Lego Rock Raiders

Beneath the surface of an alien planet, precious energy is mined and your crew of miners in yellow helmets faces rock, lava and underground monsters. Lego Rock Raiders brings the construction-set line of the same name into a world of strategy and exploration, where survival underground matters as much as mining.

The game combines strategic and action elements. You command a team of miners, manage the mining of raw materials, build a base and its equipment, and at the same time you must deal with the pitfalls of the underground. On the PlayStation the game is closer to a more action-oriented, more direct approach to controlling units and vehicles than the concurrent computer version offered, which corresponds to the capabilities of the console and its controller.

The title was released in the late 1990s as part of the wave of licensed Lego games and connected with the then-current Rock Raiders product line, that is, a series of construction sets about a mining crew. It was one of Lego's more ambitious attempts at the strategy and building genre, which stood apart from the simpler family racing.

Culturally, Lego Rock Raiders is an interesting testament to how broadly the brand was experimenting at the time. Alongside racing and adventure, it also tried the more demanding genre of resource management and strategy, and did so with its own space theme, which had its construction-set source as well as an animated and comic-book expansion.

On the console the game had to cope with how to transfer complex strategic controls to a gamepad. The result is an experience that is somewhat more action-oriented and more straightforward, but still retains a core of building and mining. For fans of bricks and strategy from that time it is a distinctive and today rather forgotten piece.

Why play it: If you are interested in an unconventional strategic detour in the history of Lego games, where you mine, build and fight deep beneath the surface of an alien planet.