Highlights

• LEGO games offer a variety of experiences, from theme park simulation to kart racing to open-world adventures.
• Some beloved LEGO games that merge movie universes with LEGO's signature offbeat tone.
• Of note is LEGO Dimensions, a crossover extravaganza, featuring popular IPs like Back to the Future, DC Comics, and Harry Potter.

LEGO is one of the world's largest brands, but it didn't get there overnight. Much like the fiddly building blocks that made its name, the company's rise was a gradual one that had to be done piece by piece; first refining their core toy products, and then expanding into other media, such as (truly excellent) films and more video games than you can shake a cheese slope at.

Principally headed by TT Games, essentially every entertainment IP under the sun has received a brickified adaptation – though there are, of course, some fab LEGO games not married to any property at all. Which of these digital plastic playthings is the cream of the toybox crop? Let's find out!

For the purposes of this list, we'll be sticking to console and PC titles that received a full-budget release. This is simply to narrow our scope, since there are countless LEGO browser games, one-off phone games, and promotional movie tie-ins etc. – we'd be here forever!

10 Legoland

Polymer-Based Rollercoaster Tycoon

A bit of a cult favourite among those who grew up with it, this oft-forgotten PC theme park sim aims to replicate the success of Rollercoaster Tycoon, with pretty decent results. The setup is simple: the batty Professor Voltage has destroyed Legoland with his latest experiment, so it's up to you (under the watchful eye of CEO Jonathan Ablebody, voiced by UK TV darling Justin Fletcher) to restore it to its former glory.

A vast array of real-world Legoland rides, like the Spinning Spider and Dragon Coaster, are at your disposal. There's also a surprising amount of depth to the management side of things, as you balance restaurant costs with ticket prices to keep the throngs of minifigure visitors happy.

9 LEGO Racers

A LEGO Kart-Racing Spin-Off

Well, it wouldn't be a popular IP without a kart-racing spinoff, would it? LEGO Racers puts you in the shoes of a plucky, up-and-coming rookie who pits himself against Rocket Racer, lord of all things karting. To even get a chance to face him, you've got to beat such eccentric characters as Captain Redbeard and Basil the Bat Lord.

On its surface, it's a Mario Kart clone. All the trappings are here: wacky courses with hidden shortcuts, weapons and items to get you ahead, irritating rubber-band AI. But there are some neat wrinkles that make it stand out, like a risk-reward system, where the longer you hold off on using a pickup, the stronger it gets. The less said about the janky open-world sequel, the better, though.

8 LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Establishing The Formula LEGO Games Would Follow

It cannot be overstated what a formative text LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga was for an entire generation. As the first foray into the TT Games Legoverse, it established a near-perfect formula that's still being iterated on to this day, melding the beloved Star Wars galaxy with a quirky, offbeat tone.

You'll play through all (at the time) six mainline films, lovingly rendered in fantastic plastic. Duelling Darth Maul in the Naboo power plant, hopping across the burning crags of Mustafar, blowing the Death Star – it's all here, and all utterly hysterical. Top that off with a staggering character roster (even Dexter frickin' Jettster is playable) and a metric tonne of collectible minikits to hoover up, and you've got a bona fide classic.

7 LEGO Marvel Superheroes

LEGO Marvel's Open-World Outing

By the 2010s, the TT Games format had begun to grow a little stale. Sure, it was pure, distilled fun, but we were pushing 15 titles in that style and starting to fancy something new. Enter LEGO Marvel Superheroes, which bucked the established trend by featuring a full-on open-world New York City, as opposed to the glorified level-select hubs we'd grown accustomed to. It's a heartfelt love letter to the comic book world, with every corner of the vast Marvel empire represented to some degree.

Where else will you be able to leap from the SHIELD Helicarrier as Howard the Duck, parachuting down into Central Park, before holding a taxi driver up with a bazooka and going on a joyride? Likewise, chucking yourself about as Hulk was amazing, smashing down buildings and throwing trucks with reckless abandon. The actual storyline, too, bolsters the package, as heroes and villains alike team up to take down a rampaging Galactus.

6 LEGO Rock Raiders

LEGO's First Real-Time Strategy

Based on the short-lived LEGO theme of the same name, Rock Raiders offers up fun of a more cerebral sort. You're tasked with ensuring the titular mining team complete their missions and retrieve valuable energy crystals, which of course are situated in some of the most dangerous cave systems ever to grace the Earth. It's up to you to decide who to send out, who's worth rescuing from rockslides (and, brutally, who isn't) and manage your resources efficiently.

Wrenches are occasionally thrown into the mix in the form of attacking monsters, who must be repelled with the appropriate equipment, lest you lose your crystal hauls. It's not going to win any awards for depth, but it does get surprisingly tense, especially since your all-seeing chief grades you on your performance – and it affects the ending.

5 LEGO Lord Of The Rings

A Plastic Wizard Is Never Late, Nor Is He Early

A gigantic missed opportunity in the sphere of Lord of the Rings video games was that, for a very long time, there were no titles offering a seamless Middle-Earth to wander. For such a richly realised world, both on the page and in Peter Jackson' filmography, it seemed a concept ripe for the taking. Trust TT Games to step up to the plate, then.

Adapting the first three movies (the Hobbit entries would get their own, inferior, adaptation), it's as big a map as a Tolkien-head could want. You can recreate the entire journey of the Fellowship with zero loading screens; walking from Bilbo's house, to Bree, then onto Rivendell, Helm's Deep and Mordor. It's magical, engrossing, and stuffed with hidden goodies – secrets that, for once, don't deserve to be kept.

4 LEGO Dimensions

Toys-To-Toys-To-Life

A major trend in the 2010s was that of the toys-to-life genre. For about five years, these things were inescapable – with reams of plastic figurines weighing down store shelves, waiting to be purchased and beamed into their respective games. LEGO threw their hat into the ring with LEGO Dimensions, and arguably had more of a leg-up than competitors like Skylanders and Disney Infinity, given that they're already a well-known toy brand to begin with.

Dimensions' main hook was intoxicating: it was an absolute smorgasbord of a crossover IP-fest, with TT Games courting any property they could lay their mitts on. Here's a brief list: Back to the Future, DC Comics, Scooby-Doo, Doctor Who, Sonic the Hedgehog, Portal, Ghostbusters, Adventure Time, Mission Impossible, Harry Potter, The Simpsons. And that's just scratching the surface. Pricey? Yep, but if you can find the bits for cheap, it's a nerdgasm like no other.

3 LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

The Definitive Way To Experience LEGO Star Wars

The Skywalker Saga had by far the biggest turnaround time of any TT Games LEGO project, taking more than five years to put together and riddled with delays. Once you sit down to play the thing, it soon becomes clear why. This is a truly gigantic experience, dwarfing the already-substantial Complete Saga in basically every way, and it puts some truly revolutionary spins on the aged formula.

All nine mainline films are now represented, and the action has shifted to a third-person, behind-the-shoulder view, allowing for greater complexity of combat. Enemies are now rocking health bars, and there are combos and shooting mechanics to mess with. Additionally, the entire galaxy is yours to roam, with more than thirty planets to touch down on and relieve of collectibles. You can even get into dogfights with huge capital ships out in space, subsequently capturing them for your own fleet. As Yoda would intone: a great game, this is.

2 LEGO City Undercover

The First True Open-World LEGO Game

LEGO Marvel may have toyed (heh) with the idea of an open world, but the IP-free LEGO City Undercover absolutely runs with it. It's Grand Theft Auto a la LEGO, complete with shameless vehicle-jacking, and is one of the most raucously funny video games ever made. "Seven? At that age, he'd have still been in preschool!" declares a detective. "Elementary, my dear fellow," replies his colleague, dressed like Sherlock Holmes.

You play Chase McCain, a veteran cop who's summoned back to LEGO City to deal with an escaped criminal, Rex Fury, with whom he has a past. Small-time crime sprees soon spiral into a mesmerisingly complicated plot, with twists and turns that'll catch you off guard throughout its generous 20-hour runtime. LEGO City itself is a joy to roam, with twenty districts to comb over in your cop car. Sequel, please.

1 LEGO Island

The One That Started It All

Perhaps we're suckers for nostalgia. The very first video game, of any description, to bear the LEGO brand name, LEGO Island was a cornerstone of many childhoods. By modern standards, it's astonishingly rudimentary, being little more than a series of still images and grainy canned animations; but dang it, it's got charm.

Selecting one of a handful of characters, including the "dude with the food" himself, Pepper Roni, you simply muck around this sleepy little LEGO hamlet, engaging in a few banal tasks. Building a car, delivering pizzas and chatting with the local postie are about as exciting as things get – unless you happen to free the dastardly Brickster.