Lego Marvel Super Heroes

Lego Marvel Super Heroes is a platformer with some puzzle-solving elements and RPG elements. The game can be one or two players, although admittedly the dynamic split-screen can cause headaches during the regular game levels (there's a setting to switch to static split-screen, I believe). This game has all of the elements one could want in an action-adventure game: iconic super heroes like Hulk and Spider Man, a visible completion statistic that doesn't seem unreachable (I'm at 217/250 for golden bricks) and unlockables (so more characters open up the further you progress in the game). I played the PC version of this game. 

At first we had a bit of a struggle setting up a GameCube controller for player two, but the secret is that you should plug in the controller before starting the game and set up any controller software to get it to run right. The game did a swell job of auto-matching the controller buttons to the game controls, so that was nice as we were able to dive right in.

There are about 16 regular levels and 10 bonus levels in the game. The bonus levels unlock as golden bricks are collected (either from completing story mode levels or finishing quests in the New York City sandbox). While most of the puzzles are intuitive or even obvious (so it's pretty kid-friendly), there are a few that are so off-the-wall that we had to look up hints (boo). Additionally, there were many bugs where I got stuck between the scenery and walls or between adjacent walls merely by jumping into the "wrong area". Luckily, when a piece gets stuck, usually one can just switch to player 2 (if there's only one player) or drop out (on the pause menu) and re-enter the game (hitting any button on controller). Another cool facet to this game is that there are a ton of characters - more than 150 - and one can customize their own character to include elements of the other characters (IronShield, anyone?).