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Star Wars [The Force Unleashed II] Demo out now! You are surrounded by Rebels!
Some (most) would probably say that Force Unleashed aren't lightsaber games.
Which I think is true. But that doesn't really make them better, in my opinion.
Hence why I added my qualifier that I think they did the Force better too, integrating it better into the gameplay and being more fun to use.
Being more flashy at the Force does not make Unleashed better.
It may not make it a better game per se, but that's what they set out to do. Everything I've seen in what they wanted to do, they've done. They wanted to give you a playground with over the top force powers, not an elegant game with tight combat with integrated force powers.
This game is constantly being compared to Apples when it's clearly Oranges. Rate the game on what it is, not what it isn't. It's closer to the God of War series then it is to the Jedi Outcast series.
I think the problem is that we're rating the game for what it is. Which is not very good.
I mean, I'm holding out for the sequel. I hope it's good. But I don't have HIGH hopes, let's say.
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
I mean, I only played Unleashed briefly, but essentially you're a sorcerer of the Force, not a Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior.
Sitting back and casting your spells(force abilities).
In Outcast and Academy everything meshed together much better.
Group of Stormtroopers? you could Lightning them all to death.
Or Pull the weapons out of their hands and run around slicing them as they tried to pick them up.
Or push them all down and slice them to death.
Pop Speed and do nothing but slash run around.
You could even grab a gun and start shooting them with a rocket launcher or something.
Or, my personal favourite, use Jump to leap high above them, Pull them high into the air and they all go screaming to their deaths.
Your Force options became a little more limited against Jedi enemies, they would counter your Speed with one of their own, they could Jump too, block your pushes and pulls etc.
But the lightsaber combat was lovely and complex and even spawned an entire multiplayer community where no one used any force abilities at all, simply lightsabers.
You're right, it's been my belief the whole time that making force powers glorified physics manipulation is a complete waste, since being a Jedi should offer you so many more options. Like in Jedi Outcast, for instance.
But I don't even have enough faith in this team to code a proper force-based game, so wishing for proper lightsaber combat is something of a pipe dream.
So far, it looks like my suspicions and fears have been confirmed (I'll give it a bit more time for more views to come in). It's disheartening though--if this team can't even do that, I doubt LucasArts will bother to find a team that could make a decent TIE Fighter even if there was demand for it.
Synthesis on
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
edited October 2010
...blah, thanks for reminding me how awesome the Academy/Outcast games were. Poop.
KalTorak on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
...blah, thanks for reminding me how awesome the Academy/Outcast games were. Poop.
They aren't quite at the Deus Ex level of "if you mention it on a forum, someone somewhere will reinstall it", but they are definitely something I like to fire up every six months or so for a quick game.
Plus some of the custom levels for Jedi Academy are insane.
The Helm's Deep recreation was incredible.
Never tried it, but there was a recreation of the Shinra Headquarters from Final Fantasy VII that was excellent (and huge, by the standards of the time...something like 480 mb?).
There was also kungfu/judo moves. It was hard to pull off, but it was pretty awesome watching your Jedi grab some pirate or dark Jedi both the legs and go all Vladimir Putin all over there.
General conclusion seems to be that the game play is better but the story sucks. I'm beginning to wonder whether I should hold off getting this and wait for a price drop. On the other hand, my budget for the week would cover this without any problems.
I think I'll wait for a few more reviews before deciding. Hopefully the Eurogamer and Gamespot reviews will hit before Friday arrives.
What a disappointment. This game just seems so, half done. I guess that's what happens when you lay off the guy in charge of the series halfway through development.
Orochi_Rockman on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
man, guess I'll be renting this instead of buying.
also didn't they fire everybody right after TFU1 shipped? I've been wondering for quite a while now who actually made this game, did they hire a few people back?
I didn't know about that, but I remember reading that the guy in charge of TFU2 left Lucas Arts before the game was finished, then when it was they fired another round of people and canceled TFU3.
Orochi_Rockman on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
LucasArts may be "proud of the work" that members of its internal Star Wars: The Force Unleashed team put forth on the upcoming title, but Joystiq has learned that it nevertheless laid off a number of key personnel on the title earlier this month during its company-wide downsizing.
We spoke with one now ex-member of the team, who told us that the layoffs came just as work on the game was wrapping up. Our source, who wished not to be named, is one of several long-time members of the LucasArts talent pool let go, many of which had worked on titles including X-Wing, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango.
Should The Force Unleashed live up to the hype surrounding it, and a sequel is ordered, the current team size is said to be insufficient to handle such an undertaking. Given the fact that LucasArts stressed a continued commitment to internal developement following the layoffs, it will just need to re-staff for such a project – in which case, it has already let some top talent go – unless it intends to outsource to an external developer.
As the October 26 release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 draws near, LucasArts has confirmed a cut in its internal development staff -- much like it did just prior to the launch of the first Force Unleashed in 2008. Speaking to Gamasutra, the publisher presented the downsizing as "reorganizing its teams to better address the needs of the internal studio."
They also said they're not outsourcing anymore which I guess is good right? I mean it's not like Bioware or Traveler's Tales ever did anything for them......
oh wait.
What a debacle. Really loved the first one but damn these reviews are making this sound terrible. Will be waiting and getting this on the super cheap it looks like.
They also said they're not outsourcing anymore which I guess is good right? I mean it's not like Bioware or Traveler's Tales ever did anything for them......
oh wait.
lol exactly
ugh well hopefully The New Republic ends up being good
Hardtarget on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2010
It's getting less and less likely that I'll be buying this anytime soon.
To be honest, the demo didn't really impress me that much, because while everything was smoother, I felt like something was missing. And I don't know what that was.
I mean I enjoyed it thoroughly. I played it multiple times and spent some time working out different ways to kill people. But there was something that felt...old.
I think I just played the first game too many times, the sequel needs more than just two lightsabers and snappier force powers.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Anyone able to unlock Guybrush? I did exactly like shown in the video but no holocron appears.
I did by accident:
In the casino room with Guybrush statues, I just attacked all the slot machines, and when I hit the last a holocron appeared.
So far, I'm about an hour in I'm enjoying the hell out of myself. The game's fun, I feel powerful very quickly and I've found some room with experimenting. Example, the mini-boss with the Shield. I've seen him like 4x, after Kamino I figured out:
If you're far away enough he'll lob an ice ball at you which you can catch and throw back at him leaving him frozen for you to wail on.
Also, when you fight him in the casino you can rip the shield from him while on the 2nd floor. Then take slot machines, electrify them and huck them down from pure safety. Loved it!
So far, electrifying shit and tossing them at people is SUPER powerful and awesome against the force resistant prick Sith
LucasArts may be "proud of the work" that members of its internal Star Wars: The Force Unleashed team put forth on the upcoming title, but Joystiq has learned that it nevertheless laid off a number of key personnel on the title earlier this month during its company-wide downsizing.
We spoke with one now ex-member of the team, who told us that the layoffs came just as work on the game was wrapping up. Our source, who wished not to be named, is one of several long-time members of the LucasArts talent pool let go, many of which had worked on titles including X-Wing, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango.
Should The Force Unleashed live up to the hype surrounding it, and a sequel is ordered, the current team size is said to be insufficient to handle such an undertaking. Given the fact that LucasArts stressed a continued commitment to internal developement following the layoffs, it will just need to re-staff for such a project – in which case, it has already let some top talent go – unless it intends to outsource to an external developer.
As the October 26 release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 draws near, LucasArts has confirmed a cut in its internal development staff -- much like it did just prior to the launch of the first Force Unleashed in 2008. Speaking to Gamasutra, the publisher presented the downsizing as "reorganizing its teams to better address the needs of the internal studio."
I wonder why anyone would want to work there at this point. What the hell is Clint Hocking up to?
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
I just watched both endings on youtube, and they pretty dramatically affected my impressions of the game. Read this spoiler ONLY if you want to ruin the ending for yourself.
What the fuck? In all the ads and interviews, the dev team was touting "heavy moral choices." The entirety of the first game's moral complexity was condensed into a fork in the path. They've somehow managed to dumb this game down even further by representing the good/evil dichotomy as a choice between the two trigger buttons. Way to go. Anyway, both endings have absolutely zero regard for canon, and Starkiller gets stabbed before he can even finish the Dark Side ending. It's the gameplay equivalent of running toward Vader in the first game's ending and getting a Game Over screen before the fight ever starts.
I liked the first game--story, gameplay, characters, everything. It was good, if not exceptional, and I had high hopes for the sequel. I'm sad to say the pretty set-pieces can't justify slogging through samey gameplay for this disappointment of a conclusion. I'll probably wind up youtubing scenes with PROXY and Kota, but that's about it.
LucasArts may be "proud of the work" that members of its internal Star Wars: The Force Unleashed team put forth on the upcoming title, but Joystiq has learned that it nevertheless laid off a number of key personnel on the title earlier this month during its company-wide downsizing.
We spoke with one now ex-member of the team, who told us that the layoffs came just as work on the game was wrapping up. Our source, who wished not to be named, is one of several long-time members of the LucasArts talent pool let go, many of which had worked on titles including X-Wing, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango.
Should The Force Unleashed live up to the hype surrounding it, and a sequel is ordered, the current team size is said to be insufficient to handle such an undertaking. Given the fact that LucasArts stressed a continued commitment to internal developement following the layoffs, it will just need to re-staff for such a project – in which case, it has already let some top talent go – unless it intends to outsource to an external developer.
As the October 26 release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 draws near, LucasArts has confirmed a cut in its internal development staff -- much like it did just prior to the launch of the first Force Unleashed in 2008. Speaking to Gamasutra, the publisher presented the downsizing as "reorganizing its teams to better address the needs of the internal studio."
I wonder why anyone would want to work there at this point. What the hell is Clint Hocking up to?
Sounds to me like they're not a Video Game company, they're a company that makes video games. So they don't build on teams, they ramp up hiring when they need people, quickly filling spots, get the game close to done, fire most of the staff and let the skeleton crew finish the game.
The D.O.D. companies do this a lot as well, it's a sneaky way to come in under budget. It looks good on paper, but makes for below average products.
It really is a crying shame isn't it? I mean Lucas Arts really hand their hands on something here. This series could have been huge because it is very fun to to totally ruin things with insane force powers.
I mean, if only they'd given a shit, just one (1) shit about their product or their customers. I really cared about Marek, Juno, Kota, and Proxy. They had me completely hooked on this series from the first game, whose flaws I instantly forgave because it was just the first game in the series. But now? Ugh, I won't be getting this and the way they handle things now really makes me just want to ignore everything else they put out from this point forward.
Orochi_Rockman on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
I will never completely ignore LucasArts ever, simply because of the totally unexpected gems they bring out (Star Wars Rebellion) as well as the solid expected games (Jedi Outcast/Academy), even if a lot of their games are total flops (Force Commander, Battlefront, The Phantom Menace)
Sounds to me like they're not a Video Game company, they're a company that makes video games. So they don't build on teams, they ramp up hiring when they need people, quickly filling spots, get the game close to done, fire most of the staff and let the skeleton crew finish the game.
The D.O.D. companies do this a lot as well, it's a sneaky way to come in under budget. It looks good on paper, but makes for below average products.
It's so fucking sad, because Lucasarts used to be my absolute favorite video game company. I recently bought the book Rogue Leaders, which is a visual history of the company (and highly recommended), and you can literally pinpoint the exact time where they switched gears and the whole creative process went into complete decay.
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
I didnt enjoy the first one gameplay wise burning thought it did a really cool job of tying the story into the Canon of the films. Reading over the plot synopsis in the last page assures I won't even be bothering with this one.
I'm really happy I rented this. I'm glad I get to play it but if I had paid $60 I would have been mad.
I also have no idea how they still fail to make boss fights that are miserable. It's not enough to just have to figure it out and execute, you are required to do it over and over. This is even worse when the thing you need to do is based on a random trigger from the boss. I had to sit there and dodge something over and over again until some arm randomly comes slamming down long enough to use lightning. (Only 1 of the 4 attacks this thing used would actually give you the chance to hurt it.)
If it wasn't for the fact that I liked all the characters from the first game I wouldn't put this disk back in my xbox.
EDIT: I do have to say the graphics are great. The grab moves almost use a cinematic camera that make them look brutal. It just so happens they are always the exact same moves...
Posts
It may not make it a better game per se, but that's what they set out to do. Everything I've seen in what they wanted to do, they've done. They wanted to give you a playground with over the top force powers, not an elegant game with tight combat with integrated force powers.
This game is constantly being compared to Apples when it's clearly Oranges. Rate the game on what it is, not what it isn't. It's closer to the God of War series then it is to the Jedi Outcast series.
I mean, I'm holding out for the sequel. I hope it's good. But I don't have HIGH hopes, let's say.
Sitting back and casting your spells(force abilities).
In Outcast and Academy everything meshed together much better.
Group of Stormtroopers? you could Lightning them all to death.
Or Pull the weapons out of their hands and run around slicing them as they tried to pick them up.
Or push them all down and slice them to death.
Pop Speed and do nothing but slash run around.
You could even grab a gun and start shooting them with a rocket launcher or something.
Or, my personal favourite, use Jump to leap high above them, Pull them high into the air and they all go screaming to their deaths.
Your Force options became a little more limited against Jedi enemies, they would counter your Speed with one of their own, they could Jump too, block your pushes and pulls etc.
But the lightsaber combat was lovely and complex and even spawned an entire multiplayer community where no one used any force abilities at all, simply lightsabers.
So far, it looks like my suspicions and fears have been confirmed (I'll give it a bit more time for more views to come in). It's disheartening though--if this team can't even do that, I doubt LucasArts will bother to find a team that could make a decent TIE Fighter even if there was demand for it.
They aren't quite at the Deus Ex level of "if you mention it on a forum, someone somewhere will reinstall it", but they are definitely something I like to fire up every six months or so for a quick game.
AREN'T YOU???!
The Helm's Deep recreation was incredible.
Ahh it was beautiful.
Never tried it, but there was a recreation of the Shinra Headquarters from Final Fantasy VII that was excellent (and huge, by the standards of the time...something like 480 mb?).
There was also kungfu/judo moves. It was hard to pull off, but it was pretty awesome watching your Jedi grab some pirate or dark Jedi both the legs and go all Vladimir Putin all over there.
Game Informer - 7.75/10
Games Radar - 8/10
Joystiq - 3/5
General conclusion seems to be that the game play is better but the story sucks. I'm beginning to wonder whether I should hold off getting this and wait for a price drop. On the other hand, my budget for the week would cover this without any problems.
I think I'll wait for a few more reviews before deciding. Hopefully the Eurogamer and Gamespot reviews will hit before Friday arrives.
It's not looking good.
also didn't they fire everybody right after TFU1 shipped? I've been wondering for quite a while now who actually made this game, did they hire a few people back?
June 2008 http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/26/lucasarts-cuts-hit-force-unleashed-team-after-all/ September 2010 - http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/01/lucasarts-confirms-latest-round-of-layoffs/
oh wait.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-star-wars/706692
lol exactly
ugh well hopefully The New Republic ends up being good
To be honest, the demo didn't really impress me that much, because while everything was smoother, I felt like something was missing. And I don't know what that was.
I mean I enjoyed it thoroughly. I played it multiple times and spent some time working out different ways to kill people. But there was something that felt...old.
I think I just played the first game too many times, the sequel needs more than just two lightsabers and snappier force powers.
I did by accident:
In the casino room with Guybrush statues, I just attacked all the slot machines, and when I hit the last a holocron appeared.
So far, I'm about an hour in I'm enjoying the hell out of myself. The game's fun, I feel powerful very quickly and I've found some room with experimenting. Example, the mini-boss with the Shield. I've seen him like 4x, after Kamino I figured out:
Also, when you fight him in the casino you can rip the shield from him while on the 2nd floor. Then take slot machines, electrify them and huck them down from pure safety. Loved it!
So far, electrifying shit and tossing them at people is SUPER powerful and awesome against the force resistant prick Sith
I wonder why anyone would want to work there at this point. What the hell is Clint Hocking up to?
Steam ID: Good Life
I liked the first game--story, gameplay, characters, everything. It was good, if not exceptional, and I had high hopes for the sequel. I'm sad to say the pretty set-pieces can't justify slogging through samey gameplay for this disappointment of a conclusion. I'll probably wind up youtubing scenes with PROXY and Kota, but that's about it.
UGH.
Sounds to me like they're not a Video Game company, they're a company that makes video games. So they don't build on teams, they ramp up hiring when they need people, quickly filling spots, get the game close to done, fire most of the staff and let the skeleton crew finish the game.
The D.O.D. companies do this a lot as well, it's a sneaky way to come in under budget. It looks good on paper, but makes for below average products.
I mean, if only they'd given a shit, just one (1) shit about their product or their customers. I really cared about Marek, Juno, Kota, and Proxy. They had me completely hooked on this series from the first game, whose flaws I instantly forgave because it was just the first game in the series. But now? Ugh, I won't be getting this and the way they handle things now really makes me just want to ignore everything else they put out from this point forward.
but it will never get made, even though they tease us every so often...
If tease you mean get the game half way finished, scrap it, then release awesome concept art and a trailer for a game we will never see.
Steam ID: Good Life
It's so fucking sad, because Lucasarts used to be my absolute favorite video game company. I recently bought the book Rogue Leaders, which is a visual history of the company (and highly recommended), and you can literally pinpoint the exact time where they switched gears and the whole creative process went into complete decay.
I also have no idea how they still fail to make boss fights that are miserable. It's not enough to just have to figure it out and execute, you are required to do it over and over. This is even worse when the thing you need to do is based on a random trigger from the boss. I had to sit there and dodge something over and over again until some arm randomly comes slamming down long enough to use lightning. (Only 1 of the 4 attacks this thing used would actually give you the chance to hurt it.)
If it wasn't for the fact that I liked all the characters from the first game I wouldn't put this disk back in my xbox.
EDIT: I do have to say the graphics are great. The grab moves almost use a cinematic camera that make them look brutal. It just so happens they are always the exact same moves...
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
While the gameplay was a bit clunky in the first game, the story was fantastic. Too bad they dropped the ball hard in the storytelling for this game.
Yea, I will end up renting, or maybe bargain binning it later. There is too much I want to buy to waste my money on this goosery.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
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