Two-Thumbed Time Bandit

What is it about seeing beloved film characters depicted as squat and square little stump-legged waddlers that is so damn cool?

Legos has created quite the empire of games, with Star Wars and Indiana Jones, due out this summer. When I first heard about the Star Wars game, I thought "aw - that'll be great for the kiddies."

A year later, I'm playing Legos Star Wars The Complete Saga. Egad! I've succumbed to the Lucas ploy of buying the same thing twice! I have The Original Trilogy, loved it, and still went out and bought The Complete Saga, which has The Original Trilogy and prequel trilogy both. What a maroon!

It's a tough game for me because I'm an OCD gamer. So going through it was hard because I was so frustrated by not being able to get all the Lego Canisters, Studs (money), and other goodies like Power Bricks.

Guess I should explain how it works: First, you go through the game guided by the Story. You collect your canisters, studs, and bricks in between fun little snippets of the movie reenacted with Legos CGI and (very loosely) based on the plot. Then, after playing the entire game, you can go back into Freeplay mode for what you've missed. Or, you can spend your Lego studs on characters to get to areas unavailable in Story mode before then, but it feels like a cop out. Well, it's in Freeplay mode where you can get some of the canisters, and until then you can't have all of them which means you can't get all the Power Bricks. This drives me to clutching my controller a bit too fiercely and twitching. But I'm working on that.

So I have this game and the Original Trilogy to keep me occupied on the Legos front until this summer, when Indiana Jones is due. RockBand, GH3, GTA3 (soon! Ever so soon!), and, I admit, Bejewelled 2, help to round everything out.

But I tripped over this poor film quality, but really fun smash-up of Indiana Jones Legos on YouTube. Damn them. By having the relevant list of videos in the right column, I have seen the hoardes of Legos vids on there. Now I know that all these little videos are out there for me to burn brain cells watching. Maybe you save brain cells when you're charmed and smiling at a program - I mean, you're engaged in it, right? Or you just don't miss them as much with the endorphin's coarsing through the blood and your giggles echoing in the room.

Either way, my gaming has regained its prominent position as a time sucker. If slot machines are the one-armed bandit, my XBox 360 has become my two-thumbed time bandit. And don't even get me started on the Wii.