Rorshac’s Game of the Week

As one can tell from the title, there are some similarities between the God of War franchise and The Force Unleashed. The demo hit XBOX Live today, I fired up the PS3 and check PSN but it was not listed yet. I woke up bright at early, kicked-off the download, and then slept for another hour knowing that when I got up my dreams would be a reality.

Since this is a demo with many features crippled, I will leave some judgment for the release version. Loading times on menus, subtitles always on, things of that nature just seem to frustrate. The demo offers two small scenarios, a Force Grip Lesson and what feel like 1/4, it better be at least that or smaller, of a level. The voice acting is great, the controls, albeit clunky at first begin to shine after a while. I found myself fumbling along trying to pick something up, charge it and toss it in a timely manner. Towards the end it really started to come along.

What it has in common with its brethren, God of War, is the following:

• Baddies when you kill them drop orbs.
• There are stylized combos that are rated.
• Bigger guys, like an AT-ST are taken down with the cut-scene follow the flashing button twitch puzzle.
• There seem to be a level up system, however that was not fully explained in the demo.
• And, It Looks just as Awesome!

That is really it, when it comes to comparison. What I did play, I loved. It felt like a StarWars game. It sounded like a StarWars game. You do really feel like you control the force and are all powerful. Even though it is more or less the same canned animation, there is something gratifying about force pushing open a door.

I saw a video of the level a few days prior to the release and I was getting gravely concerned for the title, it almost executed one of my number one flaws in many games, endless streams of enemies that are scripted events (Stranglehold Review). As it turns out, the part in question was just a poor player. The room in question is actually a bit of a sandbox to play with your force powers. You can fight your way through and leave the room at any time. My biggest complaint is I only felt in peril twice. Now the demo might just provide a health boost or reduction in damage, however, I took a lot of shots and my health bar barely dropped.

The game seems like it should be great, this little sample, though short, shows the potential this game has. Now lets just hope it is long enough, has a good story, and there are no whiny children or gungans in it. Looks like they might just salvage parts of the franchise just yet.

Lots of plot points…again….cant wait.

Oh my, this looks great. I will let pictures speak for themselves…

So I own all three systems, my Wii is a party system, my PS3 plays MGS4 and Blu-Ray movies, and my 360 has played over 100 different games.

The keynotes at E3 really showed a lot about the respective positions of all the companies. This Penny-Arcade.com comic clear summarizes all the presentations.

Here is the Microsoft Key note, some is fluff, some is great. All in all, it looks like they are listening and taking the console forward.

My big problem with what is shown here is the blade system being phased out of the main stream. I spent money on themes and icons and now they may be phased out? I do not like the sound of that. However, the rest is a pretty big push towards innovation. If things go as planned, being able to play games (XBLA) with friends over Live and only one of you needs to own a copy is great. Adding NetFlix to it is a huge deal, I not longer have to stream from my media center machine if I do not want to. All in all, looks like this E3 Round goes to MS.