There were a few bugs, such as one in the second mission where the random dialogue refused to stop. I frequently hit allies in battle and had them turn on me. Combat can feel imprecise and difficult to aim. There’s also a few significant issues with the gameplay. The events start to repeat after a while, even when you’re trying to create atypical solutions. There’s a ‘hero creator’ that lets you disassemble sprites to create new word options and new heroes, and upload your own content from the Steam Workshop, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough variety to make use of them. The origin stories are largely the same structure. Two of these areas have nothing to do but fly around and hear superheroes quip at you. There are only about 10 missions in the game, mostly consisting of random events around an area, and a single scripted mission where you try to solve issues at predetermined moments of the fight. I finished the entire main game, getting all the Starites and doing some of the origin stories, in roughly eight hours of time. You can beat random people with Superman’s power and Aquaman’s trident. You can steal Larfleeze’s Orange Lantern power battery and live out a fantasy of turning your enemies into orange constructs. The game is what it is – you can create DC characters and have them spar for your amusement. If this sounds like an inconsequential complaint, it’s because there’s really not that much to make me overlook it. It’s not like the goatee-sporting Main Man is any more risqué than, say, the Black Lanterns, or Oracle being crippled, so I wouldn’t buy that it’s an age rating thing. And yet, for some reason, the only version of Lobo available is the new, clean-shaven, less bulky redesign that’s getting some comic fans riled up. The DC library is extensive, featuring even minor characters, and over a dozen versions of big-name superheroes like Batman and Superman. Also included are an array of costumes for Maxwell’s use that change his stats as well as give him weapons and items based on the character portrayed, as well as other automatic powers. What’s new, however, is the Bat Computer tab, which lists in similar detail DC comic superheroes and villains, along with important equipment and vehicles. You can create an array of things, provided they’re not (non-Nintendo) copyrights, profanity, or drugs/alcohol related (but guns and radioactive materials are okay). The extensive vocabulary of objects and creatures you can create from previous games returns. By extension, the music is suitable, with swelling orchestral-sounding tunes, with ambient laughter at Joker’s funhouse and screams at Arkham Asylum. The opening and closing cutscenes are well-drawn, still-panel comics, and are a nice touch. Everything is colourful and fluid, and the game rarely slows down with lots of objects on the screen. Areas include Metropolis, Gotham City, Oa, the Flash’s Central City, and a few others. The result sends them into Gotham city, but shatters the globe, releasing its Starites across the DC universe – and it’s up to Maxwell, armed with the Deathnote’s less-homicidal twin, to collect them before they tempt the DC rogue’s gallery to make use of yet another cosmic power MacGuffin. While reading DC comics one day, Maxwell, the red-rooster-headed protagonist with the notebook that can create anything, and his sister Lily, decide to travel to the DC universe using a page from his notebook, and Lily’s world-spanning crystal teleportation globe. The plot is simple, and doesn’t need to be any more than that.