SallyNasty's Game Club - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for May! May the 4th be with you(starts May 4th)!

Hey gang, new game incoming - this time with some new guidelines!

But first - these are the *usual* guidelines for these playthroughs -

1. Games should be at least 1 calendar year old. That makes it easy to find games that are either a) on most people's piles or b) cheap to pick up(I am thinking 10-15 bucks max).
2. Games should be either episodic or broken up into easily agreed upon stopping points (i.e. achievement for ch.1 or reaching certain checkpoint). I would like it to be about an hour to an hour and a half for each "assigned" session, no more than 5-6 hours a week needed to participate.
3. Games shouldn't be more than 20 hours.
4. No console exclusives. Has to be on Microsoft/Playstation/PC platforms.

Star Wars: TFU is one of those games that has been on my radar for a very long time. I remember hearing about it and thinking it sounded really fun - not really sure why I never played, despite having this one on the pile for a number of years. With the recent disturbances in the force, it seemed like now was the time.

Playing the role of Vader's secret apprentice, this is set in between the horrible Episode 3 and the wonderful Episode 4(would be approximately around the time of Rogue one). With a branching story - join us as we take Starkillers journey for either redemption or descent into the dark side's embrace.

I truly hope you will play along this month!

The Steam version has no achievements! Glorious, glorious freedom!

Great pull! I never finished this playing on the wii so it'll probably be the first game club I'm in on.

I'm on the fence but I should bite.

I think this was a Games With Gold freebie a couple of months ago. I played it a tiny bit. Maybe this month I will finish it.

I liked this game. I think it did a good job with implementing force power. They felt powerful and useful without feeling overpowered. I'm going to skip this one since my backlog is just too big to detour for a game I already beat. Have fun, everyone!

I started playing tonight and overall it's pretty good. The sound and feel of the game is definitely Star Wars which is always fantastic. Two things that stuck out to me. The first is that this came from the era of game design when QTEs were in vogue for some reason. The second is that it's hard to aim when you're Force throwing objects. Still, it's a lot of fun to kick ass with the Force, and it's a pretty forgiving game on the default difficulty.

I played some of the 2nd mission tonight. The combo system is pretty fun. Something else that was en vogue at the time was playing as the villain.

I'm playing on XB1 with the backwards compatible 360 version. Man is it janky! Is PC any better?

This has been sitting in my pile for a while now. I think I picked it up in a Star Wars Humble Bundle? Anyway, this is enough motivation for me, so count me in. I'll probably get started tomorrow if I can.

RawkGWJ wrote:

I'm playing on XB1 with the backwards compatible 360 version. Man is it janky! Is PC any better?

I'm playing the PC version. How is yours janky? I was going to comment on jank before but I haven't really pinned down whether it's really janky for me or if I'm just not clicking with the controls.

gravity wrote:
RawkGWJ wrote:

I'm playing on XB1 with the backwards compatible 360 version. Man is it janky! Is PC any better?

I'm playing the PC version. How is yours janky? I was going to comment on jank before but I haven't really pinned down whether it's really janky for me or if I'm just not clicking with the controls.

Agree there is something with jank but cannot nail it down yet. I'm on the first level.

To be fair, it's a charming form of jankiness. Sort of like GTA on PS1.

I feel like the controls have a quarter second delay or something like that. Not enough to make it unplayable, but enough to feel awkward.

Played the first couple missions. Not my typical cup of milk, but being Star Wars it's instantly comfortable in its own way.

I've not noticed jank (PC version) but that could just be my real active inexperience with action games.

The game does a great job of making you feel powerful, and I'm liking the story.

I wish I could just pull out a blaster sometimes, though.

The first mission was very cool, and felt very rooted in the Star Wars universe. The 2nd mission...

Spoiler:

WTF, man! Force powered junk bots? Force powered junk golems? Random ass force wielding Rodians? And that boss fight! Games have come a very long way since this was produced.

RawkGWJ wrote:

The first mission was very cool, and felt very rooted in the Star Wars universe. The 2nd mission...

Spoiler:

WTF, man! Force powered junk bots? Force powered junk golems? Random ass force wielding Rodians? And that boss fight! Games have come a very long way since this was produced.

Yeah the old Star Wars universe was sure built to make a Jedi feel not as powerful as it should. See second game as am excellent example of what happens when a whole game is just a Jedi murder simulation.

RawkGWJ wrote:

The first mission was very cool, and felt very rooted in the Star Wars universe. The 2nd mission...

Spoiler:

WTF, man! Force powered junk bots? Force powered junk golems? Random ass force wielding Rodians? And that boss fight! Games have come a very long way since this was produced.

Yeah, I had the same feeling as you. The overall setting was great. I loved the junk everywhere. But the rest of it felt way off. I hope it improves because in the first two missions they had everything feeling right.

Did anyone else notice a major difficulty spike with the boss fight? I guess we were sort of prepped for that in the preliminary cut scene, but it took me a lot of tries to find a pattern that sort of cheesed my way through the fight.

Spoiler:

I ended up zapping him with lightning, then when I hit confirmed I'd force blast him and throw him back. For the junk golem I ended up just zapping it with lightning over and over while I ran around the perimiter.

Junk Golems

Spoiler:

I would stun them with lightning, whack way with the lightsaber, rinse, repeat.

Yeah that's become one of my go-to moves even for ordinary fights. That and just picking guys and up and chucking them somewhere.

Can't say the combat ever gets that interesting. Mostly find a way to cheese through fights. Really not looking forward to a few later on.

Spoiler:

the aloud city dock I think.
The one with the loader unit fights. They cheap shot you and the save point is terrible

Oh hell no!

Spoiler:

They made me kill Shaak Ti. No wonder this isn't canon. There's just no way that Starkiller kills Shaak Ti.

RawkGWJ wrote:

The first mission was very cool, and felt very rooted in the Star Wars universe. The 2nd mission...

Spoiler:

WTF, man! Force powered junk bots? Force powered junk golems? Random ass force wielding Rodians? And that boss fight! Games have come a very long way since this was produced.

Yeah, that change seemed really jarring to me. The obligatory platform-esque sections are annoying me a bit too.

Spoiler:

However, force shocking Jawas did make me giggle.

There's a bit a bit of an annoying conflict in how well it captures the general feel of Star Wars, if you get what I mean. Like, the force moves feel nice and powerful and really nail the feel, but then light sabres feel more like baseball bats. It takes multiple hits to take out even the standard grunts. I mean, I get that it makes sense for gameplay reasons, but still, Star Wars y'know.

Playing this kinda makes me long to go play Jedi Outcast or Academy. I felt like the light saber mattered more as a weapon then.

Funny thing is, it *was* canon until the EU got wrapped up into Star Wars Legends.

And it gets even sillier at the end of the game.

Spoiler:

Starkiller infiltrates the Death Star to rescue Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, defeats Darth Vader, becomes a martyr that inspires the creation of the Rebel Alliance so much that his family crest becomes the Rebel symbol.

O_O

Freyja wrote:

Funny thing is, it *was* canon until the EU got wrapped up into Star Wars Legends.

And it gets even sillier at the end of the game.

Spoiler:

Starkiller infiltrates the Death Star to rescue Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, defeats Darth Vader, becomes a martyr that inspires the creation of the Rebel Alliance so much that his family crest becomes the Rebel symbol.

O_O

So

Spoiler:

it inspired Rogue One right! Jk

Freyja wrote:

Funny thing is, it *was* canon until the EU got wrapped up into Star Wars Legends.

And it gets even sillier at the end of the game.

Spoiler:

Starkiller infiltrates the Death Star to rescue Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, defeats Darth Vader, becomes a martyr that inspires the creation of the Rebel Alliance so much that his family crest becomes the Rebel symbol.

O_O

And if you ever wondered why they canned the Extended Universe, look no further than things like this.

Encountered my first game-breaking glitch.
IMAGE(https://68.media.tumblr.com/562bec1d00d962906752582b3593e5b5/tumblr_oponeiUgGw1v0exizo1_540.png)

That's not a glitch. That's the Mushroom Ascent. You live there now. We all do. We all ascend.

You were supposed to ascend the mushroom, not eat it. Now you've become one with the giant boulder.

Stay off the drugs, kids.

I finally got back to this after taking a week-long break from video games in general and started out at the beginning of the last mission. What the hell? That opening was way harder than anything they threw at us before. I managed to figure out a way through it after the better part of an hour and many many deaths but I'm shocked that the designers would throw something like that encounter in to this game out of the blue.

I just wrapped it up tonight. I'm going to assemble some more coherent thoughts soon but I'm wondering if anyone else is playing this? The thread's been pretty quiet.

For me it just didn't age well at all. I hit a wall in the mushroom kingdom.

In contrast, I've dipped into both GTAIV and Red Dead with 360 backward compatibility, and they both still hold up IMO.