(This is probably going to get somewhat long winded folks, I need to rant 
)
I received my copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on Tuesday and finished it last night. The short completion time already brings back memories of another Star Wars game that didn't take me very long - Republic Commando.
The Force Unleashed shows up, for me, everything that is good and bad about gaming right now. The story is great, it's fun to play, it looks gorgeous and so on. These are things you'd expect from modern games, but it makes all of the standard mistakes.
Difficulty - there is none. I played through it in 8 hours and 2 minutes according to the save game list, which is, I understand, the target time, on the normal difficulty setting. I did not die from running out of health once. Difficulty settings are important to me, easy should be easy, hard should be hard. In this case, normal was easy and I can't imagine what easy is like.
Instant Death - I did, however, die in some stupid, frustrating places. Quite early on in the game, you have to fight a some droids, then a mini-boss and then use the force to create a bridge out of junk. The boss is relatively easy to beat but then you mess up a jump and have to start again. Saving does nothing because it just saves what stage you're on, not your progress through that stage. I don't necessarily advocate the Lego Star Wars approach of just having you reappear in the same place meaning you can't possibly ever lose, but there has to be some sort of compromise here.
Sudden, Inconsistent Ramp Ups in Difficulty - Every game as average as this one has them. In this case it's the infamous Star Destroyer. It's virtually impossible to actually die during this battle, it just takes a ridiculous amount of time. This part took me 90 minutes. 90 minutes of kill the Tie Fighters and then mess around with the confusing controls to align the Star Destroyer so I can start pulling it down to the ground. A good few times I wasn't able to align it in time to even make any progress towards pulling it towards the planet before more fighters show up. And then, if you don't kill the Tie Fighters in time it realigns itself so you have to start again.
Why every game seems to have some ridiculously hard sequence that is utterly inconsistent with the rest of the game I do not know. Another good example are the missions in Command & Conquer games where you are given a small, limited number of troops and vehicles and have to destroy an enemy base following the designer's exact sequence.
Length - This game is short. I don't mind that at all having just spent nearly three years finishing off Oblivion, but aside from the alternate ending, I have no real desire to go back and play the game again. There's no multiplayer either. However, I paid the same price for this as Oblivion which seems a bit wrong to me.
Hidden Crap - All over the place there are Jedi Holocrons which give you extra costumes, force points to spend on upgrading your powers, lightsaber crystals etc. They're usually in difficult to get to places. I hate this. People just download a guide from GameFAQs and follow it to obsessively collect every piece of junk in the game in order to even more obsessively collect every achievement point the game has to offer.
Bugs - The aforementioned Star Destroyer sequence has them (the targeting system doesn't always work on the Tie Fighters and the alignment controls sometimes show red even though it's telling you not to move either stick), the Sarlacc sequence has them (you can be dragged in to a wall and out of the map entirely, forcing you to restart) and the Vader boss battle had one - he got stuck in the floor after I knocked him down allowing me to just stab him repeatedly until he died.
There's a good, fun game under all of this, but ultimately I think this game highlights some all too common problems with modern games.
)I received my copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on Tuesday and finished it last night. The short completion time already brings back memories of another Star Wars game that didn't take me very long - Republic Commando.
The Force Unleashed shows up, for me, everything that is good and bad about gaming right now. The story is great, it's fun to play, it looks gorgeous and so on. These are things you'd expect from modern games, but it makes all of the standard mistakes.
Difficulty - there is none. I played through it in 8 hours and 2 minutes according to the save game list, which is, I understand, the target time, on the normal difficulty setting. I did not die from running out of health once. Difficulty settings are important to me, easy should be easy, hard should be hard. In this case, normal was easy and I can't imagine what easy is like.
Instant Death - I did, however, die in some stupid, frustrating places. Quite early on in the game, you have to fight a some droids, then a mini-boss and then use the force to create a bridge out of junk. The boss is relatively easy to beat but then you mess up a jump and have to start again. Saving does nothing because it just saves what stage you're on, not your progress through that stage. I don't necessarily advocate the Lego Star Wars approach of just having you reappear in the same place meaning you can't possibly ever lose, but there has to be some sort of compromise here.
Sudden, Inconsistent Ramp Ups in Difficulty - Every game as average as this one has them. In this case it's the infamous Star Destroyer. It's virtually impossible to actually die during this battle, it just takes a ridiculous amount of time. This part took me 90 minutes. 90 minutes of kill the Tie Fighters and then mess around with the confusing controls to align the Star Destroyer so I can start pulling it down to the ground. A good few times I wasn't able to align it in time to even make any progress towards pulling it towards the planet before more fighters show up. And then, if you don't kill the Tie Fighters in time it realigns itself so you have to start again.
Why every game seems to have some ridiculously hard sequence that is utterly inconsistent with the rest of the game I do not know. Another good example are the missions in Command & Conquer games where you are given a small, limited number of troops and vehicles and have to destroy an enemy base following the designer's exact sequence.
Length - This game is short. I don't mind that at all having just spent nearly three years finishing off Oblivion, but aside from the alternate ending, I have no real desire to go back and play the game again. There's no multiplayer either. However, I paid the same price for this as Oblivion which seems a bit wrong to me.
Hidden Crap - All over the place there are Jedi Holocrons which give you extra costumes, force points to spend on upgrading your powers, lightsaber crystals etc. They're usually in difficult to get to places. I hate this. People just download a guide from GameFAQs and follow it to obsessively collect every piece of junk in the game in order to even more obsessively collect every achievement point the game has to offer.
Bugs - The aforementioned Star Destroyer sequence has them (the targeting system doesn't always work on the Tie Fighters and the alignment controls sometimes show red even though it's telling you not to move either stick), the Sarlacc sequence has them (you can be dragged in to a wall and out of the map entirely, forcing you to restart) and the Vader boss battle had one - he got stuck in the floor after I knocked him down allowing me to just stab him repeatedly until he died.
There's a good, fun game under all of this, but ultimately I think this game highlights some all too common problems with modern games.
