The Lego series of games have been lampooning well-known movie franchises for years and in this latest outing have taken on one of the newest and biggest of all in Lego Harry Potter, but how do Lego wizards stand up to plastic Jedi, Joneses and Batmen?

I’m a recent convert to the Lego series and over the past year have worked my way through the back catalogue of titles. As you play through each you see a slow, steady sense of progression in the games. Nothing tangible changes very much; the puzzles follow a fairly similar routine each time, the level design follows a very similar logic. But each time the games feel a little bit more polished and a little bit more complete, as if the problems are being ironed out one by one with each new release.

Some of the puzzles are shifted more towards Lego than Harry Potter, so look a little bit out of character, but add a different set of puzzles into the mix—puzzles with more than one possible solution.

They are mainly used when traversing the environment (e.g. getting to a higher ledge) and you’ll be given a couple of generic Lego pieces that look a bit like they dropped out of Tetris. You then use your magic to move them around to any shape that will allow you to climb up to the next level. Unfortunately the game still herds you down a couple of routes as the pieces ‘lock’ in when they’re in a suitable shape, so aren’t as creative or open-solution as they seem.

In the Harry Potter films, unlike the other titles, the locations don’t vary much and a lot of the story takes place inside Hogwarts, so that’s what happens in the game. Unlike the previous games where you jump in and out of chapters from a hub the game is structured more like a story with a better feeling of immersion than before. You get to know the main grounds of Hogwarts quite well and you’re subtly guided around by the resident ghosts to classes to learn new spells and continue the story. As you walk around you’ll spot areas which are blocked off by a goblin, or a silver shiny padlock, or a glass door, which you know you’ll be able to go through later in the game once you’ve learned the next spell.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is a massive game with a great co-op mode which makes you wonder why people ever play platformers alone. It looks nice (despite a bit of shearing still rearing its head) and the puzzles and environments are all very polished, not just for a kid’s game but for a game in general. Other developers and gamers alike can learn an awful lot from Traveller’s Tales, particularly that kid’s games don’t have to be knocked out cheaply in 5 minutes and you can have fun without gritty realism and buckets of blood.