LEGO Batman: The Videogame

LEGO Batman: The Videogame brought Traveller's Tales' tried-and-tested recipe to PSP – take a serious comic-book mythology apart into bricks and turn it into humorous family fare. Unlike previous LEGO adaptations of Star Wars or Indiana Jones, though, there's no film source here for the game to retell; instead, the developers wrote their own story built on the core archetypes of Batman's world, from the Joker to the Penguin to Two-Face, and split the campaign into two separate halves, playable both as the heroes from the Batcave and as their adversaries operating out of Gotham City's underground.

The structure stays true to the series: you progress through themed chapters, smash the environment into bricks, build new objects out of them, and solve simple puzzles that require switching between the abilities of different characters – Batman is suited to combat and stealth, Robin to acrobatics and electronics, while villains like the Joker or Two-Face bring their own gadgets and access to otherwise unreachable parts of the levels. Alongside the linear missions, the game also offered free movement around a hub with the ability to unlock further characters and brick bonuses, extending its lifespan beyond the completion of the main campaign. The portable version had to scale back audiovisually compared to the console releases, but the core gameplay loop of collecting, building, and cooperative humor remained intact.

For PSP owners, this was one of the few LEGO adventures they could take anywhere with them, and the game worked well as brisk, undemanding entertainment for a train ride or a waiting room, with no need to have followed the plot of the earlier films or know the details of the comic-book mythology.

Why play it: A portable brick-built romp through Gotham City that delivers Batman-flavored humor even without knowledge of the film source.