Post-The Force Unleashed
Monday, September 22, 2008
I spent a lot of this past week not blogging, editing, and generally not doing what I should be. My backlog of columns shrank, and I can thank The Force Unleashed on my Xbox 360 for that. I've since finished it.
The game is unusual in that it manages to succeed in something and fail in that very same thing. Some examples:
Properly aging the characters. Bail Organa looks the same as he did in Revenge of the Sith despite a 16-year difference between the stories. Princess Leia, on the other hand, manages to look like a young Carrie Fisher, which is perfect for a story that takes place about 3 years before the original Star Wars.
No ability to skip cut scenes. The first time through, this is a blessing-- you want to see them, they're neat. However, after you've seen them all 2-3 times, sometimes you want to skip them so you can find Holocrons and unlock achievements. Guess what? You can't. You have to watch them every time, and this problem compounds when you want to skip to a new stage-- you have to do so from within a game level, meaning you have to (you guessed it) watch a cut scene for several minutes before regaining control.
Oh, and in the "bad" department...
Interface. The menus are largely well-designed, clear and easy to read. However, the loading time for these mostly text screens is quite significant, and the menus are pretty buggy. I've unpaused the game only to find the level started over, or I'm treated to the beginning of the level cut scene despite being in the middle of a stage.
Controls. Some parts are a little clunky, others are downright confusing-- despite the game telling you exactly which buttons to push, it isn't clear that you're always succeeding.
For what it aspired to do, I think it succeeded. You really do feel (more or less) like you can use the Force, despite some of the characters' equipment feeling less like an in-universe technology and more like an in-game cop-out. Some elements of Star Wars really don't mesh well with a good video game, simply because having super powers that essentially make you a god-like being would remove much of the game's challenge. Also, the very idea of troopers who can disappear just doesn't click for me.
I can nitpick at it, but I'd be lying if I said that the under 10 hour run time wasn't one of the most fun experiences I've had with a Star Wars game in years, and one of the more fun games I've played this year. But I'm extremely biased-- I might not have said the same thing if the setting was ancient Greece or, for example, NBC's Heroes. The final product feels very piecemeal, and there are some inconsistencies within the game itself. The Stormtroopers in the prologue are usually normal Stormtroopers, but in at least one cinema scene they're a hybrid of Stormtroopers and Revenge of the Sith clone troopers. It seems like a lot of it was farmed out to other developers or animators, giving the game a somewhat rough feel. Still, it's a decent Star Wars adventure that really aspires to be an interactive movie, and it seems LucasArts is making a lot of headway toward this goal. It's great to see a decent story in a game that isn't an RPG for a change.
Posted byAdam16bit at 12:55 AM
Labels: Expanded Universe, LucasArts, Video Games
