Game Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Hey, it's only been three weeks or so since my last post. One day I shall hold myself to a regular schedule of some sort, but that day is yet far off. So without further ado, I present to you my review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)

For the sake of my typing fingers and for a slightly shorter post, I will refer to this game using the abbreviation TFU for the rest of this review. Chances are if you enjoy Star Wars and gaming even a little, you've already heard about this game and if you had any intention of buying it and playing, have already done so. If not, the game takes place in the years between Episode 3 and Episode 4, when the Empire was consolidating its power and Darth Vader was jetting about the galaxy and murdering Jedi where he found them. It is on one such journey to Kashyyk (the Wookie homeworld) that he finds a young boy, the son of the Jedi he has just killed, who seems unusually gifted with the Force. Darth Vader takes the boy and begins training him as his Secret Apprentice. I capitalized "Secret Apprentice" because that's basically all you will know him by. At the very beginning of the game he is given the codename "Starkiller", but that only comes up once or twice at the very beginning and the main character is simply referred to by pronouns for the rest of the game.

Now TFU was released for every video gaming console under the sun, and from the water-cooler discussions I've had, there are actually substantial differences b/t the different versions, aside from the PS3 and the Xbox 360 which basically get the same game. Case in point, on the Wii, you can actually use Force Choke to kill your enemies. Not so on the 360. I know it sounds like a minor quibble, especially when you talk about the advanced particle and destruction effects and enemy AI that's only possible on the 360/PS3, but to me it still rings a little hollow since I can't Force Choke my enemies into oblivion. That said, the powers that are available are still oodles of fun. Force Lightning (especially once leveled up) is probably one of the most useful powers in the game as it does considerable damage, branches out to hit multiple enemies, and temporarily immobilizes most of them, but my personal favorite has to be just grabbing stormtroopers and then hurling them in random directions, or dropping them from great heights.

I enjoyed the gameplay overall and found combat to be rather intuitive. With a handful of exceptions, I found the game on the whole to be fairly easy (I was playing on normal difficulty) with one area at the start of the last level being a glaring exception: it is a room where enemies, both cannon fodder and challenging, just keep spawning in wave after wave. They do eventually run out, but I died more getting past that section of the level more than I had at any other point in the game, combined. It was just intensely aggravating. One more part that I had concerns about going in from the reviews I'd read was a sequence in the later part of the game where you pull a Star Destroyer down from orbit, as in the trailers. In theory, you're supposed to follow on-screen prompts indicating how to move position the spacecraft while fighting off waves off TIE fighters. The reviews all indicated that the prompts were often wrong and the act of juggling the manipulation with the TIE fighters was broken. I disagree, at least to the latter point. The prompts may have been misleading, but honestly I didn't really pay attention to them: once I figured out what the game seem to expect of me, I just did the positioning and tweaking by myself, only looking to the prompts to see when I had finished. And the TIEs are easily dispatched since they come in clear waves.

The story is fairly strong for what it is and is quite a bit more enjoyable than the plotlines from the three prequels. Continuity demands that certain events have to take place, but seeing how we get there and what the implications are was entertaining. I would have liked to see it fleshed out a little bit more, especially since the whole game clocks in at about 7 hours, but I don't have many complaints about it as is.

Game Review: "Crisis Core: FFVII" (PSP)

Alright, now this is a game that I was looking forward to for a long time so if you're expecting an unbiased, objective review you had best go look elsewhere. As a part of the "Compilation of Final Fantasy 7", I was fully expecting to forgive some level of deficiency in the gameplay so long as it looked good and was an engaging continuation of the FF7 storyline. I put on my fanboy glasses when I'm playing these games; the rosy lenses that allow me to be more forgiving just because it indulges my nostalgia a bit rather than the super-critical pair that drive me to critique every facet of the game more harshly than I normally would. I wore those rosy glasses playing "Dirge of Cerberus" and overlooked its gameplay issues and still managed to enjoy myself. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't really need my rosy glasses. By it's own merits "Crisis Core" is a great game with some flaws and probably the best entry from the "Compilation" to hit US shores.

"Crisis Core" serves as a prequel to "Final Fantasy 7" and is set 6 or 7 years before the start of the game. The story starts with SOLDIER 2nd Class, Zack Fair and his participation in ending a war between the Shinra Electric Power Company and the country/city/province of Wutai over Shinra's plans to build a mako reactor in the area. If you read over the last sentence and are left scratching your head, my advice to you is to stop reading right here and don't really plan on picking up this game. On the one hand, Square-Enix does a good job of introducing the different characters in the game and giving you enough information that even someone new to FF7 would be able to follow along and probably even enjoy it. However, the plot of "Crisis Core" explores in great detail the history behind one of the big plot twists in "Final Fantasy 7". Anyone who hasn't played FF7 by now and has grown up as a gamer on the PS2 and Xbox is unlikely to go back and play through the admittedly clunky graphics of a 10 year old PS1 game, but it is my sincere suggestion that you play through that game first so that the effect of the plot twist is not diluted by, "I knew that already. So what's the big deal?" If you have played FF7, then you know how "Crisis Core" ends, but the great part of the story is that it shows several familiar characters in a different time, with different personalities. A genial, not-crazy Sephiroth is certainly a welcome change, as is a Cloud who doesn't spend half his time and energy brooding about something or other. Related to this, the cinematics in this game are gorgeous and i was surprised that the PSP could do stuff like this. The FMV sequences easily look as good as the FF7 movie "Advent Children" that came out a year or two ago and the in game graphics are roughly equal to many titles that I could point to on the PS2. This is maybe not a fair comparison since the PSP screen is so small compared to your average TV, but that's just the feeling that I got. At any rate, the game looks great.

Now however much I praise the plot or characters of "Crisis Core", if the gameplay is boring or broken there are going to be few people who will play it long enough to see that plot. I would describe "Crisis Core" as an action-RPG, where battles happen in real time and you are free to move about the battle area and dodge and even block enemy attacks. Being an RPG, I would divide the game into three parts: cinematics and story sequences, running around interacting with the environment for puzzles or info and opening chests, and battle. Puzzles are generally of the "Go find this and bring it here" variety, but there aren't many of these and the game is mostly a linear walk from area to area and battle to battle. While in battle, the shoulder buttons allow you to move the cursor on the command menu at the bottom of the screen to select regular attacks, magic, or items. The game auto-locks on enemies in the general direction that you point the joystick and if you are able to get behind and flank your enemy, you can score critical hits that do more damage than usual. The last facet of the battle system is the DMW gauge, a slot-machine like mechanic in the corner of the screen that determines what kind of buffs you get in battle, when you can level up your character or your materia, and when you can unleash your limit breaks or summons, powerful attacks or spells that can really help turn the tide of a difficult battle. I have a couple of minor quibbles about aspects of the battle system, but I will reserve most of my ire for the DMW gauge for one simple reason: you can't control it. At all. It is completely random. Now if it just controlled the summons or limit breaks, I could deal with it. It just means that I have to set up my tactics and equipment without relying on any super attacks, but if they occur then it's a great boon. It's the fact that it controls when you level up that really bugs me. Now I said it's completely random, but as far as your character level goes that's not entirely true. Behind the scenes the game keeps track of how much EXP you've accumulated and how much is needed for your next level (it doesn't display any of this information to you however). The greater the difference between your current EXP and the threshold for your next level is, the greater the chance the DMW will level you up, but I know of no such mechanic when it comes to leveling your materia. And when you're trying to level up materia so that you can create more powerful ones, having to engage in countless battles and just crossing your fingers is a little bit tedious. Not a huge flaw, but it is definitely an annoying feature, at least to me.

I finished the game in something like 10-12 hours, but I could easily have gone much longer because the majority of the game's playtime isn't in the main storyline. As you progress through the game you unlock missions that you can run at any time from a save point and there are a LOT of missions. Maybe a hundred or more? I only completed half of them before I got tired of it, but as a result my level was high enough that the final boss was something of a pushover. There is absolutely no variation in the missions though: they all involve walking down one of five or six environments, fighting in random battles the whole way, and finishing with a kind of boss fight at the end. They don't contribute to the story in any real way. The only reason for doing them is to gain levels and equipment. Completionists may be able to take it all the way and fight the strongest boss in the game (available once you've completed ALL of the other missions) but that made the game seem way too much like work for me.

One last point I want to comment on is the music in the game. The score is done by Takeharu Ishimoto and although he reuses and arranges several themes from FF7 (originally done by Nobuo Uematsu), most of the music in the game is original. The arranged themes are all great, reflecting the quality of Uematsu's work, but the original themes for the game are more of a mixed bag. A lot of the tracks seem to basically be variations on the same melody and a lot of the others are a kind of generic sounding "hard rock" type sound with heavy guitars and bass rhythm. The battle music especially falls into the latter category and while it does well enough, it does get fairly old after awhile. Overall, it's an ok soundtrack but I've definitely heard better.

Well, this post has run on fairly long so I won't add too much more here. I'll just reiterate the position I took in the first two paragraphs: "Crisis Core" is a great game and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoyed "Final Fantasy 7". If you've never played the original, you will probably still enjoy "Crisis Core", but I would still recommend that you go dig out a PS1 or PS1 emulator and play through FF7 first.

-ZK