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I suppose it's part of my American identity but one of my video game weaknesses is video game currency. It makes games just a bit more addicting for me whether I'm collecting Grand Theft Auto dollars, Ratchet and Clank bolts, Devil May Cry orbs, or even Metal Gear Solid 4 Drebin Points. I'll crawl out onto a raging battlefield to scoop up dropped guns for those puppies even though I almost never need to use them. It's found money, so how can I just walk away? The sound is a key part of it, too. The blips of Drebin Points and whoomp of Devil May Cry orbs can't hold a candle to the king of game currency -- Ratchet and Clank bolts. The jangling of those bolts as you scoop them up and they literally float into your account must've been designed by someone with some serious psychology chops. The clicking of the studs in Lego Star Wars probably comes in second mostly because I liked Legos so much as a kid.

Recently while taking a jaunt through Lego Star Wars on the PS3 to see what I hadn't yet unlocked I switched on all the multipliers like I usually do. As a word of advice, don't save up your studs for a higher level multiplier. Buy the lower ones first. Why? They stack, that's why. So instead of holding out for a x8, grab the x2, x4, and x6 and watch the money roll in at an eye-popping x48. Grab the x8 and leap to x384, and you'll have the x10 to take you to to mind-blowing x3840 in no time. You end up earning tens of millions in an ordinary level without even trying and more cash than you can possibly spend.

While unlocking various things I hit the cash limit in the game of four billion studs. That's a four with nine zeroes after it, and it's a big number that rather ominously sits at the top of the screen no matter what I pick up. I guess it's OK that it maxes out there -- I've long since run out of things I can buy with it -- but the game's appeal has fallen a bit as a result. I still want to make it through the challenge levels and so on, but it would've been nice to keep racking up the studs while doing so. Even now on those rare occasions when I play the game with my daughter she wants to know how many "coins" we picked up. It's good to know she's a chip off the fan of the old lego blocks, and maybe to get the magic back we might start another saved game. Nah. We'll have other games to play together soon.