Apple Games has ventured onto the crime ridden streets of Gotham City with an examination of LEGO Batman: The Videogame. In the game players can explore an interactive LEGO Gotham City as Batman and Robin, capturing infamous villains, and even taking control of the villains themselves. Apple's article includes an overview of the game's features, comments from the game's developers, a history of the caped crusader, and lists of tips, tricks, and cheats for the game.

The game employs the same playful sense of humor found in previous LEGO adventures, striking a tone somewhere between the brooding hero of such works as Frank Miller’s “Batman: Year One” (1987) and the campy Batman of the 1960s TV show. The music consists of Danny Elfman’s score from Tim Burton’s hit 1989 film “Batman.”

The storyline, however, would fit the Batman of any era: Groups of villains led by Joker, Riddler, and Penguin have broken out of Arkham Asylum (“An establishment more porous than a tea strainer,” says Alfred) and are devising three separate attacks on Gotham City. As you traverse the game’s 30 levels, which are split equally between the heroes’ and villains’ perspectives, you’ll meet and unlock over 40 characters, including Nightwing, Batgirl, Clayface, Mad Hatter, and more.

“We based the game on ‘LEGO Batman,’ a character derived from a myriad of different individual embodiments across decades of comic books,” explains Smith. “As we’re totally immersed in the LEGO world, that particular definition of this character always felt totally natural to us.”

DC Comics’ input, according to producer Loz Doyle, consisted of “telling us things like ‘This character is likely to work with that character,’ ‘These two would kill each other if they were put together,’ and so on. They also provided a lot of reference materials with detailed backgrounds on all the characters, which helped us create the right animation styles for them.”

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