Day Three: Lego Everything

Browsing Barnes and Noble is rather dangerous.  Not only can one get lost for hours on end, but you also run into such items as Lego Harry Potter books, or Lego Star Wars books, or Lego Pirates of the Caribbean books, or even Lego Batman books.  It's like a trip to the past when Legos were the most awesome and creative thing a kid could own.  Epic battles and nations could be created on a massive scale using little yellow people with peg heads and clamp-like hands.  I used to love building expansive castles and imagining a siege complete with engines of war and soldiers of fortune.  But today there are so many damn Lego adaptations that it'll make your head spin.  Of course this phenomenon isn't confined only to the physical blocks, but also expands to the digital world.  If we have Legos to play and build with in real life, why do we need them also in video game form?

I enjoyed Lego Star Wars, in fact I liked running around as R2D2 and building useful objects out of bricks, but little did I know that it was just the beginning.  Next we saw Lego Batman, a decent game in its own right, but it's the same damn thing.  That's the problem with these games, there's no fucking difference between one or the other.  Whether you're Batman, Luke Skywalker, or Indiana Jones you're building the same useless crap in the same environments with the same controls.  I could see creating a sequel to a successful game franchise, but why did it need to escalate to the monstrosity it is today?  It's like you have a decent cheeseburger with all of the fixings: ketchup, mustard, lettuce, and all the other junk, so you decide to make it again.  Only the next time you make it, it turns out a little less tasty and you change the combination of the toppings.  If this happens time and time again you'll eventually reach the outcome that your burger is essentially a piece of shitty beef that you've eaten too many times only with the toppings being swapped.  That's what our Legos have been reduced to.  The only logical limit is a shitheap, or in this case, Lego Universe.