Stars Wars: the Force Unleashed

[Felon]

I've been eagerly awaiting this baby for months, and Gamefly delivered it yesterday. Hate to say it folks, but I gotta go with the lukewarm reviews for this one. The gameplay is just painful sometimes.

Killing stormtroopers with souped-up force powers is always fun, of course, but the fun quickly gets sucked out by clumsy and unnecessary platformer elements where you have to make these jumps that are fatal if you're off even a little. And dying generally means restarting a large section of the current level.

Then there are parts of the game where you can die just for not psychically knowing what to do next. Starkiller may have the Force with him, but the player doesn't.

Many of the minions fight in very un-Star-Warsy ways, such as by sniping or freezing you in place.

And the boss fights have been really disappointing. Basically, going saber-to-saber with them is a losing proposition--they'll knock you on your butt easily--so you gotta wind up fighting them from range with force powers.

I like the voice actors and what there is of the story so far, and I"m holding out hope that Starkiller's motivations wind up making sense at some point (at least Palpatine had to go the trouble of tricking Vader).

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Honestly, the only real problem I had with the game was the annoying way they decided to implement what should have been the most epic moment of the game.

Beyond that, it was a ton of fun. Great, over the top action, good voice acting and the animations were beautiful. The story, though, really outshines it all. What seems confusing at first, ended up making perfect sense, to me, in the end. While I was originally hesitant about some major plot points that have some serious ramifications throughout the Star Wars story, I'm now okay with them. It was handled well, and I'd argue this is probably the best Star Wars story told in many, many years. I wants more.

 

[Blackrat]

I'm frustrated with the frigging star-destroyer! It's not fun anymore. Otherwise so great game, but this scene is really putting me down...

 

[Vocenoctum]

I didn't care for the game in concept anyway, and the star destroyer scene just irked me... then I saw how it played on G4 and nearly died laughing.

I can't imagine how they thought that would be amusing.

 

[Felon]

Honestly, the only real problem I had with the game was the annoying way they decided to implement what should have been the most epic moment of the game.

So I'm curious; did you spend time redoing sections from missed jumps? And when you fought bosses, did you generally find close-combat to be a much bigger hassle than blasting?

I thought it was a great idea for a story, and it takes place in what I think is a much more engaging era than KotoR, but IMO the gameplay is irksome any time I'm not just mashing mooks.

It'd be a great movie though.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

So I'm curious; did you spend time redoing sections from missed jumps? And when you fought bosses, did you generally find close-combat to be a much bigger hassle than blasting?

I didn't have too much of a problem with the platforming elements beyond getting used to it in the first level. Once I had the physics down, as it were, it was fine. Course, its definitely a bit odd and some of the jumps are very uh...interesting in places.

As for the bosses, I pretty much just got in their faces and went at them. Lots of blocking involved, of course, but I just found I did so much more damage with the combos up close that it was worth the risk as long as you blocked/moved around a lot.

I thought it was a great idea for a story, and it takes place in what I think is a much more engaging era than KotoR, but IMO the gameplay is irksome any time I'm not just mashing mooks.

It'd be a great movie though.

Man, it would be a great movie. I think my problems with gameplay and such are just easily destroyed by both the fun of flinging stormtroopers around and causing hilarious results...and the great story. While I'd like to see some of the more annoying parts dealt with(...the Star Destroyer...), it doesn't kill the game for me.

But I will be eternally sad they mucked up what should have been the defining moment of the game.

 

[mrtauntaun]

This game was HUGE fun, I had a great time.... while it lasted. It was entirely too short. I finished it in less than a day, about 8 hours. I feel slightly ripped off at a $60 price tag. For that much money, there really should have been more.

But I liked it while I was playing it, I may yet go back for the dozen or so holocrons I missed. The story was excellent. And as cool as it was, in concept, of pulling a star destroyer out of the sky, doing so in practice was one of the most frustrating things ever. I haven't been that annoyed since playing some really old, really bad, NES titles.

 

[Felon]

Well, after reading some of the positive comments here I played TFU again today for about an hour, and still found it to be a HUGE exercise in frustration. A hanful of flamethrower stormtroopers with force-fields killed me more than a few times. Then after finding the correct cheeseball tactic for countering them, I found that the rest of the level was loaded with stormtrooper snipers on perches that can kill from a much longer distance than Starkiller can reach. I think the ony counter for them is to hop around like crazy until you manage to close. I stand by the comment that snipers don't really work in Star Wars. Toss in loads of big black androids that will crush SK in melee with unblockable attacks (cheeseball counter = force lightning), and stir well.

I could deal with the nuisances when the checkpoints came at reasonable intervals, but then I reached this "skyhook" that Leia (who is voiced by a woman with a thoroughly affected British accent for some weird reason) asked me to destroy. Gotta destroy seven pylons, and if a sniper, flamethrower, missile launcher, gatling gun, black android, or souped-up AT-ST should manage to take me down, I have to start all over.

Lame platformer with little depth. Oh well, October will be here soon enough.