I ignore the online games for the point of critique.
There's two distinct periods of LEGO games; the Classic and the Modern. Modern is when Tt Games took the reigns, make a killing off LEGO Star Wars and forever forced the stuffty formula upon the unwitting idiots of the world forever more. It has the most generic crap, compared to the Classic Era. The only real standouts are the original, since that was new at the time, and potentially LEGO Universe, but it wasn't a saint.
The Classic Era, on the other-hand, was different developer groups making radically different games. forget, even games in the same franchise were radically different; compare the Arcade LEGO Racers 1 to the Open World LEGO Racers 2. Hell, did you know that LEGO Rock Raiders PC was an RTS while the PS1 version was a radically different, 3rd Person Action-Adventure? The uniqueness of each game meant that their flaws would never drag and tear; it made each game feel special and homely. I remember all my classic game experiences, but none of my modern game experiences.
The best games are hardest to pick out. The worst ones of each era are easy; Classic is LEGO Island 2 (with LEGO Creator: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as close competition for the title), Modern is LEGO Movie Videogame. The worst franchise is also easy; LEGO Bionicle (the online games were the best of the best that LEGO had to offer, but the PC games (Bionicle: The Game and Bionicle: Heroes, potentially also the cancelled one) were absolutely abysmal.
So, what's my absolute favourite? Probably LEGO Racers 2. If I had to pick only from the Modern selection, maybe LEGO Jurassic World as it plays to my childhood obsession bias for the JP franchise, and it has the least amount of combat of all Tt games (and Tt's combat system is the worst bit of the formula which makes me want to off myself). But LJW would be far, FAR low in the list of my ordered favourites as there just so many amazing classic games to pick from that pushed the bar forward before Tt knocked it off completely.
