TFU is a killer game and most of the mainstream criticisms of it are invalid

The Game Room
1

I’m almost done with it (360 version), and I haven’t gotten to the infamous Star Destroyer part, but I’m 100% satisfied with the game so far. I think that the levels are beautiful, the gameplay is fun and interesting, and the force powers are wonderful. All of the different combinations of moves and force powers give it an interactive quality that beat-em-ups like the God of War series really lack - you can truly define your own style of play and approach to the game (I tend to almost exclusively use force grab rather than brawling - I spend the vast majority of the game throwing things and throwing people). I haven’t encountered a single glitch or bug yet, in spite of comments claiming that the game was “so buggy that it should not have been released” (tell that to people that bought the KOTOR game with the save bug).

The one thing that I vehemently disagree with, which I’ve seen parroted in almost every review, is that you use “quick-time events” in the boss fights. Instead of replacing the boss fights, these are more like “finishing moves” - they only kick in once you’ve basically beaten the boss. I think they provide a nice, cinematic finish once you’ve whittled down the guy’s life bar.

I also like the “whack-a-mole” style of the enemies, as infuriating as it can be. I’m tired of games where there are hordes of enemies that patiently stand around and keep a polite distance so that you can murder them. It’s all about force dashing and getting your ass out of there when they swarm you!

Killer game - just love it. I’m sad to see all the low scores.

2

Good for you; I found it more entertaining to use the game disc as a frisbee, myself.

I had a massive rant at the game earlier, so I won’t repeat myself, just address what you’ve said; My biggest gripe with the spit QTEs is that you have to do them. Take those walker things - why can’t you just keep electrocuting it to death? Or lightsabering it? No, the game resents you doing things your own way, possibly because you’re not stylist enough, and hijacks the game whilst you’re relegated to pushing buttons when it tells you to.

I wouldn’t much care about the whack-a-mole gameplay if you could actually frigging save when you went to the menu (which takes forever - unforgivable in this generation of gaming) and pressed ‘save’. Take the bit where you have to destroy the skyhook. Took me forever simply because you can’t save between destroying it and the walker thing that comes after you - if I killed the walker first, the zillions of snipers would pop me. If I killed everyone else, the walker would get me. Both lead to restarting the whole frigging process again.

Maybe I was just crap at it, but I found it a massive chore of a game that didn’t belong in this decade.

3

I wouldn’t say this is an old topic, since the game came out in the past month. And since I never threw my hat in on the original threads, I will here.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a solid game with fun ideas and an interesting story. The low scores come from any number of things which should’ve been addressed by programmers and testers in the 10 months the game was delayed from its original promised release. Among these are included the small glitches in gameplay and many, MANY targetting annoyances.

To the OP: you said you enjoyed using the force grip to manhandle people and objects. Do you mean that you never got annoyed at a mid-battle mistarget? It would’ve been easy to improve the priorities so Starkiller picks up, say, a stormtrooper or an exploding barrel before he’ll grip some random doodad on the wall or piece of unweaponizable debris. Yes, tweaking the camera and positioning before using the grip will make it more controllable, but that’s still something you have to get used to, not something immediately intuitive.

And the actual gameplay is fun, but doesn’t vary at all once you earn the points for the basic combos. Before long, the points you earn aren’t giving you anything new, just boosting damage reduction and max health and things like that. The ‘growing badass’ phenomenom is there for the first hour or two of play, but there are many more where nothing happens except the colors and shapes of enemies change and they take more hits to kill. Sadly, rancors and AT-STs have almost the exact same attack patterns and are fought in pretty much the same ways.

Since I love 3D action games (and I’m unfair like that), I can’t help comparing this to a Devil May Cry game - new enemies with totally new ways of attacking every level, new weapons offered on the whole progression all the way to the end, and new combos that actually change how you use those weapons.

It also bothered the hell out of me that the actual Jedi bosses had so many random frames of invincibility. So sometimes my lightning+saber combos will knock them away but most times I’ll just be instantly countered? Yeah, no fun to be had there.

In the end, the physics and story make it worth at least a rental, but unless they patch in some sort of multiplayer, new playable characters, or even the chance to use the light-tonfa or staff, there’s no reason to play through the game more than once, if that.

4

Actually, you can. I’ve killed an AT-CT and a Rancor without ever going into QT events. The button trigger doesn’t start unless you land, and even if you DO land you just have to not press that one button (walkers is almost always X so you can still lightning them to hell).

5

Really? I’ve never been able to manage that; their health goes into the red and then it seems to automatically go on to QTE no matter what button I press, and since I have the reflexes of a drugged-up sloth I botch it up; repeat until controller thrown at wall. Good to know it is possible, though.

Even so; the targeting system is the shabbiest I’ve ever seen, which cripples the game no matter what. How many testers did this game have?!

6

I think Robin summed it up pretty well. I had a good time with the game, spent about a week on it, got my 1000 gamer points on XBox live, and I’m probably never going to touch it again. I did like the story a lot, and the cutscenes were actually quite good. They even managed to restore Vader to his former evil badass glories, something that I thought the prequel movies had made impossible to ever do again. The bit in intro cutscene to the last level, when Vader says, “I lied.”? I loved that.

7

Out of full disclosure, I don’t have a next gen console, so I played on a PS2. I didn’t hate the game, but I found it to be really short, I didn’t like the QTEs, and by the end, I was pretty much just using force lightning on everyone. I also would have liked it to be less linear. That being said, it was a good story, and, eith the exception of the QTEs, I liked the controls.

8

For the most part it is a fun game but I did run into a couple of serious bugs that required me to turn of the PS3. One of them, my character got stuck somewhere and then all the background went white and my char could move around while leaving trails everywhere.
That was either a bug or a flashback…

9

The game overall was pretty decent, but definitely didn’t live up to the hype. THe physics engine was great but wasn’t used on all the objects (you could destroy some trees with the slash of a lightsaber while others were impervious to all damage) and the AI was great at times and completely terrible at others. The story was WAY too linear, I was hoping I’d be able to go good or evil at some point OTHER than just the final boss, which I thought was total BS. Give me a choice and make it effect the game, not just effect the ending.

Overall, though, the game was fun. I barely used my lightsaber at all, to be honest, and mostly just force lightning’d and pushed my way through the game, though I did find the boss battles, on the whole, to be kinda lame. Monotonous and repetitive and they had, as someone else pointed out, seemingly random areas of complete invulnerability. Seemed to me the easiest way to beat all of them was lightning, then attack, then push, then lightning, etc.

I feel it deserved the reviews it got. A decent game somewhere underneath it all, but not as polished as it should have been and not as high quality as was expected.

As for how many testers? can’t say for certain, but I’d guess somewhere over 100 but less than 200, 120-150 would be pretty likely for this game

10

I just took down the Star Destroyer and I don’t care what the reviewers say, that fight was EPIC.

I love The Force Unleashed, it was one of the truly great Star Wars games.