While playing with Lego playsets as a kid was always fun, everyone knows the best part was mixing those boxes together and having a pirate take on an army of dinosaurs as the Millennium Falcon swooshed overhead. Lego Dimensions is meant to recreate that feeling of nonsensical childhood bliss by bringing together beloved pop culture properties into a single game, so Batman can take aim at the Scarecrow (from The Wizard of Oz) while Gandalf laughs about it in the background. Just like you remember.

The game's story is built to accommodate all that world-mixing, as it's kicked off by a villain creating transdimensional travel for the express purpose of kidnapping famous characters we all know and love. Specifically, famous characters from Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Portal, and plenty more. In preparation for Dimensions' release for every major console (including Xbox 360 and PS3) on September 27th, we've gotten a chance to dig through Lego's toy box and see what the game has in store. We're ready to share that all with you, and not just because our moms told us to.

I know we've all been staring forlornly at our Skylanders, amiibo, and Disney Infinity figures wondering when the next toys-to-life franchise will come around, and bless Lego Dimensions for being the next to deliver. Of course, in less cheeky terms, Lego is uniquely qualified to work within the format, since they've been making both parts of the equation for years.

The game's accompanying portal (which you build from bricks before you start playing) works the way you would expect, acting as a stage where you can place whatever characters you want to load into the game. However, Dimensions' portal is unique in that it's divided into three parts, and will make it possible to move up to seven characters (or objects, but more on that later) between those three sections at will. In fact, that becomes an important part of the game in some situations; during boss fights, for instance, a red light will flash under one segment when the boss attacks the characters standing there, and their hold can be broken by moving the figures to another space. Someone should tell Dorothy that all you need to beat the Wicked Witch's magic is to move over a square.

During my time with the Dimensions' demo, I had far too much fun taking Scooby Doo on a joyride through the Lego-fied poppy fields of Oz (while he's covering his eyes, naturally) before crashing into a fight with the Wicked Witch over a crystallized piece of the universe. That reality-smushing is not only a common occurrence in Dimensions, but is meant to be the driving force of the game, as you experience fourteen different worlds crashing together in humorous, light-hearted ways. Specifically, you'll see memorable places and faces from The Simpsons, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Portal, Jurassic World, Midway Arcade, Lego Chima, Scooby-Doo!, DC Comics, Lord of the Rings, The Lego Movie, The Wizard of Oz, Ninjago, and Back to the Future, all interacting as your additional playset figures allow.

Integrating this many franchises could be risky, because time constraints could mean that there's little time to treat each property with the respect it deserves. But Dimensions seems to be on the right path so far, as it puts real care was put into integrating different pieces of these stories well. The poppies in Oz make characters sleepy, the cartoony look of the Scooby-Doo world matches the original show, and transdimensional madness takes hold of Middle Earth while Gandalf is fighting the Balrog. Plus, the game contains original music from its source material and voice performance from some characters' original actors, showing a commitment to treating these tales with respect. We won't know for sure until the game is released this fall, but the fact that few moments go by without Batman being comically grumpy makes me hopeful.

As much fun as a Lego game can be, it just doesn't feel quite right if there isn't a building component involved. Lego Dimensions not only lets you build your own block creations, but actually takes it out of the digital realm and does what Lego does best: lets you build with actual blocks you hold in your hands.

Each playset comes with at least one vehicle that's built out of a series of Lego blocks, and it will need to be transformed into something new depending on what function you need it to serve. The Delorean, for instance, has one form to emphasize speed and another that gives off bursts of electricity, both of which could be super handy in the right circumstance. In order to change the vehicle in the game, you'll have to take it apart in real life and physically build it into what you want it to be, based on a digital version of Lego's familiar schematics. You're admittedly limited in what you can create (with each auto sporting three transformations maximum), and the game can only do so much to confirm you actually rebuilt your car, so it's forced to take you at your word when you say you did it. That could make the mechanic feel gimmicky in the long run, since it doesn't actually affect the gameplay in a measurable way, but it could still be fun for players who enjoy the novelty of putting a controller down to play a game to the fullest.

While there are plenty of playable figures planned for Dimensions, the story will following the antics of Batman, Gandalf and Wyldstyle, showing the eclectic mix you can expect from the overall game and banking on The Lego Movie's popularity in one go. Each loses a friend in the game's opening (Robin for Batman and Frodo for Gandalf), which is what sends them on their journey through the game's many worlds.

These three characters will come in a starter pack with the game portal and the Batmobile, giving you plenty of stuff to play with right off the bat <(i>ha). Each has unique special abilities that help you progress through the many worlds you'll visit, like using a Bathook to pull apart obstructions or using Wyldstyle's master builder powers to uncover hidden keys. They'll be the primary focus of any story-based cutscenes as they work to recover pieces of dimension energy and rescue the captive Lego characters of the universe. Expect a colony of bat puns along the way.

Of course, that doesn't mean that our three heroes will be the only stars of this show. At any point you can introduce characters from other playsets into your game, letting them tag along beside the main three or having them act as your primary character. Each extra pack will also come with a vehicle that can be loaded into the game (like the Batmobile or the Mystery Machine) and driven by any of the characters, which you'll need for a variety of missions throughout.

Sadly there doesn't appear to be a co-op options as of yet, so the seven characters and/or vehicles will act as additional bodies that a lone player can switch between as they desire. But that presents an interesting new dynamic that hasn't been seen in toys-to-life games up until this point, so having a RPG-like party to control according to your wishes could prove interesting and fresh. And hey, if you can control Scooby Doo and immediately flip to Wonder Woman, I'm all for it.