LEGO Darth Vader and other stuff.

Well, I finally got to be Darth Vader in LEGO Star Wars on Saturday night. On Friday night, I earned "True Jedi Status" on the only chapter I hadn't gotten it on yet (Chapter 4 in Episode 3), unlocking the mystery chapter. I played the mystery chapter on Saturday night. The mystery chapter is the beginning of Episode 4 (Star Wars: A New Hope) where Leia's transport ship is caught by a Star Destroyer and boarded by Vader and his stormtroopers. In the game, I got to be Vader with a single stormtrooper companion. I fought and killed several LEGO Rebel soldiers as I explored the ship. I used the Force (and my lightsaber) to destroy a lot of stuff and used the Force to spell "LEGO" in one room, causing blue studs to rain from the ceiling. I also got C3-P0 out of a glass containment thing and used him to open some doors for me. Finally, I got to enter a room and see Princess Leia interacting with R2-D2 at the end of the chapter. After that, I decided to try some Free Play with Vader on some other levels. I played him on some Episode 1 chapters, fighting Darth Maul at the end of Chapter 6 and retaking Threed in Chapter 5. The interesting thing about Chapter 6 is that the computer player accompanying me changed into Vader itself a few times, including during the final battle with Darth Maul. Imagine that: two Darth Vaders fighting with Darth Maul. For kicks, I played as Vader in Chapter 5 of Episode 1 and had the computer player with me as Anakin (Jedi Apprentice or Jedi Knight?). Of course, in Free Play, the computer player (Player 2) and Player 1 can switch to certain other characters in a set choosen by the game, which made it even more interesting when I discovered I could switch to the child version of Anakin from Episode 1. In that chapter, I could play Anakin in three different forms: child, apprentice, and Darth Vader.

Harry and I went to see Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby on Saturday afternoon. It was a pretty funny movie, and it also had an important lesson: no one wins on their own. Every victor has people standing behind them--friends, teammates, family, teachers, etc--backing them up, encouraging them, or doing the little things that make success attainable.