The Christmas rush may have been and gone, but that doesn't mean all's quiet on the games industry front. While LEGO Dimensions may have had a bit of a moment over the festive season, judging by the rather depleted shelves at our local Tesco, Traveller's Tales have another, more traditional and less figure-buying-orientated title up their sleeves for January, in the form of LEGO Marvel's Avengers. A sequel of sorts to one of our favourite LEGO games of recent years, this one follows Iron Man, Hulk and co through brick-themed versions of all their big film moments in the two Avengers films and beyond, teaming up to smash enemies, bash baddies and solve puzzles on their way to saving the world - and we can't wait.
But what's even better is that if you pick up the game on either a Playstation 3 or Playstation 4 (no word on the Playstation Vita as of yet), you'll be able to download some extra characters and levels post-launch - for the low, low price of free! While the game itself already includes a story mode based on a whopping six Marvel films (that's Avenger's Assemble, Avenger's: Age of Ultron, Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier for those that are keeping count!), the free downloadable expansions promise to take in two more Marvel films, offering goodies based on last year's Ant-Man film and the upcoming Captain America: Civil War film too. That's a whole lot of Marvel for your money!
You'll be able to nab yourself Iron Man and... black Iron Man? (Also known as War Machine)
Of course, it wouldn't be a LEGO game without oodles of obscure characters, and LEGO Marvel's Avengers was never set to disappoint, offering everyone from Squirrel Girl and Miss Marvel, to giant alien space dragon Fin Fang Foom - but the Playstation exclusive add-on will add a whole range of extra heroes too. With the aforementioned Captain: America Civil War download, you can net yourself nine more characters as featured in the upcoming film, consisting of yet another Captain America version, a new Iron Man (this time in his Mark 46 armour), plus Black Panther, Winter Soldier, Falcon, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Crossbones and Agent 13. Somewhat disappointingly, it seems like that's all we get on the Cap front, with no new levels to play through mentioned - but you'll at least be available to pick it up from launch day.
On the other hand, the Ant-Man bundle sounds like the much more substantial add-on, coming with "an awesome level based on a section of the film", as well as eleven characters to play as - two varieties of Ant-Man (one Scott Lang Ant-Man, one Hank Pym), Ant-Thony the flying ant, Cassie Lang, Darren Cross, Scott Lang, Hank Pym, Hope Van Dyne, Luis, The Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) and Yellowjacket. And while those names may mean nothing to us because we haven't seen Ant-Man yet (I know!), we do like the idea of being able to fly around the LEGO Marvel's Avengers world on the back of Ant-Thony the flying ant! With a spring release planned for this pack, it looks like we have some time to catch up on our Marvel films at least!
LEGO Marvel's Avengers will hit pretty much every platform imaginable at the end of the month, on the 29th January - that's the aforementioned Playstation 3 and Playstation 4, as well as the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, 3DS and Playstation Vita. In the meantime, why not have a sneak peak at one of the brand new team moves you'll be able to exploit come the end of the month:
