While you may scoff at yet another "toys-to-life" game, I have to give it up for LEGO Dimensions, as it was one of the first games to truly mix and match franchises all in one place. Sure, you could argue that now Darth Vader and Sully from Monster Inc can roam around the Disney Infinity toy box, but as soon as you boot up an existing Play Set, only their respective characters can participate. That's where LEGO bucks this trend.
As soon as I was whisked away on the grand adventure that first brought me to the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz, I could immediately start using Batman, Scooby and Owen Grady from Jurassic World as my main characters. This was both absurd and totally awesome.
As fro the gameplay, it was still your standard LEGO game, with various puzzles to solve and platforming to overcome, but it also played around with the Portal of Power. This peripheral, which scanned the minifigs into the game was also integral to puzzle solving. Sometime it would correspond with on-screen portals, meaning you had to move your minifigs around. Other times it would paint the minifigs in different colors, which would then activate various switches. It was pretty genius, and definitely one of the most clever implementations of the portal.
As far as franchises go, you had everything from Jurassic World, Scooby Doo, Simpsons, Doctor Who, Chima, Ninjago, DC Comics, LEGO Movie, Lord of the Rings and more. Whenever you obtain at least one character from their respective franchise, it unlocks a fully explorable world based on it, giving players even more to explore and uncover.
I'm also quite fond of LEGO Dimension's approach to new content. Apparently there won't be yearly versions that will always come with a new portal, but instead new packs will constantly be patched into the game. While we still have yet to see if this is indeed how Warner Bros. approaches new content down the line, it would certainly make upgrading much easier, and I won't have a ton of useless portals lying around my house.
