Staci and I have been away from RVA visiting the families this past week. By visiting, I primarily mean sitting on their couches doing next to nothing, but that was the entire point really. We weren’t really keen on doing anything in particular.

Last night I went to my parent’s house for the first time in a little over a year and I came face to face with the sheer volume of accumulated stuff I have left there. We moved to this house when I was in college and my brother graduated from high school. You wouldn’t know it from the sorts of things we’ve saved. Piled in heaps and buckets and scattered across the basement floor are all number of toys spanning nearly my entire life. Things we probably should have gotten rid of, but never managed to do so.

It starts with a few beloved franchises. A box of Transformers, for instance, or old Star Wars figures. There’s no way we can just throw those out. Those are collector’s items, and positively soaking in sentimental value. But, since we’re keeping Han Solo we might as well hang on to Funshine Bear over here. I mean, there’s plenty of room here. And things pile, and pile, and pile. My parents are equally guilty of this, having their own piles of things, but it being their house they have the right.

The action figures, though, are only the least anguishing tip of the iceberg. While I certainly love many of them, they cannot compete with the towering edifice of my LEGO collection.

I have loved the LEGO brick since I was a wee lad. I still remember my first set (6364 Paramedic Unit) and that I never built it. The same Christmas I also acquired a red plastic LEGO brand carrying case and promptly dumped the set into the tub and never looked back. In time, I would end up building the model for which instructions had been provided at least once before enjoining the new parts with my ever-burgeoning collection.

It was the Star Wars sets that broke me the hardest though. I hadn’t so much as walked past the LEGO aisle in a store until an ex-girlfriend brought home the X-Wing set to which we soon added the Y-Wing and A-Wing sets. That’s when the obsession took hold and I would find myself shuffling around department stores looking for sales or making trips to outlet malls to look for deals (I’ve barely forgiven myself for letting the TECHNIC Space Shuttle slip out of my fingers).

But now we have a smaller house, we’re still thinking about moving, and I’m eager to get myself onto a budget that works so we might stop living so close to our paychecks. The question arises: What do I do with all of this that I have acquired? Can I bear to sell such a beloved collection? Might that actually give me peace of mind to let go? Neither the letting go, nor the movement of storage of my heap give me any comfort as I think about them now.

Some time last week I got a call from the LEGO Consumer Services division. I had been making a short list in my head about possible cake toppers for, you know, the wedding when I came across something in a photo set on Flickr that I knew I just had to have. So, I wrote them a letter and last week I got a call.

He was just calling to let me know that the cake topper is a special gift to their core LEGO fans and wanted to know what color I would like the base in. I chose red, for reasons that will become obvious to anyone attending the event or viewing the photos. Yay LEGO!

Unused, but by no means rejected, cake topper ideas:

• Fisher-Price Little People
• Han Solo & Princess Leia
• Rosie the Riveter & (undecided)

It occurs to me that this is precisely the sort of game that I would have been thrilled to play as a wee lad but precisely the sort of game I tend to turn my adult nose up at. It is a licensed game. Hell, it’s a game licensed from a toy line itself licensed from a popular movie trilogy. It’s a double whammy of licensing.

We discerning gamers of the world have good reason to snub the licensed game — though it may well be the bread and the butter of the industry — as it can generally be assumed to be of the basest marketing trash and rushed to market to capitalize on the release of a movie or whatnot. The horror stories of botched games — poorly planned and released prematurely — have been oft repeated and become a part of our collective gamer unconscious. Children, I believe, are immune to such common knowledge as well as reviews. I know I certainly played a fair share of what were probably shoddy NES games based on some cartoon, movie, or other product. A game like this one that combines two of my all-time favorite franchises into one would have sent me absolutely crazy with want.

Of course, I did end up setting aside my prejudice and buying this game (albeit on the cheap) or I wouldn’t be writing this little review. I had read some very positive things beforehand, so I still wasn’t just buying into the franchises. Still though, I’m a bit surprised as just how much fun I had.

LEGO Star Wars is based on the three prequel Star Wars movies. Technically, I suppose it’s based on the LEGO toy line based on the prequel Star Wars trilogy. While playing the game, I had to wonder if that wasn’t actually a wise decision despite the fact Episodes I through III are substantially weaker as films on account of they have so much “video-gamey” content. Look at the droid factory bit from Attack of the Clones. It’s basically a level out of every platformer ever made.

So, LEGO Star Wars is a platformer. You run, jump, double jump, fight, and collect shiny things. It uses established minifigures and models from the Star Wars licensed LEGO line that has been a best seller for the company over the past 7 years or so. As a fellow who has purchased several of these over that time period I can attest that they are spot on recreations of the toy line. True to their plastic nature ships and characters explode into their respective parts upon destruction, bringing me great delight. Most of the game is spent on foot leading a variety of characters through locations seen in the film series though there is a vehicle based level in each of the game’s three film sections. By variety I do mean variety: there are some 40-odd playable characters in LEGO Star Wars. Most are just slight variations on another character, but it’s still fun to choose from such a wide pool. Any game that lets me amble through as a compeletly useless and helpless gonk droid is all right in my book.

The neatest little touch is the attention to both of its licenses. Kudos to developer Traveller’s Tales for taking the time to think about what being made out of LEGO bricks would mean. Central to the LEGO brand is the fact that any creation can be torn down into its parts and rebuilt as something wholly new. LEGO Jedi can use the Force to make things out of bricks laying about. This is the best idea in a video game in the past year. It makes such perfect sense. Brick building is limited to certain pre-defined objects, and all a Jedi character need do is find something that glows and put the Force on it which puts a damper on the creativity inspired by such an inclusion but it’s still awesome.

Okay, there’s no possible way I could ever see spending this much money all at once on a LEGO set, and quite honestly the massive Star Destroyer is probably a more impressive model, but god damn:

Goodness, gracious me!