Forget Mario and Sonic (for now anyway) – one of the most popular gaming franchises in recent video game history is Lego. The reason is simple – the games are easy to pick up, great fun to play, and accessible for all ages. And with Lego Jurassic World set to be released in June, it’s high time we built a list of the top ten brick-based video games. A tough challenge indeed. MORE: Lego Jurassic World trailer looks bricking awesome Released on Windows in 1997, Lego Island was the very first Lego game ever made. With no plot as such, players could free roam the colourful island taking on a variety of missions, from delivering pizzas to jet-ski racing. While it’s not dated particularly well, it remains a classic and a springboard for some truly great games. As a child there was something unsatisfying about building an awesome car out of Lego bricks, then not being able to watch it speed around a track, which is why Lego Racers is so brilliant. Essentially the Lego version of Mario Kart, with one key difference – you can build your own car (which has it’s pros and cons).
It’s an old game now, but certainly deserves its place in this list. 8. The Lego Movie video game A Lego video game tie-in of a Lego film – you can’t get more Lego than that! The game closely follows the plot of The Lego Movie, using a colourful world made entirely of Lego bricks, a huge variety of playable characters and a generous smattering of good fun. 7. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga This is a superb offering that combines both the brilliant LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Star Wars II in a neat package. Released in 2007, the Complete Saga offers higher quality graphics than the originals, as well as a classic soundtrack and a hilarious dose of unique Lego humour. 6. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean After such success with other film-to-bricks-to-videogame adaptations, the franchise moved on to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, merging the first four blockbuster films into one convenient game. The complex story may be a little hard to follow as – like others in the franchise – there’s no dialogue, but they capture the pirate world perfectly and the game play is great fun.
5. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 As the name suggests, this title focuses on key moments from the first four Harry Potter years, resulting in a magical game that brings Hogwarts to life. Game developer Traveller’s Tales paid close attention to both the films and books in looks and story, so genuine Potter fans will feel right at home. 4. Lego Lord of the Rings An fun adaptation of Peter Jackson’s iconic trilogy that used genuine dialogue and music from the original films, which took the franchise to a new level. While it condensed the story somewhat, the atmospheric title offered plenty of replay value with a vast world to explore and endless secrets to discover. Released in 2013, the franchise ventured away from the movie adaptations and brought a huge open-world game with an original story to the Wii U. The result was a family-friendly, action-filled sandbox game, which is the closest Lego will come to Grand Theft Auto series (without all the prostitutes, drugs and swearing).
2. Lego Marvel Super Heroes An exciting and varied open-world game with its own original storyline, using around 150 characters from the Marvel universe to tell it. With excellent gameplay, endless collectable, witty storytelling and oodles of replay value, this is one of the best Lego games out there. 1. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes In a tough-to-call list, my number one Lego game is DC Super Heroes, released in June 2012. The first in the Lego series to have original voice acting (up until this point the stories were mainly told via primitive grunting), which added a new dimension. Even though it’s slightly older than Marvel Super Heroes it’s an excellent sandbox offering, in which players could plays as both Batman and Superman and unlock an array of classic DC heroes and villains. With a fine balance of drama and humour, excellent narrative and gorgeous graphics, this is surely the best Lego game to date.Brick by brick, the Lego franchise has built itself into a household name when it comes to toys, video games, and more recently, the movie industry.
With no signs of slowing down, we thought it was only appropriate to list our best Lego games of all time. Gotham City is known as one of the most dark and gritty places in the comic book universe, so it’s quite surprising to see the Lego franchise enter Batman’s world with it’s vibrant and colorful aesthetics. However, Traveller’s Tales, the developer of the game, has managed to make these two juxtaposing forces work in tandem with Lego Batman. One of the best Lego games because of the sheer amount of characters to choose from. Bane, Harley Quinn, Robin, and the Dark Knight himself are all playable, which brings in a massive amount of replay value. Available exclusively on the Wii U, Lego City Undercover has the player controlling Chase McCain, a cop whose sole purpose is to defend Lego City from crime. Development for this game began 3 years before release, when Nintendo approached TT Games to create a new Lego IP for their then unreleased console, the Wii U. Lego City Undercover uses ideas from the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which is why it’s on our best Lego games list, and also contains a numerous amount of Nintendo easter eggs, such as hidden Piranha Plants, the ability to catch Cheep Cheep while fishing, and a Warp Pipe that can be discovered unlocking Lady Liberty Island.
This game isn’t completely released yet, but from what we’ve seen of it so far this looks to be in the running for one of the best Lego games. A sandbox game where the only limit is your imagination. Worlds allows players to build the terrain and environment of the game through several landscaping tools and features. It also include a multitude of vehicles and objects that can be utilized to traverse your very own Lego world, as well as a plethora of customizable costumes and outfits to make your character stand out. Keep an eye on this one, and make sure you check out the beta on Steam Early Access. The Clone Wars brought a couple of cool new features to the table, including the ability to control fleets of clones as they go to battle with droids. This feature was able to be implemented due to the fact that TT Games upgraded their engine to include the ability of holding over 200 moving objects and units on the screen at once. Story swap mode allows for swapping between characters in different areas of the game world, giving players more than one perspective on the story.
This game is praised as one of the best Lego games, and being the one that broke the mold as far as Lego games go. To coincide with the fourth Pirates movie, “On Stranger Tides”, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean puts the player on the high seas as they undertake the role of Captain Jack Sparrow, as well as other key characters within the Pirates universe. What makes this one of the best Lego games was the hub world, known simply as The Port. The Port expands as players progress through the game, adding new explorable areas and discoveries to the mix. Characters are wide and varied, including anyone from fan-favorites such as Elizabeth, to dastardly villains like Davy Jones, each with their own special abilities. Middle Earth is home to a multitude of memorable locations, creatures, and characters, and all of them are recreated within Lego Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s masterpiece is known for it’s epic scale and over-arching story, and this is transferred meticulously to the Lego recreation of Lord of the Rings.
Traveller’s Tales themselves has said that the trademark slapstick humour of the Lego series had to be toned down in favour of Middle Earth’s grand and serious narrative. The open world of this game is packed with collectibles, and is a wonderful representation of what Middle Earth would look like in the vibrant and blocky world of Lego. The magical world of Harry Potter collided with the Lego universe first in June 2010, and contained scenes from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, all the way up to “Goblet of Fire”. Fast forward one year later and the second game, encapsulating “Order of the Phoenix” through “The Deathly Hallows”, was released for Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita, PC, Wii and the DS. Both games were instantly considered some of the best Lego games available, with reviewers praising the games’ uses of the film’s soundtrack, classic Lego humor, and the replayability value especially after the main story is finished. Before there was Minecraft, there was Lego Creator.
Creator was a critically acclaimed sandbox game released in October 1998 for PC, and is lauded as one of the best Lego games. Giving the player control over a buildable world, this game was made to be a duplication of the physical toy, and featured a bunch of content packs to add more functionality to the game. It was also given two sequels in the form of Lego Creator: Knights’ Kingdom and Lego Creator: Harry Potter, which added new buildables and items into the mix. The Star Wars franchise is one of the cornerstones of our generation, and has laid the foundation for every science fiction and action movie following the release of “A New Hope” in 1977. There have been numerous games based off the space opera, with Star Wars: Battlefront, Rogue Squadron, and The Force Unleashed to name a few. But, there has been no Star Wars game quite as memorable, chaotic, and whimsical as Lego Star Wars. Featuring spins on each and every movie in the saga, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga won us over as one of the best Lego games with its quirky sense of humor, infectious co-op gameplay, and epic selection of characters ranging from known characters such as Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and R2-D2, to downright hated characters like Jar Jar Binks.
The complete saga is a classic. Super heroes are in incredibly high demand right now, with Marvel’s cinematic universe leading the super-powered takeover of the movie industry. This collision of colossal names is a match written in the stars as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Spider Man, and Wolverine enter the blocky world of Lego. With a selection of around 150 characters, Lego has truly outdone themselves with this spectacle of a game, and the sheer delight of seeing classic superheroes in Lego form is not to be missed. The game features an open world, fully functioning co-op mode so you can come up with the wackiest of character combos, and side quests narrated by Deadpool. Lego Marvel Super Heroes is not only the best of the best Lego games, but a love letter to fans of both Lego and the superhero universe. – – – – – – – - Seriously, the Lego game franchise is filled with so many gems, it’s hard to keep track of them all. This is only our top 10 list of the best Lego games, but maybe we missed one of your best Lego games?