The Force Unleased Demo Impressions

As expected, The Force Unleashed demo underwhelmed, fortunately, with great timing for the topics recently discussed on this blog: the flow of combat.

Here's a list in somewhat chronological order of my thoughts from my short time with the demo.

• Whoa! What's with the character movement speed? Touch the left stick and the character jets around the screen at speeds too fast for the...
• Geeze! The camera can't even keep me on the screen. Why is it pointed at the ground if my enemies are right in front of my character. I'm getting shot from somewhere off screen. Not cool. At least I have a...
• Umm. Why isn't the lock on holding the camera in place. I'm holding the button and I'm still having a hard time keeping things focused on the screen. Zelda OOT could do it, what's the deal Force Unleashed? Perhaps part of the problem stems from...
• Yeah. You can lock on to objects and enemies which turns the whole battle arena into a hot bed of lockable things. Now when you want to focus on one thing, the lock on may get confused and lock onto another. Well, at least I have a light saber that I can swing around...
• and miss apparently. Maybe it's an issue with the bad 3D created from the wild camera, or maybe it's because of the poor hit boxes that don't line up with the animations. Either way, for a warrior armed with a light saber, it's unusually difficult to land a hit. With just a few taps of the attack button and...
• Yup. A flurry of crazy attacks leap out of my character. Instead of doing the attacks/combos myself, the character sees fit to just wail around in a fashion very similar to heavenly sword. But if this game is like heavily sword then that can only mean...
• As I expected. Quick time events. Poorly implemented, God of War like quick time events. There goes the gameplay for beating that boss.
• Also, the 3D controls for the force grip powers are more complicated than they need to be. This mechanic could have used a real 3D controller so that manipulating an object in 3D space would be easier and more intuitive.

Congratulations Force Unleashed. You made just about every wrong design decision to squash the flow of combat and make another senseless, button masher like action game. Good thing you spent all that time on the graphics, which, for the record, underwhelmed almost as much as the gameplay.

And now for the pun that comes free with every Force Unleased write up....

Nah, I won't unleash that bomb. My criticism should suffice.

Comments

[Johnathan]

This was a fun read. You should do some more of these short demo impressions.

[Richard Terrell (KirbyKid)]

@ Johnathan

Thanks. Maybe someday (soon?) I'll have the time to do more blogging. Either that or if I find a way to monetize my work, I could do so much more. Until that day....