What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation, by Max Kaehn, Grade 32

[mithriltabby]

Finished Star Wars: the Force Unleashed. I picked up the PS3 version after reading the review in Wired; I had originally planned to get the Wii one, but that would only have been worthwhile if they made the Wiimote control the lightsaber directly.

The story is almost entirely linear: it plays straight through from beginning to your choice of which boss to fight at the end to determine if you’re going to wind up on the Light Side or the Dark Side. Once you complete a level, all the FMVs are playable as extras, which makes it possible to show other people the vast majority of the story. The one thing I’d like to add is being able to replay some of the more extravagant scripted battle scenes (which, like God of War, kick in when you’ve done enough damage to a bad guy and then put an icon on screen of which controller button to push now to advance the sequence of impressive moves); that would make it possible to show the most impressive stuff, and for the player to be able to appreciate the scripting instead of waiting for the next button to show up on the screen.

The game play is pretty reasonable; I played on the default (difficulty level 2 out of 4) and was able to handle most of the boss fights without getting killed too many times. It’s a third person shooter with some occasional platformer aspects— not as much as Ratchet & Clank. It gives extra points for using button-mashing combos that you unlock as you gain experience, as well as for creative use of the default powers, and the carnage of the Dark Side does have a good deal of visceral fun as the awards go by: Crush bonus. Frenzy bonus. Long way down bonus. The Penny Arcade comic is pretty accurate (hat tip to cmccurry for pointing it out to me): telekinetic mayhem, Force Lightning mayhem, lightsaber-throwing mayhem, and blaster-bolt deflecting mayhem (which obsessivewoman particularly enjoys for its karmic-retribution qualities). I never managed to figure out half of the combos and was still able to play through the whole thing.

Picking up all the goodies can be quite tricky without a walkthrough telling you where they’re all hidden, but you can go back and replay any level you want as many times as you want to, with all of the powers you picked up playing at higher levels. Unlocking both endings requires playing through the final level twice. I’m looking forward to going back and playing through the game again when I finally get an HDTV.

Comments

[strollerman.livejournal.com]

You're in grade 32 already! Growing up so fast.