My overly-long post criticizing Halo 3 now seems a little out of proportion. I finally got Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360 version) to cheer me up while I recovered from having my wisdom teeth out. Boy, that is really a game with fundamental problems.
I was aware of the less-than-ecstatic reviews by X-play and gamespot (following their rather over-hyped pre-launch coverage), but sometimes things that bug other people don't really end up being something that bothers you (e.g. I liked the repetitiveness of Assassin's Creed, because that stuff was fun for me and I liked doing it again and again).
Given my generation I have a soft spot for Star Wars and even Star Wars games, and ST: TFU is great... in parts. Visually, even story-wise it varies between good and great.
But every now and again I ended up spending two hours trying to jump over the same damn chasm, or gap between two bridges, in an endless loop of button-mashing frustration.
Dodgy auto-aim, check. The only enemy any near me is a purge trooper right in front of me, except the auto-aim has my force lightning zapping off at some crate at 90 degrees angle to where I'm looking. Try to throw something with the force, and half the time it wont go where you want.
Boss battles where the bosses are immune to half of your force powers - thats just nasty - but add in the suddenly fixed camera and quick-time events spoil what should be epic cinematic moments. I don't remember any of the awesome moves Starkiller is supposed to have performed killing the Bull Rancor or defeating Vader, because all my attention was focussed on the bottom of the screen looking for the next X, B, A, Y to appear.
And don't even talk to me about that stupid bit trying to pull the star destroyer out of the sky. Which also looked totally different to the preview trailer they produced a year or so ago. Yes, lets create a situation completely different to the rest of the game control-wise and not explain any of it at all. Another hour or so of frustrated load, struggle, die, load... etc before I gave up and searched the web on what to do.
Anyway, it did have enjoyable moments, but the flaws were real and significant. I can't imagine that play testers didn't point out the problem areas that broke the flow and immersion of what would otherwise have been a pretty spectacular (if short) game.
What now for Star Wars fans? Bioware has finally announced what was long suspected: A Star Wars MMORPG set in the time of the Old Republic. I love Bioware's RPGs, but an MMO? It appears Bioware has accepted that almost everyone will want to be either Jedi or Sith, but I wonder how well balanced this will work out to be in practice.
[ST: TFU image from the gamespot review of the game.]
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