8 September 2021

Lego Games on consoles - which ones are good, which ones are bad

Lego Games has always been one of my favorites. Not only I loved Lego bricks as a child, the main magnet towards the games is the humour and silliness, along with some well crafted worlds and clever situations. The story isn't a plus for me in games, if I want a good story I watch a movie, or better read a book. Even so some of the Lego Games have reasonable crafted stories anyway, and the ones based on licensed properties sometimes are successful in following the original story.

There's a reasonable gap around 2012 between the games. Previous to this date games had no dialogs and the story was told by animated sketches with grunts. After 2012 games have voice dialogs to convene the story. I do think the humour was much better and generally more accomplished on the older games. This was far more difficult to do, as it's like the difference between making humour in silent movies and movies with recorded sound.


Console games


2007


Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga


This is a compilation of the 2 original games of what can be considered a "Lego game" (2005's Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and 2006's Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy). They're both really well done games with lots of humour, silly situations and some good intros. The plot line of the first 6 movies is sparsely followed, it's not perfect but not bad. Graphics and details is largely inferior compared to newer games, but were good for the time and were improved in the compilation from the original GameCube  / PlayStation 2 / Xbox versions. The game engine was in its infancy, several things are still very basic.  It has co-op play but in a limited manner, as both players would be only able to move in a shared window with border limits. Even though it's the first game(s) it's still one of the best and you should really not miss it.


2008


Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

Considering how exceptional the original material for a game that explored humour could be, this one is good but not stellar. It follows sparsely the story of the first 3 movies. There's a few clever ideas but nothing really fancy.

While being inferior to the 2 Star Wars previous games, it's still a good game to play.


Lego Batman: The Videogame

The first super hero based Lego game and it's quite good. The plot is original, and reasonable. It plays differently from previous games, you can play hero and villains missions.

It's much better than Indiana Jones which was released in the same year.



2009


Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

A sequel to the first Indiana game, the first to have trophies on PS3, as the others already had on the xBox 360. IJ and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the worst of the 4 movies, the plot is just dumb and there's less silliness and humour. Not that IJ and the Temple of Doom was a good one either. Although many people love this game I find it inferior to even the first Indiana game.

They added a creator which was more or less useless, and force you to finish a completely pointless and boring replay that adds nothing if you want all achievements / trophies.

This one I would recommend to just skip.


2010


Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4

Telltales being a British company it would have been dreadful if they made a bad Harry Potter game. It doesn't disappoint. They follow the plot of the original story remarkably well. There's plenty of good humour and silliness. The hub is quite good, and is well integrated in the game. Graphics and gameplay that had evolved since the first Star Wars Saga are even better here.

Only downside is that it's a buggy game, thankfully not much at least in my experience, but it's worse than previous ones. They probably tried to push the game engine too much and the problems showed up. It's still one of the Lego games I do recommend that you shouldn't miss, Harry Potter fan or not.


2011


Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

I was probably expecting too much of this one. Having loved the Complete Saga I was hoping this one to be better. The game was reasonable until I got to the first battle between armies, in which you control one side. When I saw it and started playing I was thinking, wow this is amazing. Really, really short excitement time, when I saw how absolutely dreadful and pointless theses missions are it was a absolute pain to do any of them. I thought it would have strategy but there's none, it's mostly dumb as bats squads on your side and vehicles so slow you'll fall asleep driving them, and stellar armies and leaders on the other side. Unless you cheat (hint use Super Speeder) many of the timed battles I think are impossible to achieve. I did try but lost my patience.

The space battles are good and cleverly done. Major drag is that you must return to a central point in the hub to change characters.

Another one I recommend skipping as you'll likely be bored to death to fish the battle missions too.


Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game

I'm not a fan of Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Still like with Harry Potter, clearly there were huge fans of the movies at Telltales and they made a really good game. It has the best humor and silliest situations of all the Lego games. It has very clever and original uses of the game mechanics. It really could be a stellar game. But it's not due to bugs, bugs and more bugs. The game would freeze a ton of times. It finally come to a section in the boat's hull where I had to move bombs, and there it was a absolute nightmare (rebuild of the PS3 disk each time๐Ÿ˜‘๐Ÿ˜). The game would always freeze and I could not progress. When I thought I couldn't finish it  and was going to throw the towel I decided to try another character besides Jack Sparrow, and amazingly the game did not crash. Well it did in other areas, but I was able to finally finish the boat area. Don't use Jack Sparrow unless you need the compass...

If you forget the bugs it's even the best overall, followed by SW complete Saga and both Harry Potter games. Problem is if you're unlucky and get the freezing nightmare...


Lego Harry Potter: Years 5–7

Like the first Harry Potter game this one is very good too. There isn't much to add, just a sequel with the same qualities. And the bugs too unfortunately.

Still highly recommended like the first.


2012


Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

This one had a first: the first Lego game to add dialog. Original dialogs, since Lego Batman games have original stories.


Lego The Lord of the Rings

Another first: not dialogs, that were launched in the previous game, but movie dialogs, with scenes using original dialogs from the movie.



2013


Lego Marvel Super Heroes


Lego City Undercover


2014


The Lego Movie Videogame


Lego The Hobbit


Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

 

2015


Lego Jurassic World


Lego Dimensions


2016


Lego Marvel's Avengers


Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens


2017


The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game


Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2


Lego Worlds


2018

Lego The Incredibles


Lego DC Super-Villains


2019


The Lego Movie 2 Videogame



Portable console games


2013


Lego Legends of Chima: Laval's Journey


2014


Lego Marvel Super Heroes: Universe in Peril


Lego Ninjago: Nindroids


2015


Lego Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin



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