Let's talk about The Force Unleashed for a few minutes.
I want to outline the pros of the game first, since it's such a short list, and then move on to the cons, which will make up the considerably meatier part of this entry.
Pros:
- Several aspects of the game are visually stunning
- Some of the Force Powers are cool
- Excellent physics engine
That's it. That's all the game has going for it. It fails in every other department.
The control is twitchy and ragged, the camera is inexcusably wonky, and not a level went by wherein I didn't ask myself one of the following questions:
"WTF is going on?"
"What just killed me?"
"Where is he? WHERE?"
"How is this even remotely fair?"
"Who designed this level?"
Various others, all similar in scope. Oh, and to anyone who might be reading this and thinking, "Well, he just sucks," let me assure you that I do *not*. I'm 28 years of age, I've been playing video games since I was 6 or maybe younger. I'm a gamer for most of my life at this point. I don't suck. The game does. It's stupid, and the people who like it are also stupid. Simple as that.
Each stage has at least one room in which you enter, and there are guys with sniper rifles, heat-seeking missile launchers, repeating laser cannon, and huge stomping monsters or machines shooting anti-material rounds or throwing rocks or anything else. They can all shoot you at the same time, they can all kick you when you're down, and you frequently find yourself out of life before you can even blink. What is more, and interestingly enough, there is surprisingly little in your arsenal of Force powers to counteract any of this. So you are left with only one strategy: Suck it up. Take your unfair death on the chin, let the game load your last save, and try again. And again. And again, however many times it takes for you to get lucky and make it through.
As bad as that was, the story somehow managed to be worse, and that was the part I really cared about. First, it's too short. It seems large portions of it were cut, and the parts they left in were lousy. The scenes in which character development and plot motion were supposed to be taking place are far too short. There was some serious potential for meat here, but they skimped. Anything that might have been said or done that might have been interesting was crammed into a minute-long max space for each scene. The only reason I can even begin to discern for this was, they were afraid the "gogogokillkillkill" type gamer that doesn't care about story would have gotten bored.
A good example: In one scene, our hero discovers his home on Kashyyyk, a place he has not seen or set foot in since he was two years old. Your mentor advises you over the radio: "Don't go in there. You'll be alone against whatever you face." Fantastic, sounds like a great time to build some storypoints! So he goes in and is confronted by the ghost of his father. The ghost speaks one line, vanishes, and... that's it. Scene over. Back to "gogogokillkillkill"!!!
To hear the people who made it talk, the game was supposed to be about a tragic hero on a path of redemption. That's totally fine by me, I love that kind of story, bring it on. The problem is, we never see anything even remotely like redemption happen to the hero. We're just supposed to guess that it did. In a final scene, you're about to kill the emperor. Your Jedi mentor explains that if you strike him down in anger, you'll be right back where you started. ... Did I ever leave where I started? News to me. All of this death and destruction I'm causing with Dark Side power really strikes me as the kinds of things a redeemed man might do, right? No? Oh well.
Oh, and they went ahead and tacked on a love plot as well. And I mean *literally* tacked on. The girl you see maybe five times in the whole game, all for thirty seconds at the longest length. Their "romance" consists of her giving him status updates over the radio and a few sly smirks here and there. Then, suddenly, before the final level of the game, she's making out with the hero. Wow. Zero to passion in ten seconds. Totally believable.
And the endings, which I am going to go right ahead and spoil, both suck. Seriously. In one you die. In the other you are better off dead and can't be called a real ending; it feels more like a punishment for making a stupid choice than an ending. A lot of game developers are buying into this thing lately: "Hey, let's kill the hero in the end, they'll never see that coming!" OMG Shock! Except... not.
Anti-climatic endings really bring my blood to a boil. I slaved over your crappy game, took one unfair death after another in stride, growled in anger and nearly threw my controller through my TV on more than one occasion, finally get to the end, and... you just kill me? Just like that? I don't even get, like, a saving throw? My God, it's Neverwinter Nights 2 all over again!
I could go on and on. I've vented only a tiny sliver of the ire I hold against The Force Unleashed. I'm so glad I rented. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever purchase it, or recommend anyone else purchase it. If this were my disc, we'd be finding out just how well it fit in my toaster right now. As it is, I'll be taking it back to Family Video two days early. I do not want it to be in my home any longer than it needs to be.
2 comments:
Complete trainwreck of a game. It was painful to watch you play it. God knows I'm never going to.
So, one minute your mentor is suggesting, really goading you into pulling a Star Destroyer down into a planet, presumably killing thousands of crew members in the process and that's fine. Slaying the evil bastard at the core of this entire Sith occupation, thus preventing more needless death (it ain't like he was defenseless--he immediately proves he isn't!) is somehow wrong.
Truly a WTF moment.
The walking animations were laughably bad and the models' proportions were queer. I thought the facial animation was almost cartoony, which gelled very poorly with the more photorealistic art direction.
Starkiller's eyes were particularly creepy and who the mighty fark thought it'd be a good idea to make his "girlfriend" a cadervous toothpick with an inflated mouth? She could slice oranges with any angle of her face. Jeez.
Proxy was the only interesting character and he was really just boss fodder.
The whole thing felt very much like a cash cow, counting on hype to sell more boxes. It was truncated, illogical, bland, and a reminder of just how bad the industry as a whole has gotten.
Pure garbage.
I heard you were playing it for the XBox. I wonder if there are differences between the consoles? PS3 version I will say was buggy. Certain things would cause it to freeze or lag, occasionally the boss would get stuck but also couldn't be touched.
Two endings? I'm not sure how you get a different ending, is that an XBox thing? I liked the force powers in general though there wasn't a tremendous amount of versatility with them. There were some enemies were overly bothersome to have to continually deal with. In general though I didn't mind the large scale ambushes. He naturally deflects incoming fire.
I liked the story, I actually thought it was at least better laid out than some of the newer movies. [ Even though Padme gives birth to twins she just keels over and dies with no physical malady. Mother of two dies of broken heart, film at 11 ]. I had actually feared the game was over when he confronts the Emperor that first time.
I agree with you though overall the game was kind of short. I would be interested to play it on the Wii to see what the controls would bring to the game. Next time your around you'll have to do a quick run through on the PS3 to see if it looks / feels the same as the XBox version.
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