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.LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean is the ninth LEGO video game to be made and the seventh Pirates of the Caribbean video game (fourth console video game).
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean was announced in May, 2010, by Traveller's Tales Jon Burton, and on November 18, 2010, by Traveller's Tales Mark Stone. The game follows the previous LEGO video games: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman and Harry Potter Years 1-4. It was released on May 10, 2011, to coincide with the release of the fourth installment of the film series. It was developed by TT Games and distributed by Traveller's Tales and Disney Interactive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable and Microsoft Windows. LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean is based on the Pirates of the Caribbean Pirates of the Caribbean films: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man's Chest, At World's End, as well as On Stranger Tides, which was released May 20, 2011. It featured over 70 characters from the franchise, and its flagship drop-in, drop-out co-op gameplay. The 3DS version uses the StreetPass feature to activate sword fights. The concept of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game came from the first four Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
The following is a list of characters that are playable in the majority of the game systems. Gameplay is similar to previous Lego games in the series. The game uses the same two player drop in drop out co-op mechanics used in all the Lego games. The hub in this game is called The Port. From here, players advance through the game, unlock characters and extras, and as players get further through the game, The Port will evolve and get bigger, revealing new areas to unlock and discover new things. Like past titles, different characters have different abilities. For example, everyone (except characters like Davy Jones who can walk under water) can swim under water, and members of Davy Jones's can breathe whilst doing so, Captain Jack Sparrow has the ability to use his compass, which points him to hidden items throughout the level, Will Turner has the ability to throw axes at targets to complete objectives, while female characters such as Elizabeth Swann have the ability to jump higher than other characters in order to access areas
unreachable to other characters. The game was officially announced on 18 November 2010. The game was developed by Traveller's Tales and published by Disney Interactive Studios. It was released in May 2011 to coincide with the release of the fourth film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. A demo was released online at the beginning of May 2011. It includes the very first level in the game 'Port Royal'. It is, as the name suggests, set in Port Royal and is based on the first few chapters of "Curse of the Black Pearl", including the scene in which Will duels Jack and when Jack and Will commandeer the Dauntless and then steal the Interceptor. Trailers for all four movie story modes of the game have all been released and a debut and teaser trailers have been released too.GameSpot gave 6.5/10 for PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii, while 6.0/10 for PSP, 3DS, and DS. IGN gave 7.5/10 for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS, while 8.0/10 for 3DS. GameZone gave the Wii version an 8/10, stating "LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean is an impressive action-adventure game that’s fun throughout its entirety.