After weeks of rumors, leaks, and speculation, Traveller's Tales finally announced LEGO DC Super-Villains, the latest entry in the very long-running LEGO franchise where players use a huge roster of licensed characters to smash objects and collect studs. Whereas most games in the series focus on heroes, this one features villains from the DC Universe, including a custom baddie that players can design from the ground-up.

While LEGO DC Super-Villains makes virtually no effort to evolve the established LEGO games formula, it does at least one thing different, and that is put new focus on the player-created custom character. The games have allowed players to create their own characters for years, but these characters have never been featured parts of the story. That's different this time around, with the custom character serving a key role in the plot alongside the many other playable characters in the game.

To its credit, LEGO DC Super-Villains' huge roster of playable characters manages to avoid relying too heavily on Batman and his rogue's gallery. Most DC media tends to fall into that trap, and while characters like The Joker and Harley Quinn still play prominent roles in the story, equal time is given to characters like Lex Luthor and even Captain Cold.

The levels these characters explore are mostly fine and exactly what LEGO fans will expect, but the stuff in-between the levels can get tedious. The laggy open world serves little purpose beyond artificially lengthening the story mode (which didn't even need lengthened as this is one of the franchise's longest games at 20 levels), forcing players to follow green studs and travel long distances just to get to the next level. What's even more annoying are the mini non-levels that proceed some stages, as these play exactly like levels but are infinitely less rewarding since they don't contain mini-kits and studs collected during these segments don't count toward the True Super-Villain stud total. It's odd that these sections aren't just made official parts of the levels they proceed.

As previously stated, the levels themselves are fun enough, but with one major downside, and that is the complete lack of challenge. Now, the LEGO games aren't exactly known for their difficult gameplay, but past titles at least made it somewhat challenging to get stud totals or solve some of the puzzles. LEGO DC Super-Villains is mind-numbingly easy, with many stages allowing players to get the stud total before hitting the halfway mark. The lack of challenge also makes the boss fights boring, repetitive, and over-long, as bosses often take way too many hits to defeat, and since there are no real stakes, there is no tension or excitement to them.

Even more frustrating than LEGO DC Super-Villain's extremely low difficulty and tedious boss fights is the game's lack of polish. Despite these games following an identical formula and being virtually indistinguishable from one another gameplay-wise, Traveller's Tales still has yet to iron out the many bugs and technical issues that have plagued the franchise since its inception. The usual suspects of story events not triggering and players glitching through objects are present and accounted for, but a new problem with the auto-save icon is especially annoying. Almost every single time we played the game, the Harley Quinn auto-save icon would pop up and never leave until the next session. In split-screen, the spinning icon can be downright nauseating for the first player to look at for extended periods of time.

It's possible that this particular issue will be ironed out in a patch, but in the meantime, it's something that anyone hoping to play through LEGO DC Super-Villains in split-screen will want to keep in mind. Otherwise, LEGO DC Super-Villains is basically the same LEGO game experience that Traveller's Tales has been churning out for well over a decade now, so one's enjoyment will largely depend on if they're sick of the formula yet or not.

LEGO DC Super-Villains does little to distinguish itself from past LEGO games, to the point that it still features some of the franchise's trademark technical issues and glitches. It's not revolutionary in any sense of the word and playing more than one level at a time may result in extreme boredom. However, its huge roster of playable characters is impressive and its focus on villains helps things feel at least a little fresh. Most will be fine skipping it, but since there's not a lot of couch co-op options available nowadays, it may be worth looking into after it's been deeply discounted.

LEGO DC Super-Villains is out now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. Game Rant reviewed the game on Xbox One.