Lego Star Wars The Original Trilogy - Xbox 360

I've always said I loved the Lego games. The first one I played was the Lego Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and was hooked. Here's the kind of interesting thing: I realized that up until I played the original trilogy game I had only played two of the Lego games. Star Wars 1-3 and Lego Indiana Jones. Star Wars 1-3 I thoroughly enjoyed and Indiana Jones I hated with a passion. So basically my love of the Lego games was based off of enjoying one game and hating another... and yet I would have said I loved the Lego games.

When I started playing Lego Star Wars The Original Trilogy I went into it thinking I enjoyed the Lego games. You know what I found out? I really don't. When I originally played Star Wars 1-3 I believe I truly enjoyed it. However every Lego game after that has felt exactly the same, and every thing I've disliked about the Lego games just gets transfered over to the next.

When I have to trudge through a Star Wars game you know something is wrong. I love Star Wars, I love everything about Star Wars. Hell, I actually enjoyed the prequels to an extent, but you know what? It was a chore to play Lego Star Wars The Original Trilogy. By the end I just wanted it to be over. Where do I even start?

The AI? The AI was absolute shit. This doesn't really surprise me and frankly I don't expect the game to have stellar AI. Here's the problem though. You have AI teammates. Teammates that I expect to at the very least SHOOT bad guys... and they don't. I once had three AI teammates stand there and watch stormtroopers kill me. They didn't do anything, they just watched. This wasn't an isolated incident. It happened all the goddamn time. Your teammates do absolutely nothing while they're being shot or you're being shot. Occasionally they fight back but for the most part they just die. This wouldn't be so bad except occasionally you have to build things from destroyed Lego blocks. Every time you get shot you have to start over. Bad guys almost always target you. Bad guys respawn infinitely. See the problem? For the most part I just tried to make a barrier with my teammates so at least they would get shot so I could build things. And forget if you need the AI to actually do something, press something, or help you out in some way. That was just a practice in frustration. The AI in this game is beyond terrible.

Jedis are absolute bad asses... in every other Star Wars game. In this game? I would take a blaster over a light saber any day of the week. If there was an option between a Jedi and some sort of generic trooper with a blaster you can bet I'm going with the trooper. The light saber is the most ineffective weapon in the entire game. Makes total sense, right?

Only Bounty Hunters can open this door. Get used to seeing that phrase. Littered throughout the game are doors that only bounty hunters can open. What does that mean? It means that once you beat the level you have to re-beat at least part of the level with a bounty hunter character (which you may or may not have unlocked somewhere in the game) just so you can open that door and see what's behind it. If the game was a little better I might have wanted to try it, but considering for the most part it was a trudge to beat the level the first time I rarely wanted to replay the level with a different character.

It's dull and repetitive. Basically I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over just in different locations. There seemed to be absolutely no variety in the game. Nothing surprised me. Mostly I just killed some guys, found some puzzle pieces, built something, moved on to the next screen. Over and over and over again. That's what I felt like I was doing all six hours I played the game. Occasionally you would get a flying level or something that was a bit different, but overall it was incredibly repetitive.

The flying levels. Sure they broke up some of the repetitiveness, but here's the problem: they're horrible. Remember in Empire Strikes Back where Luke had to attach a rope from his A-Wing to a boulder and then crash the boulder into a wall blocking his path, but unfortunately the boulder was insanely difficult to control and also he had to kill 3 AT-ATs, 6 AT-STs, and 8 Imperial Probe Droids before he could that? Me either, but you'll sure do a lot of that kind of thing while on the flying levels! The ships control like absolute shit, you're tasked to do repetitive shit that just feels like padding the games length, and overall you just want to flying levels to end. So yeah, they break up the repetitiveness but you have to deal with all that.

The camera. Yeah, the camera is bad in a platformer. Shocking, I know.

The save points or lack thereof. This has been one of my major complaints about the Lego games. Their save point system is absolutely shit. You save when you beat a level... with no middle checkpoints of anything of that nature. You can save when you beat a level, that's it. These levels may take 45 minutes, it may take an hour. Need to turn your system off before that? Have fun completing the level all over again. Listen, we're no longer playing on the SNES or something with limited memory for saves. You can give us more then one save every 45 minutes. The one reason I've heard against save anywhere is that it makes games easier (which is complete BS, it generally makes games less frustrating, not easier) but with the Lego games you're literally playing a game where you can't fucking die. It doesn't get much easier then that. Give us a save anywhere feature. I was playing a level in Return of the Jedi when I realized I needed to get ready and go out for the night. I needed to leave in 15 minutes and just didn't have time to finish up the level. Rather then leave my Xbox on for the next five hours or so doing nothing I opted to turn it off. Guess what I had to do the next day? Beat that entire level over again because I couldn't just save. Awesome. The save system in the Lego games is absolute shit. Each level is broken up in two or three mini levels, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't be able to save at the end of each of those mini levels if you're not going to give us a save anywhere feature.

All of the Lego games feel exactly the same. They feel like you just changed the backgrounds a bit and went from Lego Star Wars to Lego Indiana Jones or to Lego Batman. They all feel like the exact same game with the exact same flaws. That's why I enjoyed the first Lego Star Wars game, at that point it was new to me. The humor was new, the feel was new, it was new... but after playing two more games that felt exactly the same with the exact same flaws? I've had enough. Until there's a major overhaul with the Lego Games I might has well just not play them because I already have.

Squid.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 - Xbox 360

I hadn't planned on playing The Force Unleashed 2, but it just kind of fell into my lap. I was house sitting last week and had planned on playing Blue Dragon, when I noticed they owned Force Unleashed 2. I figured I might as well give it a shot while I had it instead of renting it.

I should have enjoyed The Force Unleashed 2. I really should have. They seemed to have changed some of the things that I disliked about the first. And despite its flaws I still really enjoyed the first Force Unleashed. Though for some reason I just couldn't get into The Force Unleashed 2... something just didn't click.

Even though they fixed a lot of the things I complained about in the first one, they still didn't fix them all the way. The annoying quicktime events? Still there, sure there are less of them, but they're still there and they're still annoying. The targeting? Still not what I want it to be. Occasionally you just can't target the stormtrooper you want to, and that can be a problem. Why you ask? Because The Force Unleashed 2 is significantly harder... kind of.

It's not that the game is harder, it's an artificial difficulty. The bad guys aren't more difficult to kill it's just that there's more of them, and their attacks are more annoying. Then they do things like mix bad guys, ones who can't be hurt by the force with ones that can't be hurt by lightsabers. So you're trying to attack some with lightsabers and others with force magic, and that's where the problem of targeting comes in. You're trying to do to much at once on a game that just doesn't handle like you want it to. It's not a horrible problem but overall it detracts from the game. You will end up dying a lot more then you did in the first one... but all of your deaths will feel kind of cheap.

The game is also still way too short. I started playing it at about three o' clock in the afternoon the day I got there, and with some major time not playing I still manged to finish it by morning of the next day. I would say there's maybe five to six hours of gameplay... padded gameplay. I would say at least an hour or so of that was spent on two boss fights: The Gorog and Darth Vader. Those two boss fights may be the most padded boss fights I've ever seen. It got to the point that they were so long I got bored. And on top of everything else for the most part they're long because they're confusing. You're vaguely told what you have to do and left to kind of fill in the blanks. On both fights I had to consult a walkthrough to see what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I'm okay with a game being short if there's a high amount of replayability or some sort of multiplayer. With The Force Unleashed 2 you get a really short game and that's it.

I really enjoyed the first Force Unleashed game. It's probably one of my favorite Star Wars games. Yet somehow they managed to take the second one, add things to make it better, and somehow end up making it not as much fun. Sure there were some things I enjoyed: I started off with all my powers, the rage meter thing was kind of fun, and the story was pretty good... but overall I just didn't have as much fun as I did with the first. I've played the first game four times, after I beat the first one on light side I instantly played it again to get the dark side ending. With the second one I had no desire to replay it, maybe sometime down the road but certainly not after I had just beat it. The Force Unleashed 2 isn't a bad game (though I would say it's not worth $60), but I didn't get as much enjoyment out of it as the first. I would say it's worth a rent, but I wouldn't expect a lot out of it.

Squid.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Review

I love Star Wars. LOVE Star Wars. Ever since I was a kid I've had a fascination with Star Wars and everything related to Star Wars. I have a rather large Star Wars collectibles collection, I've seen the movies countless of times, I've read some of the extended universe books, hell I loved Star Wars Galaxies. I saw the "special edition" original trilogy when it was in the theater even though it was awful. I saw The Phantom Menace opening night and seven more times while it was in the theater. What I'm getting at is that I love Star Wars. So having me review a Star Wars game reminds me kind of this Penny Arcade comic.

I greatly enjoyed The Force Unleashed. Does it have it's flaws? Yes, certainly... but other then a few minor things it is in my opinion what a Star Wars game should be. When I harness the force in a video game I want to feel powerful. I want to be able to force throw people across the screen, I want to be able force lightning stormtroopers and then throw my lightsaber at their electrocuting lifeless bodies. In The Force Unleashed, I can do that... and so much more.

This playthrough of The Force Unleashed will be my fourth, why is that? Well one because it's an awesome game and two because it's an extremely short game. Short but sweet. You're looking at about six to seven hours of gameplay. After you're done though you're most likely going to want to pick it up and beat it again. I kid you not. The first time I played it I beat it to get a certain ending, I then immediately started over and beat it for the other ending. After that? Well I turned on all of the cheats and beat it as a God. Let me tell you how awesome it is to be able to pull a TIE Fighter out of the air and throw it at someone. The best thing about that? That wasn't some cheat code I had to enter... you can do that normally in the game. That's right, you can toss a goddamn TIE fighter at someone.

The Force Unleashed is set in the time between the prequels and the original trilogy. Order 66 has been executed and you're Darth Vader's new secret Padawan, in charge of hunting down Jedi as well as a plot to kill the emperor and rule side by side with Darth Vader.

When I play almost any game that has a morality choice I almost always go with the good side. I'm not sure why, I always have. Fable? Good guy. Fallout 3? Choir boy. Star Wars Galaxies? Fighting the dirty imperials with my rebel friends. I always choose the good side. Well with The Force Unleashed I got to play from the other point of view... and let me tell you, it felt good. There's something interesting playing as a complete psychopath of a Jedi. There's something very enjoyable about force lifting a jawa to the top of the screen and just letting go, thus solving the eternal question of "Can jawas fly?" (Hint: they can't.) I couldn't get enough of throwing a stormtrooper through a spaceships window and watching as him and all of his buddies get sucked out into the vacuum of space.

As I mentioned before The Force Unleashed does have its flaws.

Like I said, it's short. If I had paid $60 for it this might have mattered, but I picked it up for $20 and have played it four times now. So even though it's a very short game it appears to have a rather high replayability factor.

Quicktime Events. If there was something I could banish from the gaming world forever it would probably be quick time events. That being said, I didn't mind them all that much in The Force Unleashed. They only appeared when you were about to kill really large enemies or bosses. Taking down a huge rancor with some awesome moves, but having to do it through a QTE? I can deal with that.

Combat can be kind of difficult at times. Occasionally my targeting was kind of wonky. Instead of using force lighting on the guy in front of you it might go just to the side of him, or a guy behind him. If you pay attention and try not to do things to quickly this usually isn't a problem, you just have to pay attention to what you're targeting. Overall it's a very small gripe about the game.

The Force Unleashed is probably one of my favorite Star Wars games. As I said, to me it's what a Star Wars game should feel like. If you're a fan of Star Wars (and how could you not be?) I would highly suggest it. Here's a tip though, if you play it through once and aren't a huge fan? Play it a second time, preferably with cheat codes. Having all of the force powers and being all powerful in this game is one of the most fun gaming experiences I've had.

Squid.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Xbox360

I'm a huge Star Wars geek, shocking I know, I love everything about Star Wars. I recently sat down and in two days watched Star Wars Episodes I through VI and loved every minute of it. I then remembered that The Force Unleashed tied the two trilogies together... but I couldn't remember how.

So now it's time to sit down and get my geek on and force push everything in my way... hopefully through windows and into outer space.

Squid.