Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Catch-All

0kelvin wrote:

On the QTE issue, I don't mind the offensive "Hit this sequence of buttons to finish the boss" QTEs. It's the defensive "Hit this sequence of buttons or die!" sequences I dislike.

It'd be nice if they made the "Hit the sequence of buttons" thing easier to see off the bat. I didn't even know where to look for the sequence until it was too late.

Rat Boy wrote:
0kelvin wrote:

On the QTE issue, I don't mind the offensive "Hit this sequence of buttons to finish the boss" QTEs. It's the defensive "Hit this sequence of buttons or die!" sequences I dislike.

It'd be nice if they made the "Hit the sequence of buttons" thing easier to see off the bat. I didn't even know where to look for the sequence until it was too late.

Well you should have done what I did: Read this forum first so you could be prepared for it.

I liked the demo, but I need to spend some more time with it to make sure the camera controls aren't going to spend most of their time trying to piss me off. The quicktime event at the end didn't bother me, because I agree with 0kelvin-- finishing off a boss with a QTE is okay provided it's of a reasonable length. Two button presses is okay, but once they get into double digits I start getting annoyed.

Also: I agree that it's ridiculous that this uber-bad-arsed-force user can't deflect 100% of blaster fire when blocking.

I've never played God of War but if this game is similar in gameplay then I might end up getting it just so I can play a bad-arsed beat-em-up without worrying about virtually cheating on my wife. (I'm assuming SWFU won't include any quickpr0n events)

nsmike wrote:

Am I the only one who was disappointed with the demo?

I mean, MORE QTEs? Really?

I can't help but having felt like I played a Star Wars-skinned God of War mod with force powers.

I found the demo overall underwhelming - and yeah that QTE to finish off the boss was just irritating. You have a game with some decent combat mechanics, and then it turns into Simon Says to finish a boss battle. Just lame.

AcidCat wrote:
nsmike wrote:

Am I the only one who was disappointed with the demo?

I mean, MORE QTEs? Really?

I can't help but having felt like I played a Star Wars-skinned God of War mod with force powers.

I found the demo overall underwhelming - and yeah that QTE to finish off the boss was just irritating. You have a game with some decent combat mechanics, and then it turns into Simon Says to finish a boss battle. Just lame.

Simon Says is awesome. No need to use it like an insult. Simon will not be amused.

I haven't played the demo yet, because six days after it was released, it's still gold only. What crap.

AnimeJ wrote:

I haven't played the demo yet, because six days after it was released, it's still gold only. What crap.

Don't you have a free trial from Halo 3 and/or GTA IV laying around somewhere?

Rat Boy wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

I haven't played the demo yet, because six days after it was released, it's still gold only. What crap.

Don't you have a free trial from Halo 3 and/or GTA IV laying around somewhere?

Nope, didn't buy Halo 3 or GTA IV. My gaming budget is currently very constrained.

I might play this as a rental or buy it used eventually, but I'm not shelling out $60 for this. The demo reminded me of the crappy Episode III game.

Rat Boy wrote:

Don't you have a free trial from Halo 3 and/or GTA IV laying around somewhere?

I was going to do that the other day before I renewed my Live subscription and found out the trial cards are good for multiplayer gaming only, no additional Gold perks.

AnimeJ wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

I haven't played the demo yet, because six days after it was released, it's still gold only. What crap.

Don't you have a free trial from Halo 3 and/or GTA IV laying around somewhere?

Nope, didn't buy Halo 3 or GTA IV. My gaming budget is currently very constrained.

Pro-tip: create a new silver account, and they'll toss a Gold trial period at you. Use a different email addy though.

LiquidMantis wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

Don't you have a free trial from Halo 3 and/or GTA IV laying around somewhere?

I was going to do that the other day before I renewed my Live subscription and found out the trial cards are good for multiplayer gaming only, no additional Gold perks.

Strange, it let me download the demo after I upgraded.

Rat Boy wrote:

Strange, it let me download the demo after I upgraded.

I didn't actually bother trying, I just dug up three 48 hour trial cards that had in the fine print that they were only good for online gaming and excluded everything else. Maybe since the gold-exclusive downloads are relatively new they just happen to work with the trial card membership.

Dysplastic wrote:

I don't really feel comfortable bashing the QTE's until I see just how present they actually are in the game. Assuming the same ratio in the demo as the game, there are nowhere NEAR as many in FU as in GOW. Also, the combat does conjur GoW, but in a good way - and with better abilities. There is a reason GoW is such a successful action game. Add limited RPG elements and you've got an interesting game.
And I'll still maintain the combat is much more fun than in Too Human, at least Demo vs. Demo.

Which game has the right to be known as GoW? God of War or Gears of War? And does Gears have QTE's as well (it's been a while since I played...)?

TheWalt wrote:

Which game has the right to be known as GoW? God of War or Gears of War? And does Gears have QTE's as well (it's been a while since I played...)?

Gears does not, though it does have context sensitive actions - kicking in a door versus resurrecting a fallen comrade.

Maybe a new spin on QTEs might help make them less annoying and possibly even fun. Instead of telling you what button to push, just indicate when to push a button, and then have the sequence of events change depending on which buttons are pressed at that point. If there were clear and consistent rules for each button during these sequences, like X always does something with the lightsaber, A always dodges, B always does a defensive Force power and Y always does an offensive Force power, it could really make you feel in control. If it were possible to mess up and take damage during these sequences without instantly killing you and without failing the entire sequence and requiring you start all over from the beginning, it could give it a sense of challenge without the annoyances, and finally different attacks doing different amounts of damage to the enemy could make it possible for you to end the battle quickly at the risk of being greatly damaged yourself or to play more defensively at the cost of allowing more time for the enemy to get the better of you.

Obviously, this would be more work for the team, but it could be worth it if it allowed you to still feel in control of the game and still have fun while still delivering that specific bit of cinematic awesomeness.

MechaSlinky wrote:

Maybe a new spin on QTEs might help make them less annoying and possibly even fun. Instead of telling you what button to push, just indicate when to push a button, and then have the sequence of events change depending on which buttons are pressed at that point. If there were clear and consistent rules for each button during these sequences, like X always does something with the lightsaber, A always dodges, B always does a defensive Force power and Y always does an offensive Force power, it could really make you feel in control. If it were possible to mess up and take damage during these sequences without instantly killing you and without failing the entire sequence and requiring you start all over from the beginning, it could give it a sense of challenge without the annoyances, and finally different attacks doing different amounts of damage to the enemy could make it possible for you to end the battle quickly at the risk of being greatly damaged yourself or to play more defensively at the cost of allowing more time for the enemy to get the better of you.

Obviously, this would be more work for the team, but it could be worth it if it allowed you to still feel in control of the game and still have fun while still delivering that specific bit of cinematic awesomeness.

I'd love to play a game that did QTEs like that, but it still results in my pet peeve; boss battles that don't use the game mechanics you spent the whole level getting used to. It feels like cheating to me. "We couldn't make this boss hard enough through the limits we set for ourselves, so we're going to make you learn a whole new game mechanic that only applies to this boss."

I prefer the way God Hand handled boss battles: Every so often you could stun a boss, which would cause a button to display on the screen. If you hit the button, you got to hammer an attack button as fast as you could to deal as much damage as you could before the timer ran out. However, if you never hit the button to trigger that sequence, you could still beat the boss, it would just take longer. This could be totally bad-arsed in a Jedi game. With a light saber, you could unleash a flurry of attacks that send bits of the armor flying off in every direction. With force powers, you could crush it light a tin can.

On a completely unrelated topic, it's too bad the Force wasn't in Star Trek instead of Star Wars. Then the abbreviation for this game would be STFU.

I just tried the demo. I thought it was impressive technically speaking, but I was a little disappointed by the gameplay. It felt a little too generic in contrast to, say, the Jedi Knight series. Good job with the force, but not so much with the sabre wielding experience (or lack thereof). Still fun though, and I can't criticize the game just for not being Jedi Knight 3.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Also: I agree that it's ridiculous that this uber-bad-arsed-force user can't deflect 100% of blaster fire when blocking.

I think that you can block everything when pressing the LT button. The thing I couldn't figure out though was how to aim for stuff when throwing objects (or people).

django wrote:

I think that you can block everything when pressing the LT button. The thing I couldn't figure out though was how to aim for stuff when throwing objects (or people).

The game does a fairly good job of guessing who you want to hit (I was able to hit a dude who was shooting at me from behind by flinging a crate backwards. Let me tell you; flinging a crate at a dude shooting you in the back without even seeing him feels all kinds of bad-arse), but you can also use the targeting button while holding an object with the force.

My favorite is to lift explosive crates over groups of enemies and slam them down as hard as I can. You get some kind of crush bonus for that kind of thing.

I don't even like Star Wars, but I think this one is going in my "To Buy" queue.

django wrote:

I just tried the demo. I thought it was impressive technically speaking, but I was a little disappointed by the gameplay. It felt a little too generic in contrast to, say, the Jedi Knight series.

I had to remind myself that this was more "Star Wars does God of War," then, "Jedi Knight goes next gen"

Once I left behind that expectation, the game was a ton of fun.

nsmike wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

I haven't played the demo yet, because six days after it was released, it's still gold only. What crap.

Don't you have a free trial from Halo 3 and/or GTA IV laying around somewhere?

Nope, didn't buy Halo 3 or GTA IV. My gaming budget is currently very constrained.

Pro-tip: create a new silver account, and they'll toss a Gold trial period at you. Use a different email addy though.

Yea, I know about that, but that's effort and I'm rather 'meh' about effort for something that I'm fairly well sold on, even if my meagre budget forces the purchase back a bit.

As a reference, the last 4 games I've bought were GoW, Mass Effect, Crackdown and Rock Band. Rock Band got picked up with the 360 on the tail end bits of the economic stimulus check and the 360 was used(It's new now thanks to 3 red rings :D); the other three were all used, and I paid $75 for the lot of em.

EGM's reviews for this one are in the wild now, very lukewarm.

EGM wrote:

Star Wars: TFU - C, C, B-
Good: Force powers
Bad: Combat
Horror: PS3 version sound glitches, getting stuck in walls in both versions

I don't think they are appreciating the fun of force-driven asskickery, i loved the demo something fierce

Jack Random wrote:

EGM's reviews for this one are in the wild now, very lukewarm.

EGM wrote:

Star Wars: TFU - C, C, B-
Good: Force powers
Bad: Combat
Horror: PS3 version sound glitches, getting stuck in walls in both versions

I don't think they are appreciating the fun of force-driven asskickery, i loved the demo something fierce

I think they did, but thought everything else was bad.

Jack Random wrote:
django wrote:

I just tried the demo. I thought it was impressive technically speaking, but I was a little disappointed by the gameplay. It felt a little too generic in contrast to, say, the Jedi Knight series.

I had to remind myself that this was more "Star Wars does God of War," then, "Jedi Knight goes next gen"

Once I left behind that expectation, the game was a ton of fun.

OXM gave it a 7.5. If I remember right the knocks on it were QTEs nullifying the awesomeness of the force powers and it's not like the Jedi Knight games.

maxox wrote:

it's not like the Jedi Knight games.

I've noticed a lot of that going around, It looks like this game could partially be a victim of these expectations.

Rat Boy wrote:
Jack Random wrote:

EGM's reviews for this one are in the wild now, very lukewarm.

EGM wrote:

Star Wars: TFU - C, C, B-
Good: Force powers
Bad: Combat
Horror: PS3 version sound glitches, getting stuck in walls in both versions

I don't think they are appreciating the fun of force-driven asskickery, i loved the demo something fierce

I think they did, but thought everything else was bad.

Meh, I haven't trusted an EGM review ever since they named the AtarI Jaguar "deadest system of the year" two years in a row. Granted, I'm a Jaguar partisan, but it just seemed mean spirited to me to pick declare a system dead and then the next year talk about how it's still dead as if it were a new story.

I'm loving the demo-- I've played it several times now and it's just left me wanting more. Probably end up picking this one up at some point, once I have money in the budget and time in the queue.

Tycho's impressions seem less than glowing.

nsmike wrote:

Tycho's impressions seem less than glowing.

Was just about to post that link. Tycho is one of the guys that I trust when it comes to opinions on video games. I may be putting this game back in the "rental, buy when the price drops" column.

After playing the demo a few times I think they have so far failed to deliver on how much they talked up the various aspects of the game. I want to like the game, because it's a star wars game with a cool storyline, but I'm not going to lower my standards because of that. It went from day one to a wait and see (rental or possibly bargain bin) game after the demo.

that they were prepared to deliver a significant, substantial middle chapter. This has absolutely occurred.

This is all i wanted to hear. It's still day one for me.