The Force Unleashed - yes, I know I'm late to the party.

[weemadando]

I've been playing The Force Unleashed - and though I'm only about an hour in I feel that I can already unload some baggage on this one way train to wreck-town. Being a massive Star Wars nerd I could bitch and whine about how this game is inconsistent with the existing canon, or that it just recycles the same environments from every game, novel and film without a hint of originality or thought. But those would be easy swipes - and cheap ones too. Playing as Vader's apprentice is a cool concept and it is the recognisable environments that create an immediate impact and association, which separates this from "generic space game X".

No, the problems I have are with the game mechanics and even the design. None of these make it a bad game, as it is still fun, playable and thus far, it works - but they do prevent it from being anything more than average.

I'll start with the obvious - I have a Lightsaber. Why the hell do my enemies have health bars? When it takes me a combo or two to drop an enemy we know that there is a problem. Because it's a Lightsaber. I should wade into that crowd of rebels and emerge on the other side amongst a light shower of cauterised limbs. Now, like most Star Wars games which have come before it is choosing not to play the dismemberment game, which I find disappointing given it is one of the few settings where you can have a limb cut off and there be no blood to scare the censors, because it's a goddamn Lightsaber. The concession was undoubtedly made for ratings - and as much as I hate that, I can understand it. But it still doesn't solve the health bar problem.

Why have a health bar at all? I can't see many people becoming so deeply invested in this that they are worrying about force power micromanagement and going: "Oh, he only has a 1/5 of his health left, not 1/4 - so I shouldn't use my Sith Slash on him and instead do a Sith Slam to ensure maximum efficiency." The health bar shouldn't even be there, it's distracting and serves no real purpose. I couldn't give a crap what their current health is - they're still standing up and thus I'm still going to liberally apply Lightsaber until they fall over.

I would have preferred to be mowing down greater quantities of less "healthy" enemies - have the game focus on you feeling like the Force-throwing Lightsaber-swinging bad-boy that you are meant to be. Instead, I'm stuck being the only character in the Star Wars universe for whom Stormtroopers are actually a threat. I just cannot get over how incongruous and immersion-busting it is to unload a flurry of Lightsaber death upon some Rebel Scum (TM), only to have them kick you in the chest and knock you down, because they've still got half their health left. It's stupid and I don't want to have to talk about it, but here we are. Thankfully with the terrible "lock on"-system and lack of decent camera controls, you'll rarely see a health bar for the person you're actually trying to hit with your Lightsaber so the whole point is really quite moot.

It just strikes me that the lack of dismemberment in any form and the use of a healthbar has really undercut what could have been a remarkable chance to show off the Euphoria physics/AI stuff. Lets look at GTA IV, where an injured person reacts to their injury or physics interaction and then attempts self-preservation in the environment accordingly. Compare this to Force Unleashed, where Euphoria for enemies is little more than a hopped-up rag doll system and the closest your enemies come to reacting is occassionally grabbing something when you Force Grip them.

And this brings us to the core gimmick of the game: Force Grip. One upon a time when you were stuck in a game, you looked around for the airvent to shoot in order to crawl into it. In this game, you look around for something with a great big glowing aura (or better yet - great big yellow arrows) which you need to Force Grip. And it's here that the game bogs down, as the first time that you drag a yellow arrow across a door it's a case of "heh, that's pretty cool", but the second time you go: "Really? Again? So soon?" Then, by the tenth occurence in the first level of a puzzle relies on "use the Gravity Gun (sorry "Force Grip) to pull the power cord out of the shield generator" you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's 2004 and you're playing Half Life 2. You know, back when this crap was still somewhat new and different.

This tedium is what I fear will stop me from going too far with this game, no matter how much I love Star Wars. Every aspect of this game feels focus tested, like it is was developed to be as safe an investment as possible. And I'm under no illusions that this is how things work and that this is definitely the new LucasArts way. It's just that this board-room-generated-checklist approach has never been as painfully obvious. I'd like to hope that the occassional flashes of inspired design that are in the game haven't been totally wiped out by this lowest-common-denominator approach to development and that I might find something to love. But other things about the game make me question just how well made it actually is.

With the ability to Install to HDD now available on 360, I haven't played a game of disc in quite a while - and being able to hear my 5.1 sound system over the console is a lovely change. And in several games I've noticed a real performance increase in terms of both load times and framerates. Well, if the load times for Force Unleashed when installed are anything to go by, then I am ecstatic that I have it installed and am not just running from the disc.

How can it take the same amount of time to load an options screen in the pause menu as it does to load a level? In a game that relies on upgrades and character advancement, this is not just ridiculous, but passes into the realm of totally goddamn unacceptable. Every time I go to a menu or select and option from a menu it actually has to bring up an honest-to-goodness load screen. And not a quick flash of one, but a nice long load screen. Enough time for you to consciously think: "Man, this is taking a while, has it locked up? I'll check to see if any Friends are online. Oh, only three - and none playing anything I want to. Ah well, back to the game. What? STILL? Come on! How can it take thi- Wait, there we go. Hurrah, now I can adjust the brightness."

And this isn't just while playing the game, this is from the main menu too! It's like someone there thought that Mass Effect's elevators were the greatest innovation in game design since CGA colour and the world needed more of that crap. When a game takes as long to load an options menu as it takes GTA IV to load a city, you know that there is a problem. And I might forgive it if the menus were works of art or somehow remarkable. But they aren't. They're drab and derivative, there is no conceivable reason that they should take so long to load.

I feel like I shouldn't play this game, like I shouldn't waste me time on another pandering grab at my fan-whore money. Maybe I should just go and get Conan or Hellboy or Viking to get my brawler fix. Or go back to Madworld, actually no. Lets not go back to Madworld right now. I'll leave that for next rant.

[Vendetta]

I feel like I shouldn't play this game, like I shouldn't waste me time on another pandering grab at my fan-whore money. Maybe I should just go and get Conan or Hellboy or Viking to get my brawler fix. Or go back to Madworld, actually no. Lets not go back to Madworld right now. I'll leave that for next rant.

Well Conan will at least satiate your need for limbs flying all over the shop.

And then the last boss will bend you over and forcibly sodomise you. With tentacles. And quick time events.

[SylasGaunt]

I've been playing The Force Unleashed - and though I'm only about an hour in I feel that I can already unload some baggage on this one way train to wreck-town. Being a massive Star Wars nerd I could bitch and whine about how this game is inconsistent with the existing canon, or that it just recycles the same environments from every game, novel and film without a hint of originality or thought. But those would be easy swipes - and cheap ones too. Playing as Vader's apprentice is a cool concept and it is the recognisable environments that create an immediate impact and association, which separates this from "generic space game X".

Eh? The environment thing I thought was one of its more winning aspects given that it avoids the Tatooine-Hoth-Dagobah-Yavin trap. Sure Cloud City, Felucia, The Death Star, and Kasshyk are environments we saw in the movies but they're not typical fare for story driven Star Wars games (though many of them do appear in the Battlefront games but then those are trying deliberately to include as many movie battlefields as possible).

Lightsaber Rant

Couldn't agree more. There's no reason not to have that thing at least kill the bog standard stormtroopers in one hit.

How can it take the same amount of time to load an options screen in the pause menu as it does to load a level? In a game that relies on upgrades and character advancement, this is not just ridiculous, but passes into the realm of totally goddamn unacceptable. Every time I go to a menu or select and option from a menu it actually has to bring up an honest-to-goodness load screen. And not a quick flash of one, but a nice long load screen. Enough time for you to consciously think: "Man, this is taking a while, has it locked up? I'll check to see if any Friends are online. Oh, only three - and none playing anything I want to. Ah well, back to the game. What? STILL? Come on! How can it take thi- Wait, there we go. Hurrah, now I can adjust the brightness."

Yes. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell the devteam managed to make it take so long to get to the upgrade screen. I've never seen a game with an upgrade screen that takes that long to get to it.

[Darth Onasi]

On the lightsaber, Vader gave his apprentice a knockoff toy lightsaber he found in Watto's junkyard way back when and confiscated the real one.
This was his punishment for being a cheating rat bastard in Soul Calibur IV. Yep.

[Stark]

Hey guys Star Wars games aren't very good and Unleashed bears only a slight resemblance to Star Wars.

This is news. Somehow. If you're a giant lameo nerd who plays games that suck just out of brand loyalty.

[MKSheppard]

Hey guys Star Wars games aren't very good.

I take it that Stark has never played TIE Fighter?

[Stark]

I take it that Stark has never played TIE Fighter?

Fuck off idiot. TIE Fighter has nothing to do with Star Wars: Beat Em Up. Don't make me list, in alphabetical order, all the shit SW games (ie all of them but TIE Fighter and MAYBE Rebellion if I'm feeling generous). It's not MY fault people post about games months after they come out and say the same shit people said months ago (like OH NOES TEH SABRE IS TEH NERFFED).

[Starglider]

The Rogue Squadron games (at least, II and III, I didn't play the first one) were fairly good. Nothing amazing, but on a par with Blazing Angels 2. Actually III was better because the ground-based missions added variety.

[MKSheppard]

Fuck off idiot.

You can eat shit and die; you said:

Hey guys Star Wars games aren't very good

Hmmm...

X-Wing
TIE Fighter
X-Wing Alliance (I admit I wanted an actual smuggler game, not X-Wing 2.0, but hey...)

Dark Forces (Decent shooter)
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 (Everything past DF2 became more and more jedi wank)

I could probably throw in X-Wing vs TIE Fighter in between TIE Fighter and XWA; but I never played it; so can't comment on it.

[Stark]

LOL you're such a knee jerk retard. Ps Xwing Alliance had a better engine but sucked and you forgot all the Dar Forces games made of poo.

I'm so glad you posted your need to justify SW games as good though.

Starglider, the ground missions might have been a good idea but they SUCKED.

[Starglider]

Starglider, the ground missions might have been a good idea but they SUCKED.

The ones where you were on foot were kinda sucky, but also very easy, so I treated them as amusing interludes rather than actual missions. Like wandering around the mission hub in a console platformer. The AT-ST missions were fun though.

It has been a long time since I played Dark Forces, but I seem to recall it being one of the better Doom clones. KOTOR was a solid RPG as well. You can nitpick those games but I can't see why (a) they're any worse than typical non-SW games of their period and genre or (b) how you could make them any more 'Star Warsy'. Even the Star Wars vector arcade game was cool in its day, I remember eagerly shovelling 20p pieces into that thing when I was eight or so.

So no, I have to agree with Shep in that there are a fair few decent SW games - almost all 20th century ones. The torrent of shit really began when the prequel trilogy started, and it didn't really ramp up until the clone wars became the favored source of EU material.

[Stark]

Even putting aside the idea that XWA and DF were 'good', the idea that anyone is surprised when a licenced SW game sucks is funny as hell.

And the filled-polygon Xwing arcade game was WAY better than pretty much everything except TIE Fighter.

[Starglider]

Even putting aside the idea that XWA and DF were 'good', the idea that anyone is surprised when a licenced SW game sucks is funny as hell.

Hey weemadando, were you actually surprised by the things you complain about, or did you expect the game to suck and just bought it because you compulsively spend money on anything with 'Star Wars' in the title?

I got the impression that it was option (b) since you out right admitted to being a 'fan-whore' at the bottom of your post

[Stark]

Look you! If it's not surprising (and it isn't, since SW games have a bad record, licenced games have a bad record, and the Unleashed thing was hashed over months ago when it came out) why is everyone having a nerd-rage that I dared to say it's not surprising? He even goes on about the beat-em-up nature of the game, which is the whole point (ie Jedi Academy = nerds love it but crap sales, Unleashed = wider market).

[Havok]

The thing with Star Wars games and lightsabers, is that you can't probably ever do it right. If you want to one slash/kill enemies for realism, (Vader took a LS hit to the should by the way) then how can you not justify the flip side... one blaster hit will probably kill you.

As much as video game nerds complain about "realism", they don't actually want it. Let's actually throw out realism and just go with consistency with the movies. Personal armor can not stop blasters, lightsabers can cut through anything but other lightsabers, and apparently, Vader's shoulder pads, lightsabers can block blaster bolts, but you need Jedi precog skills to do that.

If you apply that to a game, you will get the wading through hundreds of enemies killing everything in arms reach, but one shot in the back of the head from the snipers you can't see will send you back to the beginning of the level.

"Hey, but I'm a Jedi and I have the FORCE!!" OK fine, so the AI in the game is going to control your character for the whole game and you are basically going to be a spectator, because you don't ACTUALLY have the Force and there is no way that I can think of that a system that actually emulates the Force is going to work when it comes to lightsaber combat and defenses. You could do an arrow system where it warns you where an attack is coming from I suppose, but the way programers make levels, you can eliminate that all together and just die a few times until you memorize where the baddies are going to spawn from. Either way, it is just going to come down to timing and memorization, because real realism would have the badguys do things that are unexpected and then you would keep getting killed.

You could do a slow down sequence which gives you enough time to turn block and do whatever Jediness you need, but how boring would that get after a while. "Oh here are the badguys moving at 1/8th my speed. Block block parry parry Gooood". It still comes down to memorization, or a massive non realistic advantage.

And yes, everyone wants to be the lone Jedi that saves the universe, but as we all know, that only happened ONCE. The rest of the time we see pairs and large groups of Jedi, and they are almost always fighting one or two, dumb or inferior opponents. And honestly, even that doesn't happen very often.

I dunno, basically, I just don't see the point of complaining about realism/constancy, because I don't think there will ever be a Star Wars game that will deliver.

[Stark]

Well frankly the biggest problem with Unleashed was the awful level design, not the combat. Most people caught up with the 'sword-chop' nature of the combat before the tutorial was finished.

And for the record I dont' want to be the lone Jedi etc etc. This is why DF2 sucked - OH KYLE LOOKS LIEK YOU WERE A JEDI THE WHOLE TIME!

[Darth Onasi]

Meh everything about Unleashed sucks. The gameplay is crap, the story is retarded and violates canon and the main character is a neo nazi skinhead Gary Stu. Send it to hell!

[Vympel]

Bah. I liked Unleashed. Sue me.

[Darth Onasi]

Oh yeah? Well I like Empire at War!

Sort of.

Maybe.

Nah.

[Stark]

I didn't mind it as a sword-chop game (but I play Dynasty Warriors) but the level design was terrible with puzzles and platforms and linearness etc.

[Darth Yoshi]

"Hey, but I'm a Jedi and I have the FORCE!!" OK fine, so the AI in the game is going to control your character for the whole game and you are basically going to be a spectator, because you don't ACTUALLY have the Force and there is no way that I can think of that a system that actually emulates the Force is going to work when it comes to lightsaber combat and defenses. You could do an arrow system where it warns you where an attack is coming from I suppose, but the way programers make levels, you can eliminate that all together and just die a few times until you memorize where the baddies are going to spawn from. Either way, it is just going to come down to timing and memorization, because real realism would have the badguys do things that are unexpected and then you would keep getting killed.

Jedi Outcast tried to get around that with an auto-dodge against snipers, but it kicked in pretty randomly and burned through half your Force meter. Essentially you'd be walking along, and out of the blue Force Speed would kick in for half a second and you'd contort while a sniper blast passes through where your head was. That's probably the best I've seen.

[General Zod]

I didn't mind it as a sword-chop game (but I play Dynasty Warriors) but the level design was terrible with puzzles and platforms and linearness etc.

How is DW6 anyway? [/hijack]

[The Yosemite Bear]

I still haven't played it yet, though I did enjoy KOTOR.....

and TIE, and a few others....

[weemadando]

Even putting aside the idea that XWA and DF were 'good', the idea that anyone is surprised when a licenced SW game sucks is funny as hell.

Hey weemadando, were you actually surprised by the things you complain about, or did you expect the game to suck and just bought it because you compulsively spend money on anything with 'Star Wars' in the title?

I got the impression that it was option (b) since you out right admitted to being a 'fan-whore' at the bottom of your post

I'd played the demo and thought - meh, it's OK but not for $120 bucks. Then when I found it in a bargain bin for about $20 of course my potential fun:expenditure ratio seemed about right.

I'm not surprised about any of this stuff really. It's just that I like to write and was feeling inspired to rant about that game as I'd just been playing it.

[Vympel]

Well, see, you held off and got a bargain. Me, I got it from JB HiFi for $89 - way less than $120, but yeah in hindsight I should've waited for it to go cheaper. I did play it like three times though, so *shrug*