Loving Daisies

Lord. On a whim, I rented Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It earned mostly poor reviews, which warded me off from buying it. Maybe that was for the best.

No, it was definitely for the best. Lucasarts was executing murderous cuts in its development staff while TFU was being made, and after playing it, I think I understand the exact chronology of this game's genesis:

Developer #1: ... and then you can electrify your lightsaber!
Developer #2: And throw it at a wookiee!
Developer #3: I gotta say, guys, sounds like this is gonna be pret-ty awesome. Let's get started on it right-
[Executive bursts through the door, smelling strongly of cough syrup, his mouth flanked by 6 inches of Fruit By The Foot and an unlit cigar.]
Executive: Due to changing market blah blah, Developer 1, Developer 2? You're so fired. Alright, Developer 3, time to bang this one out. Chop chop!
Developer 3: *whimper*

This is a game that was laid out by people who were in love with the concept they had fashioned, and put together by a very spent, very unhappy group, trying to take their last revenge on a monolithic employer by phoning it in. The final, muttered curse of the short-timer. A shame that it sold over a million copies in its first month (just counting the 360, PS3, and Wii versions.)

The whole thing feels like it was programmed in Java and then ported to BASIC. Targeting is a nightmare. The camera is sluggish and inattentive, except in boss battles, where you're forced into viewing the battle from a disorienting fixed perspective. There are instant-death pits littering stages. You will be knocked into them by enemy fire. You will misstep and fall to your death. You will use a lightsaber combo on an enemy that will carry you over the edge and into a loading screen, so you can repeat the cycle. I died constantly, for various reasons, and rarely did I feel that I had died because of my own failure. It's not often that I yell at a game, but it's even rarer that I plead with a game. "Why?" I asked, in my most imploring tone available.

There are loading screens everywhere. Between sections of a stage, the game loads. When you go to the pause menu, you get a good 5 second load. In between the submenus of said screen, you will load. After a while, the load screens morphed from a sneering annoyance to a graceful respite from the vile taste of that Unleashing the Force leaves.

I've only played the first stage and a bit of the second, so I'm unwilling to classify this as anything like a review. However, I will say without reservation that this game deserves scorn. I have no reason to continue playing it, other than the masochistic pursuit of Achievements.

My Judgement: Unfortunately Unpleasant

Now, look: I don't want to become Tim Rogers. I am going to try my best, in the future, not to conform to his standard of alternating between repetetively damning prose and overly embellished praise. This post resembles my review of Mercenaries 2 a bit too much, but horrible games inspire me to write more than passable ones do. I'll try to vary my tone here, hopefully with a long-delayed review of Tales of Vesperia.