LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Wii)

LucasArts and Traveller's Tales happened upon an alchemical combination of nostalgia with the 2005 release of Lego Star Wars, a jovial action adventure game that mined a pan-generational affection for both George Lucas' space opera and those colorful Danish building blocks. Its 2006 sequel was better, largely because it was based on the original trilogy rather than the prequels. Now Traveller's Tales has wrapped the contents of both games into a single package with Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. That's a great deal of content, and if you haven't played either Lego Star Wars games, this is a solid package made even better by improved graphics, new levels, and online cooperative play. If you have played either Lego Star Wars games, though, you'll be getting a lot of recycled content here, which makes The Complete Saga harder to recommend.

The basic appeal of Lego Star Wars is that it lets you act out some of the more memorable Star Wars moments with cute little Lego people, a concept that hits so many different nostalgia triggers with such precision that it almost seems sinister. The game itself is an action adventure with a heavy focus on puzzle-solving and cooperative play, often at the same time. You'll make your way through the Naboo palace, the cloning facility on Kamino, the streets of Mos Eisley, the corridors of the Death Star, and other distinct locales, with a small party of various characters in tow. While there are literally dozens of characters that you can unlock and play as, they all fit neatly into a few different character classes, each with unique and appropriate abilities.

Though you can control only one character at a time, you can switch between which character you're controlling on the fly, and much of the game is deliberately designed to force you to switch back and forth between characters often, making full use of their various abilities. Of course, all the characters and vehicles, and large portions of the environments, are made out of Legos, which creates a surreal, playful kind of aesthetic. It also figures into the gameplay pretty often, as you often have to build objects to progress. The game breaks away from the action adventure format on occasion for a vehicle sequence, such as the pod race from The Phantom Menace or the attacks on the Death Star. They're rarely as polished or intuitive as the action when you're on foot, but they work well enough and break up the action nicely.

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