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Star Wars: the Force Unleashed Demo Sets Xbox Download Record
The demo version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released a few weeks ago for download through Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. Now, LucasArts has announced that the game shattered records for the number of downloads on Xbox Live, taking only eight days to reach 1 million. The full version is due out next Tuesday, and LucasArts will be holding a launch party in San Fransisco on Monday night to celebrate. The game is part of a multimedia project which includes a best-selling book, a comic, action figures, and other tie-ins. According to Eurogamer's interview with producer Cameron Suey, previous Star Wars games suffered from a "lack of ambition." Suey also shows off some of the gameplay in a video. A video walkthrough of the PS2 and PSP versions is available at Kotaku. The game will not be available for PC. Early reviews for the game are good, but not great, and developers recently mentioned that George Lucas himself provided input on the project.
Bringing down a whole star destroyer?
Maybe it was bad if you expected an action game, but as a turn-based d20 system presented in realtime, I found it excellent. My only complaint with kotor is they managed to squeeze framerate problems (xbox version) into a game that certainly didn't seem to be pushing any graphical limits.
That said, the story overshadowed all.
I miss Jedi Knight II... whatever happened to that storyline, anyway? Kyle Katarn was awesome. Jedi Academy was really fun too. The dual-sided lightsaber was so powerful, I loved it. This is bringing back a lot of memories, of the days when Lucasarts didn't suck.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Hell yeah.
Forcing Bastila to accept that you are, in fact, the rightful Dark Lord of the Sith is probably the most satisfying moment in gaming history.
KotOR's gameplay was bad because:
a) It was massively imbalanced. Pick up the right combination of feats (Master Flurry, Master Speed, Master Two Weapon Fighting) and you could drop even Malak in one round. Pick up the wrong set of feats (a caster build without Force Breach, for example) and you could breeze through the entire game and then get completely fucked on the boss fights at the end.
b) Half of the mechanics in the game were useless. There was no reason to be a techie or a stealth class because while both had gimmicky moments where they could do something cool, the game was chock full of full-on frontal assaults you couldn't avoid. The gimmicks never paid off as well as going head on anyway. Besides, you could never be as good at those things as the droid, because in the end you had to make your character combat able as well.
c) Ranged combat was horrible. You could abuse the hell out of force powers and plink away at mobs that were permanently stunned with your pistols, but in and of themselves blasters weren't a decent weapon choice.
d) Levelling was fucked up. By allowing you to bank levels until you switched to your jedi class, you could completely break the difficulty of the game. Staying level 2 until the first planet was completely made the first planet way too hard, but having an extra 4-5 jedi levels made the rest of the game way too easy.
e) You could cheese half the fights in the game with grenades and shields. That's how you get to being a jedi at level 2, but it works just as well for the rest of the game. There are very few fights that shield spam and grenades can't win.
KotOR is one of my favorite games of all time. The story is great, there's tons of stuff you can do off the beaten path, and it has a ton of replay value. The actual gameplay is subpar, though. KotOR 2 is one of my biggest disappointments of all time because it fixed the gameplay of KotOR but was so buggy and had so much cut content you couldn't actually enjoy it. A bastard child hybrid of the two might be the best game never made.
Game... blouses.
I prefer turn-based RPGs to action games actually. Each character was largely going to focus on a set path of feats (Critical Strike, Flurry, etc), so you just spammed your feat attack, or an over-powering Force power like Force Wave. Combat was never difficult, nor was strategy ever a factor.
Final Fantasy games get blasted for encouraging button-mashing, when in reality each character plays different enough to warrant some attention when selecting items.
In KOTOR, I can have every character just focus on Flurry and basically spam the same button for everyone.
Even on replays when I intentionally don't level my character until I become a Jedi, I find all the early areas frightfully easy, even with a level 2 character.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Citation needed. I certaintly don't remember hearing this, and I can't find it on LA website, wikipedia, google, etc. There were rumors of this following a series of layoffs, but it turned out that LucasArts had abandoned much of its internal development and would farm everything out to 3rd parties from then on. At least that's what I heard, I admit that my memory is fuzzy on that point.
That said, I agree that it's a crime we get crap like Adventures of Obi-wan but no continuation of the X-Wing/Tie-Fighter franchise.