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History of Star Wars Video Games
Leafel writes "UGO has posted a feature on the history of Star Wars video games, dividing the timeline into 4 categories: The Golden Age (up to 1990), The Silver Age (1991-1996), The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000),
Modern Age (2001 on). From the article 'December 2004 saw the latest release in a long line of Star Wars related video games. As a sequel to one of 2003's top role playing games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has made a lot of Xbox owners and RPG fans very happy. In honor of KOTOR II's release and in anticipation of May's Revenge of the Sith movie event, we take a look at the long history of interactive Star Wars entertainment, complete with all of its highs and lows.'"
My quickie review from maybe six hours into the game: The characters and voice acting are decent, but so far I just feel like I've been able to look at each new NPC and say "Oh, you're the replacement for Carth" or whatever. The Jedi mentor person at least seems like she might have deeper motivations, but we'll see.
Likewise, the game narrative hasn't improved much. My big gripe with the original KOTOR was that the dark side wasn't all that subtle. I mean, people talk about being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force and you assume it's a slippery slope situation, but in KOTOR 2 it's even worse -- you tend to get presented with three options: "Sappy Good", "Cautious but Good" and "Pwn3D by 7h3 517h!". I was hoping they'd do a better job writing the Dark Side as something sublime and more amoral, but really it just comes off as cackling cartoonishly evil.
Back in KOTOR, things seemed at least somewhat original because no matter what you were covering new ground with a new engine. KOTOR 2 misses that in a big, big way -- many of the missions are like "okay, another 'go collect shit' mission. Great". The game and narrative don't even make a real effort to disguise the obvious mission templates. I keep finding myself playing to try and get it over with rather than enjoying myself and exploring the levels.
The default difficulty level is also disappointing if you've played KOTOR, since if you know your way around the combat system even a little bit the fights are just flat-out easy. Again, this could just be a function of not being too far in the game, but you'd think after five or six hours of play you'd encounter at least a little trouble.
I enjoyed the original KOTOR quite a bit, but the new one is more or less just an expansion pack that I shelled out $60 for. The extent to which this one just feels like quickly retooled version is just terrible -- I'd say that the people involved ought to be ashamed of themselves if I thought that anyone involved with Star Wars these days had any shame to feel.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Those games were excellent... I wish they'd reissue them and update them to work on today's OSes or console systems.
...the game lacks a lot of polish and was rushed out the door
as well as the most of stuff locasarts produces these days do
Man I feel old. What are they going to say, the 1990-1995 era was pre-historic age? Come on, can we at least get like 20 years before going golden age? A human generation would be nice...
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Not to demean what you are saying, but I think that our age has a lot to play with it. I sometimes catch reruns of cartoons that I used to watch as a kid (i.e. transformers) and the graphics (while technically the exact same) just doesn't look as good as what I remembered. I think its the same for the games. When we were younger we were more impressed and awe inspired and we have that memory. Now we are older, and harder to impress - so we are basing our current judgements on our memories which tend to trump up good memories into fantasy ones :D
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I want to know why there isn't a modern day version of "X-Wing vs TIE Fighter"? Think about it. Imagine setting up 4 squadrons of Rebel ships, and 6 squadrons of Imperial ships, and capital ships on both sides....
Now put in a different person in each ship (multiple people to man guns on capital ships), and use the web.
Who wouldn't want to play that?!?!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Even Speilberg sometimes blows it. "Jurassic Park III", anyone? That effectively went direct to video, although there was some brief, minimal theatrical release. He had the sense to stop at that point.
At some point in the sequel business, it's time to give it up.
Although we'll probably have to endure "Ocean's 13".
I'd love an updated version of X-Wing with state-of-the-art graphics and game-play. What is the closest thing to X-Wing out there today?
Also, I love Call Of Duty. Is there a "Call Of Duty"-type game set in the Star Wars universe?
Sam
Hey, what about Dark Forces? MUCH better than KOTOR.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.