Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Review

As many people who pretend not to know me are aware of; I am a huge Star Wars fan.  I know that Boba Fett is a Mandalorian, I know that there were four IG-88 droids and I know what planet General Grievous is from.  It’s Kalee by the way.  So I was actually surprisingly enthusiastic after getting through a pretty lackluster text crawl and seeing Darth Vader’s ship fly to Kamino.  The music and some rare set pieces were actually rather enjoyable for me, if just nostalgically.  

So we find out that Starkiller was cloned and is now some kind of apprentice for Darth Vader, or something, whatever.  We learn practically nothing about any character which makes the story feel unmotivated and vacuous, which is worse because the story is that without even adding anything else to the equation.  It takes the information from the first The Force Unleashed and carries it here so if you didn’t know exactly what happened you’ll be more lost than a Jawa on Hoth.

The whole clone aspect is brought up, mentioned a few times but never expanded in any way.  You’re told that it’s impossible to clone Jedi but we see Vader use a bunch of duplicated Starkillers, childishly categorized into blue force users and brown lightsaber users.  And that’s never addressed.  Characters including Proxy and Boba Fett show up but they barely do anything.  Proxy is just a connection to the surprisingly superior first game and Fett simply kidnaps Juno Eclipse, who is apparently the love interest and primary objective for no clear reason, and never shows up again.  And when Starkiller travels to Dagobah, for the hell of it, he has a shockingly short chat with Yoda that may as well have been one of them saying “sup”.  The story is so hasty and lackluster, filled with meaningless boss fights, enemy introductions and drawn out situations.  I can barely comprehend what even happened and why.  Starkiller himself has miniscule amounts of character that crumble away near the climax when he starts constantly shouting “Where is she!?”.  After the third time I expected him to punch The Joker in the face.   

Why didn't it fire that many before?!

The combat is just as crude and lifeless as the story.  Now, it may be a surprise to hear this from something who is pretending to be a Video Game Critic, but, I have a slight fondness for quick time events.  I think they have the potential to seamlessly mesh the gameplay in with a cut scene therefore creating a cinematic and fully interactive experience.  We’re not there yet and The Force Unleashed II is evidence of that.  The QTE could have been quite effective if large enemies didn’t show up so often, turning many fights into obnoxious chores.  And when you slash and shock stupid bipedal robots with flamethrowers you begin their cinematic execution and the last button you have to push is completely random.  It makes sense having ‘circle’ be force push and ‘triangle’ use lightning, but no matter what button you hit Starkiller just spits out another little force push and then flips around a bit, which the game acts out for me.  It would have been so awesome if these events gave you the ability to choose what moves you did to take something down, using the cinematic moment for added focus on single enemies and stylish moves instead of zapping and hitting things like a steroidal BioShock.  For example; you fight a large target and engage its QTE, but now you can choose whether to damage it with a lightsaber strike, make it stumble with force push or stun it with lightning.  All of these choices have distinct effects on the enemy and even things around it.  If I just have to push ‘square’ for Starkiller to begin a destructive display of Jedi acrobatics then what’s the point of me doing anything or the oppurtunity even being there?

I was told that dismemberment was present here but it happens so little it may as well never exist.  I threw several storm troopers into a giant fan only for them to boringly bounce off and your lightsaber just cuts people slightly which makes slicing an AT-TE in half make even less sense.  This series does not have a tendency of being child friendly.  Realistic dismemberment would have been monumentally effective, for an effectively visceral experience and especially for sales.  

...and Tie......Defender....

The camera is always placed too far away from the action.  I felt like a kid who was smacking his toys together so I mostly just swung my lightsaber around and sporadically zapped storm troopers until a door opened, because doors only open until everyone is dead in a room, common fact.  Also, stop inventing enemies just for specific games!  It’s exactly how I feel about Star Wars Lego that makes up ships like a Tie Defender.  Here’s an idea; use enemies and vehicles that are familiar and comfortable in the Star Wars universe and make Starkiller less powerful.  Making every enemy and situation large and explosive doesn’t work because there’s no contrast to anything else around it.  Larger enemies do mildly mix a situation up, but because they appear in virtually every fight you’re in, they are the situation.  And now they can kick you when you’re close, so they at least pose a threat, an annoying and completely harmless threat.  Besides that they either ineffectively blast you with lasers or fire missles that you can counter back with such an easily timed deflection that it took me a while to master it because I assumed that “deflect missles back just as they are about to hit you” meant less than 20 feet in front of me.   There were even these large droids with General Grievous faces which would have been very interesting if it was more than just pretentious aesthetic to make the developers seem deep.  Overall, the combat jarringly jumps from being a rather successful display of Starkiller’s raw power to systematically quick time event-ing large droids to death.

She survives by the way.....yay.........

Worst of all is the excruciatingly tedious fight with Darth Vader himself.  There is absolutely no strategy except zapping him for a millisecond and then flailing your lightsabers in his general direction.  He effortlessly blocks everything else and is such a stupidly repetitive ‘challenge’ that fighting him as an end boss is just depressing, especially for such an iconic character.  He has the mentality of a Nintendo 64 boss, continuously throwing things at you despite the fact that you’ve thrown them back at him 20 times, running away and letting his goons take care of you, taking ridiculous amounts of damage and jumping to a platform only for you to jump after him.  It’s only afterwards when he has Juno hostage and orders you to obey his commands when things actually start to get drastically more interesting.  But all that potential is instantly ripped away when Juno takes a swing at Vader and he just throws her out a window which makes his surprisingly stirring speech, which could have made the game go for another 14 hours and possibly be good, completely pointless.  

And that’s what this game is; pointless.  Its story is horrendously tacky and short, going to three locations; two planets and one ship.  The combat, while sometimes mildly fun, is basic, bland and never becomes anything other than ‘Starkiller bombastically thrashes his lightsabers around and spits out lightning and blue wind’.  It’s just depressing because The Force Unleashed series had such an opportunity of being amazing.  Especially since it actually acts outside the canon of Star Wars and treats its characters with relative respect.  I loved it when Boba Fett, Vader and even Proxy showed up but they just didn’t do enough.  Like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic; The Force Unleashed II didn’t have to be Star Wars to be good.  With more effort in story, combat and pretty much everything else it could have been a really endearing series of games.  Instead it’s another grotesque attachment on the hideous mutant that is the Star Wars franchise.  I chose the Lightside ending by the way.  I’m a nice guy.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Review

I celebrated Australia Day by playing about seven hours of Uncharted 3 on my brother’s Shiny Black Monolith (PS3).  The fact that I was able to finish the whole game in one day with a short ‘2 Minute Noodle Break’ should give you an idea of what I thought of Drake’s Deception.

Firstly; No.  No no no no.  You cannot have your character fall out of a plane, land in the middle of the desert, walk for dozens of hours without food or water, hallucinate and then fight off a battalion of soldiers while rolling, shooting and climbing his way around.  No.  Stupid.

Secondly; Uncharted 3 wants to be a movie.  It’s like Naughty Dog intended to make the series a trilogy of movies but resorted to an interactive medium to strike at a growing market.  It’s flooded with cut scenes which I always have an instant stigma against since it’s the non-game part of a game.  Yet, the gameplay still effectively fades in from a cinematic or flawlessly slides its way into the action.  This creates a distinct flow that continues throughout most of the journey.  Unfortunately, because these moments occur so frequently, it’s hard to tell whether you can even control Drake or not.  I couldn’t control Drake when he shot someone, yet I didn’t do anything while he was falling out of a plane, causing me to plummet to my sandy death.  If you put down the controller to watch the cinematics you’ll have to lunge for it when the interactive elements jumps back to the spotlight.

The climbing, shooting and puzzle-ing aspect is here again but it doesn’t pace itself quite like Uncharted 2.  All the sections are spaced relatively well to each other but there’s too much of everything, so it goes for too long and clogs up the experience.  This may be because I played it all in one day, but I started and finished Uncharted 2 about 2.5 times in a week and it never got tiresome.  I do more than just play games by the way.

I’ve never been that instinctive with puzzles in games and fortunately those moments are deceptively scarce here.  My favourite, or least despised, involved standing in a specific spot to hold a map up to correctly align it with objects in the room.  That is simple and dynamic, with a clear goal and way of achieving it.  When I know what needs to be done but can’t finish it because the tools are so obscure or fidgety it crushes the momentum and any enthusiasm I had.  Every single puzzle section puts such a halt on everything and you’d think the ancient civilization would just have their massive door made with a key lock instead of huge gears, levers, pillars and conveniently climbable objects.

There’s essentially no innovation here.  You could say “Don’t fix what’s not broken”, but I can say “I could play Uncharted 2 and get the exact same experience, except better.”  Drake still finds himself in sporadically varying environments which does make the experience as a whole more intriguing and vibrant, but the sheer size of everything can get very obnoxious.  Although the graphics are absolutely unbelievable, the buildings, ships and everything else that’s randomly broken is mostly seen as something that can be climbed to get out of.  The camera does pull back to give you very awe-inspiring shots but you’ll always be looking for some overly convenient thing to grab onto so not only is that difficult because you can barely see yourself but it’s seen as a truncated puzzle and not just a pretty location.  What makes the too few chase scenes incredibly enjoyable is that you’re instinctively using clearly placed objects to guide you to someone running along the same path.  It’s timed, which adds tension, and the objects that are placed like ramps are more useful in that situation than Drake climbing up something where his arm tells you if you can do it. 

Fighting was arguably my least favourite part.  Enemies throw grenades like ‘hot potatoes’ and Nathan Drake controls like a horse, so taking cover and fighting multiple targets is stiff, clunky and sometimes incredibly annoying.  The guns also have aiming that's a little too realistic for my taste.  When you finally blow up a truck or even kill a single enemy it’s satisfying, mainly because it’s one less annoying part of the situation.  Brawls with single targets are realistic and intuitive for the first couple hours of the game.  After that point you’ll realize how Drake constantly uses the same set of moves and counters, so fighting become a tedious pattern you’ll have to adamantly endure until the enemy goes down after an arbitrary amount of kicks in the jewels.  I was playing on easy yet some people can take ridiculous amounts of damage, even when you shoot them in the face.  Drake himself can take obscene rounds punishment while automatically healing his bullet wounds like a snarky Wolverine.  It feels like BioShock, in that ammo is scarce, certain enemies are hard to take down and when you shoot someone they show no feedback and red paint spurts out of them like you shot a bleeding pimple.  This, sometimes, can make for very tense conditions because it forces you to resort to guns and tactics you wouldn’t comfortably use.  Other times it’s infuriating but the autosaves are common enough to not shatter enjoyment, kinda. 

The characters are charismatic in a pretty superfluous way.  They can shine in particular moments, mostly at the start and end, but they usually just vomit out adventurous quips and exposition that I barely listen to.  It’s surprising what particular characters set up and never expand on.  One of the first people you meet is shown to be claustrophobic.  You see him get anxious in tight areas which makes him feel wonderfully human, but then he vanishes before the half way point and is barely mentioned again.  We also play Nathan Drake as a child and see how he met his friend and pseudo-mentor Sulley, but nothing really comes of it, we just see how they met, with bombastically climactic results.  We also learn that Nathan Drake isn’t Drake’s real name, but it’s brought up out of nowhere as if we’re supposed to just ride that sentence to some meaningful conclusion that the game never gives us.  There are even some ‘trippy’ moments when Drake gets drugged and these actually clash with the ‘real’ moments in an entertaining way, if just to see something different.  But nothing even comes of that, he either runs through a Middle Eastern market for what feels like seven minutes or the game (spoilers) makes you think a character is dead until it just goes “Nope, it was ALLLLLLL a dream”.

My favourite moment from the whole game is when you control Nathan walking in the desert.  It’s just that; Nathan walking in the desert.  The length of the moment and the fact that it’s essentially right on the front cover makes it clear the developers were proud of it.  They should be.  I’m glad they put in such a serene segment since every other time you’re falling, shooting, doing a puzzle or jumping off things just before they dramatically break apart.  I really felt for Drake in this situation, especially when he finds a well for a second time and realizes he’s been going in circles.  When he finally finds a city I almost started crying, ‘manly crying’…you know?  When your eyes get moist but nothing drips out…I probably could have worded that better…anyway.   

If you liked the other Uncharted games then you’ll like this, because it’s stayed exactly the same.  The situations are still grossly ludicrous but still enjoyable.  The mechanics of climbing huge structures is user friendly and simple, while the controls can make combat unintentionally difficult.  I would actually recommend playing it on VERY EASY.  Guns and ammo are sparse enough to make virtually every combat scenario effective/annoying and it’s not like the game being hard makes a chapter taking place in a boat graveyard more redundant.

Might and Magic Clash of Heroes Review

It’s 3:12:07am in the morning.  After 26 hours, 54 minutes and 32 seconds in 3 days I have now finished 

Might and Magic Clash of Heroes.

I wasn’t expecting much from this Steam bought game.  I didn’t see it as anything but a cheap spin off from the Might and Magic series, specifically Heroes V.  However, the second the main menu faded in and started to play the main theme from Heroes V, I was stunned and my jaw literally dropped.  I stared at the screen for about nine seconds, just listening to the music.  From that point and throughout most of my play through, three words kept circling through my head:  

“I am home.”

I was seeing characters I essentially grew up with, Markal, Godric, Fiona, Cyrus.  The Might and Magic series is a universe that I am falling in love with the more I experience it.

The innovative combat is what pulled me back to Clash of Heroes.  It follows me in my thoughts.  When I close my eyes I see the stacks, the rows, the chains, the colours, the charging units.  When I’m looking at my desktop I have to remind myself that I can adjust the icons wherever I want.  I don’t have to move the lower folders away before grabbing the one above, or delete Microsoft Word so that it will connect three folders together to form a SUPER FOLDER, or something.  I guess that’s what I get for playing over seven hours of this addictive adventure a day.

The combat is the only interactive element, excluding walking to nodes on a beautifully artistic path.  These battle situations play out like a bombastic and tactical puzzle game, like Bejeweled or upside down Tetris.  The idea of making stacks and combining creatures together is a concept that took me a while to get used to, until I reminded myself that it’s essentially the core concept of all Heroes of Might and Magic games.  Combat involves tactically moving units of varying colours and tiers into rows and columns to perform certain actions.  I’m not too happy about the childish looking creatures, some of which almost look like babies, but the relative diversity of many units keeps every battle satisfying and engaging.  Yet, every creature is treated more like lifeless weapons than actual people which gives Clash of Heroes an unintentionally depressing sense of severity and it doesn’t help when an idle Bone Dragon, Pit Fiend or Griffin can get destroyed by virtually anything in one hit.  The combat is intuitive and very rewarding, but nothing in any battle feels alive.   In preparation for the updated combat mechanics of Might and Magic: Heroes VI, the units are separated into Core, Elite and Champion creatures.  

• Core units are building blocks, forming walls…somehow, buffing higher tier units and even forming their own stacks to dish out small amounts of damage. 
• Elite units have specific abilities that echo the theme of the faction that controls them.  Elite and Champion creatures can be permanently destroyed in battle which adds a tense level of strategy and risk to every battle they’re in.
• Champion’s require four core units to be placed behind them to attack.  They can obliterate you in one hit if you don’t create walls and even move idle units to block they’re line of earth shattering destruction.

Aside from the juvenile design for every single creature, I did have one major problem that could have been easily fixed.  There are a shockingly few amount of creatures that attack in any physical way.  Bears, imps, zombies and golems run at the enemy and strike them physically which makes the combat feel more tangible, but it’s odd that many creatures execute their attacks from a distance with stupidly obnoxious displays.  The battles don’t feel visceral enough when a giant four armed cat launches its swords at you rather than ferociously slashing your defenses apart.

There are some tedious situations that force you into a battle that the story doesn’t even call for.  Easily, the most frustrating moment of my experience involved fighting my way through guards that were summoned by the main villain.  The fact that the game resorted to something so needlessly lazy is tiresome and depressing, but that’s not the worst part.  The second set of guards you face are three titans.  Overall, 5-10% of battles you face are constructed in a way to force you to hit a certain target in a certain way, like; gates, buttons and even vomit.  Attempting to meticulously take out the three linked, charging and powerful targets caused me some much un-wanted annoyance.

The titans are so powerful that they can stampede right through you if you haven’t made excruciatingly precise maneuvers with mandatory creatures that you’re not told are mandatory.  Your units are randomly slotted into position at the start of every battle which can result in this particular fight being literally impossible to win.  Moments like that can completely obliterate my fondness of a game, like Prototype’s overpowered end boss. Actually, Clash of Heroes does have a tricky boss but I was lucky enough to defeat it on my first go, and the music and mechanics of that particular fight were so magnificent that I enjoyed it more than I ever thought.  Battles are definitely overused here, including a situation where you have to fight in an arena to get an audience with a king.  That’s such a conspicuous way of shoving the player into contrived fights, and there a several battles that could have been more effective if the story created a more potent scenario.  You face Guards so often that the  story starts to feel less important yet the most appealing battles are when the main heroes are facing each other because both characters have a stake in the result.

It took me quite a while to finally appreciate the fact that the playable characters are essentially children.  I saw it as a clear marketing strategy to appeal more friendly to kids.  The heroes are surprisingly relatable and well characterized, for a Nintendo DS and Steam game.  They often fall into generic fantasy speak, with lines that could have been said by virtually every single living thing you meet in the game, but many characters have arcs, motives, goals, tragedies and obstacles.  The two most engaging are Fiona and Aidan.  

Fiona falls into the land of Heresh, the dead homeland of the Necropolis faction (My personal favourite in Heroes III and V).  Alone, scared and…wait for it…….dead, she floats her way through the cursed landscape which eventually leads her to losing the one hope of becoming alive again and vowing to slice off the head of whoever is responsible.  A reaction like that is actually rather jarring but it’s refreshing to have some emotional feedback in a gaming character where they could have very easily been bland and lifeless, pardon the pun….because she’s dead…

Aidan ends up in Sheogh, the demon underworld.  It is quickly established that Aidan is very hot-tempered and brooding, like the fact he has red hair.  After realizing that he has control over Inferno creatures, which is surprisingly never explained in any way, he violently challenges and slaughters all who stand before him.  He also has, arguably, the most interesting moment in the entire game when the powerful artifact known as The Blade of Binding fuses with his own arm.  With this one effective moment; Aidan himself is now the objective the villains are after and every other hero is now connected with the story.  With friends, family and personal desires binding the characters together; they arrive at the climax in a completely natural and believable way.

Might and Magic Clash of Heroes is one of the most addictive games I have ever played.  It is absolutely perfect for a child, or child at heart, on a long plane flight.  Work and food were the only things that drew me away from this gem.  It certainly does have its faults, but I am exceedingly impressed at this addictive and magical adventure.  I recommend it to anyone.