Force Feedback - Star Wars Games Analyzed

Thanks to TotalGames.net for their article discussing the history of Star Wars-based videogames, in which they air the fan-voiced complaint that "LucasArts used to be a seal of quality on a game, but it's become totally devalued by so many third-rate titles." However, the article notes the upsurge in buzz over expansive titles like Knights Of The Old Republic, commenting: "Rather than divide their fanbase into original trilogy and prequel fans, LucasArts seem to want to bring them together", before suggesting some unlikely license uses along the lines of Super Bombad Racing: "Jedi Set Radio and Dance Dance Rebellion, anyone? Maybe Grand Theft Jawa?"

Comments

Full Throttle II

[tsa]

"Rather than divide their fanbase into original trilogy and prequel fans, LucasArts seem to want to bring them together"

Why did they stop development on Full Throttle II then? I thought the reason they quit qith that was just that: is was to be a combination of arcade adventure and 'real' adventure.

Re:Full Throttle II

[SmallFurryCreature]

Adventures didn't die. Lucasarts killed them. Sure the press may have loved the new inventive way of controlling them like Monkey Island 4 did or Gabriel Knight 3. The game buying public hated it.

Don't fix it if it ain't broken.

But you need 3D to attract the quake crowd you say? Stop talking to customer focus groups. People that say they would buy X if only it had Y are lying. It is like people who say they would use public transport if only XXXXX, or who would run linux/mac if only it had XXXXX. They won't. Ever.

Perhaps in fit of sanity lucasarts realised that one of the most bitched about parts of the original full throttle was the bike fights. Sure it was original. Sure it was new. Sure it was kinda fun. Until you got hopelessly stuck at that point.

Hybrid games rarely work. Mixing adventures with anything is sure to fail miserably. I am wrong? Prove it. Adventures are slow by nature. Hell in Lucasarts adventures you usually can't even die. To then suddenly add elements from other games, rarely works. Answer me this. Wich did you thought was more fun. The fights in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or the ones in the original Monkey Island? Right thought so.

The official line anway was that Lucasarts thought Full Throttle 2 was not going to live up to expectation. Make of that what you will. It been discussed on slashdot in its own artice.

Re:Full Throttle II

[Anonymous Coward]

Most poorly worded and pointless post ever.

Jesus, what country are you from?

I remember lucasfilm games

[SmallFurryCreature]

Battle of britain and Secret weapons of the luftwaffe were solid flight sims coming with thick clear manuals that even gave several run downs on the war the games were set in. Good solid manuals that told you everthing thing you need to know and a lot more.

Their adventures based on the excellent scumm engine were topnotch. X-wing was amazing.

Then something happened. I don't know what but I will give you the clues. Maybe you can figure it out.

• Afterlife. If you never seen it be thankfull.
• X-wing vs Tie-fighter. I am not 100% sure but around this time a logo started to spring up when you loaded the game. It was amazing bright and cheerfull. It also was glaringly out of place. What is it with all these fucking logos? Why did they outsource the development or something? I buy a lucasarts game. Not just something rebadged.

  Missles in later x-wing games. X-wing is a dogfighter. Laser against laser with the odd protontorpedo against heavy targets. Later on in the game however you couldn't start a run on a capital ship without dodging endless missles. What joy.

  Minefield in x-wing games. Clear 1 gazillion tiny mines. Whee. Are you having fun yet?

  Monkey Island 4 control system. (it may have been grim fandango that did it first don't know) UGH. One of the bad points of click and play adventures has always been pixel hunting. Now you had to pixel hunt by moving an other pixel across the screen with cursor keys. Yikes. Whoever made this one is an enemy greater then Gates and McBride put together.

• Manuals. Anyone notice manuals and general goodies like keycards have becoming rarer and rarer these days? From the thick binders (handy for putting the manual open on a certain page) to the well the sheets of copy paper you get now. Yet the price of games has gone up, but the media price, floppies vs cd's has come down. Rip off?
• First episode. Ugh, what did they do to star wars. All the games based upon it have been total dogshit.
• Consoles. Lucasarts made it big on the PC. It has made good money from a loyal fanbase. So what does it do to reward us and continue the good relations? Develop console only games. Grrr.
• Crap buggy games like rebellion and what was that RTS called again? Ewh.

Mmmm, I just don't know what happened at lucasarts. Did someone quit? they were once the greats. Then again there was time when sierra was know for quality as well. Oh well. I guess that certain things just pass away. Spam free email. Usefull usenet. Perhaps it is like dementia in humans. Once great minds doomed to become like drooling 2yr olds.

Let us remember the Lucasarts we once knew and loved. And hope that this demented old driveling shell of a company passes away peacefully in its sleep.

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[ScorpiusFan]

I agree there was a time period where the quality of Lucasarts games declined, which seemed to happen around the time XWing vs Tie Fighter was released.

I was amazed by the quality of older titles like Strike Fleet (modern-day naval simulator), and Tie Fighter, and Dark Forces.

But once they started to contract out the work to other companies the quality was very erratic.

It was if key personnel were no longer working on the games, and instead just licensing out the Star Wars content to other companies, hoping they could build good products.

And thanks to the rising sales of home computers a few years ago, I guess Lucasarts was able to make money from these mediocre titles, which gave them no reason to make quality a high priority.

What was the last game that Lucasarts made inhouse? Are the older employees even there anymore?

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[stryck9]

The RTS game was: Force Commander.

I would disagree with you on the Xwing games though. Even with the mines and the missles, they were still a lot of fun. In the case of Xwing vs. Tie fighter, LEC / Totally games dropped the ball in the sense that Tie fighter had been such a stellar game, with a stellar story line, that ditching SP in favor of MP only in Xwing vs. Tie, was almost criminal.

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[stryck9]

All of the people who contributed to the successes of their major titles, like Tim Schaefer, Ray Gresko, Justin Chin, etc... have long gone. The people who are left like Hal Barwood, produce crap like Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Judging by the fact that Full Throttle 2 has been canceled, and Sam and Max 2 is in limbo (both being produced internally), something is rotten in the state of denmark.

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[SuiteSisterMary]

In the case of Xwing vs. Tie fighter, LEC / Totally games dropped the ball in the sense that Tie fighter had been such a stellar game, with a stellar story line, that ditching SP in favor of MP only in Xwing vs. Tie, was almost criminal.

But then made up for it by porting Xwing and Tie Fighter to the XvT engine.

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[Babbster]

X-wing vs Tie-fighter. I am not 100% sure but around this time a logo started to spring up when you loaded the game. It was amazing bright and cheerfull. It also was glaringly out of place. What is it with all these fucking logos? Why did they outsource the development or something? I buy a lucasarts game. Not just something rebadged.

Actually, in this particular case, it was only SORT OF outsourcing since the people they outsourced to were Totally Games, a company formed by Larry Holland, the former LucasArts employee who was responsible for all of the flight/space simulation-type (PC) successes of LucasArts, starting with Battlehawks 1942 and my personal favorite of those days Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain. Right now, the two companies are collaborating on Secret Weapons Over Normandy which, if it captures half the magic of the classic Secret Weappons of the Luftwaffe, will be excellent.

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[Goldberg's Pants]

RTS? Force Commander?

There have been some good Star Wars games though. Rogue Squadron was great, and the first game you actually got to go against AT-AT's in.

As for Afterlife, I only ever played the demo, but I remember thinking it was a very innovative game.

Of course, there have been total dogs like Rebel Assault which were just FM fests. (Though sadly, I still want to play that:))

Re:I remember lucasfilm games

[Dehumanizer]

Regarding the "logo" in XWvsTF, you probably mean Larry Holland's company, Totally Games, which did make all the X-Wing games (including the awesome Tie Fighter), and also the WW2 flight sims you mention.

I guess they deserved to put their logo in their own games, right?

I agree about the minefield comment, though.

Ah yes, the good old Star Wars games

[fredrikj]

Those I've played which I'd consider memorable:

- Super Star Wars/Super Empire Strikes Back

These games were awesome! The controls unfortunately had a few flaws, but nevertheless the gameplay kicked ass due to the variation. One level you'd be platforming through a sandcrawler, the next you'd be flying a Mode 7-based hovercraft. The graphics and sound were amazing for their time too, and those sprites still look great IMO. Extremely crisp, and the bosses look just the way they should :)

- Dark Forces

Anyone with me when I say this is one of the most underrated games ever? The atmosphere is incredible and the level design ingenious. I remember it as being way too hard though, but perhaps I'd do better if I played it today.

- Shadows of the Empire

This game had really awful controls and some fatally boring levels. But it was revolutionary when it came... first encounter with a real 3D Star Wars game. Some tense moments too, and great use of music (well, how could any Star Wars game NOT feature great music? :)

what?

[libnatel]

"Rather than divide their fanbase into original trilogy and prequel fans, LucasArts seem to want to bring them together"

Episode 1 and 2 actually had fans?

Heh, funny I never knew that.

The begining of the decline

[stryck9]

This article neglects the adventure games that LucasArts published which were also really high quality. The decline of LucasArts on the PC side started with the release of the game: The Dig, but the straw that broke the camels back was: Rebelion. I don't know how they were able to release that game but you could look at it and wonder what had gone wrong at LEC. For a long-time LEC produced all of their games in house (with the exception of the Xwing games made by Totally Games, Larry Holland's shop). At some point they decided they didn't want to foot dev. bills, and farmed out most of it to companies like Factor 5, and Raven which results in mostly crap. Of the games that are produced in house you get garbage like Indiana Jones, and the Infernal Machine made by sacred cows at LEC like Hal Barwood (also EP on RTX Red Rock).
Like Microprose, for a while you could buy anything from LucasArts and it was going to be a good game, sadly that is no longer the case.

Original trilogy

[StellarEX]

VHS is being phased out and the original trilogy won't be on DVD until like 2007, if even then (and it's not even the 'original' original trilogy!) Most people I know have gotten DVD players and chunked the VCR. There's going to be a generation that has never seen the original star wars films. Episode I and II is all they have, heh.

GK4

[Dehumanizer]

Excuse me, but Gabriel Knight 3 was a brilliant game, and the 3D actually "worked".

What about Star Wars Galaxies

[samsarajr]

Not that does suck eggs. A starwars game without space.. kinda funny though (in a bad monty python dead parrot kinda way). "What no space" "Its there, but comming in another yet to be announced expansion" "But There is no space ships, or space in a space game"??"

Lucasarts did what with KOTOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me if I am clueless here, but didn't BioWare handle KOTOR more or less on their own? DId Lucas Arts have anything to do with that game beyond saying "Wow, this game is cool, if we were working on this it would suck by now"?

Re:Lucasarts did what with KOTOR?

[stryck9]

LucasArts was involved in so far as saying, ship this in July because we don't think it is that good, and we don't want anything taking away from Rouge Squadron 2 console sales during Q4 (which they believe is a superior title).
FYI: LucasArts is shocked that KOTOR got amazing reviews and selling really well.

Some valid points; however, whinning..

[Inoshiro]

"Consoles. Lucasarts made it big on the PC. It has made good money from a loyal fanbase. So what does it do to reward us and continue the good relations? Develop console only games. Grrr."

Whine, whine, whine, "I can't get my games, woe is me, I shall now cry pathetically on Slashdot."

You ignore that they made a lot of PC-only cames. Oh, how shall I ever forgive that Lucasarts because I can't get the early Monkey Island or Grim Fandango games on my favourite console?

Game developers develop for the audience they think will provide the most revenue, pure and simple. They don't put games just on consoles to spite the high and mighty SmallFurryCreature -- they do it because there is interest and demand for console Lucasarts games (despite their sub-par record with games recently).

Or perhaps you're just bitter because Xbox got KOTOR months before the PC did. If so, rest well knowing that you got Jedi Academy a couple of months before the Xbox version.

Whinning about how good a game is if only you had the console for it just proves you didn't care enough about the game -- otherwise you'd have bought it and played it.

Super Mario Bros 3 Superplay

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.emptylogic.com/suprnova/torrents/299/sm b3.torrent Bittorrent file for an amazing video of Super Mario Bros 3. It's pretty sweet, I'm spreading the .torrent link everywhere that I can.

Sim Deathstar

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:
"How about Sim Death Star - start out as a lowly Imperial Moff and build your own planet-killing superlaser! Vaporise innocent planets for your own amusement! And be sure to keep your stormtroopers well trained or else you might find those pesky Rebels popping a torpedo down your thermal exhaust port..."

I actually think this would not be such a bad idea.