For some parents, the idea of kids sitting down in front of a Lego-branded video game might be baffling: isn't the point of Lego that it's not on a screen? But the mega-success of Minecraft – based on building things out of blocks with different colours and properties – proves that Lego and video games have been influencing each other for at least a decade. There are now Minecraft-branded Lego sets: a real-life toy influencing a game that becomes a real-life toy again. Many official Lego games have come out of a cross-pollination. Since the mid-90s there have been more than 50 of them, the most recent being this week's Lego The Incredibles, based on the Pixar film.

It won't surprise you to learn that Lego Ninjago Movie: The Video Game is a video game based on the Lego Ninjago Movie. If that does come as something of a revelation, then you might want to turn elsewhere. What may come as something of a shock is that, far from being a quick cash-in, the Lego Ninjago Movie: The Video Game (LNM:TVG from here on for the sake of brevity and sanity) is actually pretty decent, refreshing the Lego game formula and introducing some new concepts. LNM:TVG follows the plot of its namesake film, so much so in fact, that large chunks of cutscenes are simply ripped from the movie itself. It follows a group of trainee ninja's in the city of Ninjago, which is facing an impending threat from the evil Garmadon and his gang of nautical henchmen.