Oh, it's good. It's like, extremely good. A real culmination of nearly twenty years of refinement, taking the best elements of every game, adding some progression systems that only add, never subtract, and work really hard to be funny again! It's exquisite. Full review when I've actually finished it.

The absolute gold standard of the series. The most interesting open world of the lot, but more to the point, TT finally do what they'd threatened to since Batman 2 and set the real levels in the open world itself. For some reason they've not gone back to this format despite it being brilliant - likely because City Undercover started life as a WiiU and 3DS exclusive.

While we're on the subject - the 3DS exclusive is a like-for-like remake of the WiiU version, with the only difference being the world map is sectored off into smaller sections. But all the actual world design is the same! A really impressive feat.

Another total banger. The original story is fun enough to carry you through, but the real fun begins when you finish it and are able to fully explore the open world. Plus, it's the first superhero game that actually feels... good. Marvel's Avengers wishes it was as good as this.

Simplistic by modern standards (the hub is two rooms!) but this game really showed the potential in a formula that continues to this day. Sony have founded and killed studios in the time TT have been making these!
Part of this is definitely nostalgias talking, but coming home when I was just a kid and whiling away the hours getting every golden brick to unlock that final miniland level feels like home.

The progenitor of adding the open world into the lego formula still stands up today as one of the best of the lot. Another really fun original story (which the Lego Batman film cribbed bits from!) with a whole bundle of cool stuff to unlock in Gotham, this is where the series really started taking off.

One of the later games without an open world, instead having multiple large hubs of the different islands from the jurassic park films. This one's a middlign adventure, but the novelty of playing through Jurassic Park helps it stand up. I did have a bug that meant the raptor jump in the Jurassic World levels never worked, though, which meant I couldn't actually beat the game. Ah well.

See full review for more, but overall - not as good as the previous game, but still pretty entertaining. Lots of charming character interactions.

Pretty standard fare entry this, but has the distinction of being one of only 4 games where everything in the environment is made of Lego. The Lego Movie itself is effortlessly charming and that carries over to the game. A swift and breezy ride for fans of the film, although it including clips of the film in place of in-engine cutscenes (before the film came out!) was an odd choice.

The very first game in the series is definitely showing its age now. Mainly famous nowadays for the iconic Lego Yoda Death Sound, it's only really this high in the list for templating the entire series as early as 2005. Something that is sadly lost as the games matured is the purely mimed cutscenes - I don't think the series ever got as funny as the first two games ever again thanks to that.

PLaying this recently is what got me to write this list. You can read my review for more but basically - beta of the marvel open world leaves the game kinda fucked

What a horrendously awkward title!
I played this on switch where it was a technical mess, which I think limited my enjoyment somewhat. If I'd played it on PC I probably would have been interested in exploring the open world, but considering it ran at about 10fps, I decided to save myself the eye strain. The levels are fine - might give it another go some day on PC.

Did absolutely nothing for me, sorry. I think because they took out the open world (despite it being 2's most-praised feature?) and outside of Batman, I could not give less of a fuck about DC.

Like, it's fine. But without fail when the lego games address a single film from a series, it ends up kind of bad. Hopefully Skywalker Saga redeems the origin of the entire endeavour, if it ever actually comes out.

Another one that just didn't tickle me. No attachment to Ninjago, and the open world didn't open itself up at all after the first few levels - it seemed to just want me to keep playing the story then explore at the end. Nah thanks. Oh, and it runs like shit on the PS4 (HOW?)

The second lego movie isn't as good as the first, and this game isn't as good as the first either. There's some meta-world building mechanic which the game explains to you after level 2 and it was way too complicated for the simple nonsense I want out of these. aff

An elegant demonstration that it wasn't just Marvel that carried the original Marvel SUper Heroes. This does the same thing as Batman 3 - removes the open world. It also tries to condense like 8 marvel films into the usual lego number of levels and it feels a complete mess as a result. Hard avoid.