and every time I land on what should be fun fanservice it's a real gut-punch. Honestly there are quite a few celebs in this! Conan O'Brien is your tutorial guide, Kevin Smith keeps making cameos related to both his career and just goofy villains (I've had to find him a polar bear for Superman to fight and he narrates a full battle with Condiment King so far), and I think the Arrow cast, or at least Amell, voice themselves in that stage.
I haven't dug into the DLC yet, since that was part of why I lost my save at the time: the release of one of the stages caused a bug that corrupted my post-game save, and this game is large. It's a full-on open world game after you get a few levels in, letting you poke around the Hall of Justice (and later the Legion of Doom HQ), Batcave, Watchtower... then it decides "Hey, you wanna just visit every planet one of the Lantern Corps calls home and do motorcycle tricks and Tony Hawk shit on each? That's here too." I do not know if the "VR Missions" were patched in later but I sure never found them the first time out, and there's about 20 of those as well. It's a meaty little title.
But the funniest thing is like West and company, so many of the DLC stages hit real different nearly ten years later. You know what the season pass gets me? A stage based on Man of Steel, an Arrow level themed around the show's first (and second? my brain says Deathstroke is in here too) season, a speedrun of the Dark Knight trilogy as one stage, a Bizarro stage, the aforementioned Batman '66... and a completely PG-rated stage featuring "The Squad", which memory tells me was the one that killed my save. I really want to see how that's handled with the hindsight of "can you believe we've had two and a half Suicide Squad films since this game came out?"
Also, the incredibly large cast that I never got to dig too deep into. Multiple DC editorial staff are just guys you can pull out of the toybox. Batman outfits from a single Silver Age cover are their own characters. Entire Elseworlds variants, like Green Lantern Bruce Wayne from 'Darkest Knight'. Some of these guys have another 2-8 (that's not a typo) costumes and suits under an individual figurine. I can't believe a children's game from a decade ago is some of the most fun I've had with a video game so far this year.
Also also: you know it's a comic book game because every single level has some kind of mind control whammy (some of which you, the heroes, are using on random mooks to solve puzzles!) to explain how heroes and villains are teaming up or fighting one another. Martian Manhunter taking over a hoodlum in a knit cap's mind and making him march through radioactive waste to hit a switch? You're a war criminal now, J'onn.
