Half my time so far has just been with the tutorial. It was a tutorial. It was fine. Which isn't nothing. I've played games with broken tutorials, or tutorials that were so difficult I could barely get through them. AI Wars had a six hour tutorial. So, you know, a tutorial that gets in, explains the game, and then gets out is just fine by me.
The other half of my time has been spent trying out the Rebel campaign. I'm glad to be playing the good guys for a change (I suppose Starkiller was technically on the right side, but he never felt particularly "good" to me). I look forward to defeating the Empire and restoring freedom to the galaxy.
Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling about the campaign as a whole. I'm only four missions in so far and three of those have been straight up escort missions (actually, even the fourth required you to keep a certain character alive, but since he was your toughest unit, I'm not counting it). First, you have to bring R2-D2 and C-3PO to a certain location to decode an Imperial signal, then you have to bring some pilots through a gantlet of enemies in order to steal some X-wings. And then you have to rescue some prisoners from space transports while keeping your own transports intact.
I can only speculate as to why they made that choice, but it's one that makes even easy mode a pain in the ass to complete. I suppose my only option is to get better at the game, but I'll have you know, it's under duress.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Star Wars Empire At War: Gold Pack - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Command or corrupt an entire galaxy in the definitive Star Wars strategy collection. It is a time of galactic civil war. Will you take up the reins of the Rebellion, assume control of the Empire, or rule the Star Wars Underworld?
Star Wars Empire at War:
From the lives of soldiers to the deaths of planets, you are the supreme galactic commander. It is a time of galactic civil war. Take up the reins of the Rebellion or assume control for the Empire. Whichever you choose, it will be up to YOU to steer your side to ultimate victory. Command everything from individual troops to starships and even the mighty Death Star as you execute campaigns on the ground, in space and across the galaxy. Forget tedious resource gathering – just jump straight into the heart of the action. You can even change Star Wars history! Every decision affects your next battle and every battle helps shape the fate of the galaxy.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
It was part of that giant Star Wars bundle I bought a couple of years back. However it wasn't entirely incidental. I'd seen this game being played before, and I thought it looked kind of cool, so it was a factor (albeit a minor one) in my deciding to get the bundle at all.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'll admit, I'm not thrilled that the store page describes resource gathering as "tedious." Building a base economy is one of the main things I enjoy about RTS games (as contrasting with the things I don't enjoy about them - their "real time" and "strategy" aspects). On the other hand, if I really do get to control a Death Star, that might be pretty cool.
I won't bore you with yet another recounting of my ambivalence towards the RTS genre, but needless to say, it's a factor. If the game turns out to be easy, I'll probably like it. If it turns out to be difficult, I probably won't. What I want most of all is to feel like I'm playing with miniature Star Wars figurines in make-believe wars. That's what interests me about the game. The cool screenshots of AT-ATs and Star Destroyers, as things I can manipulate and command. I'm willing to pay the price of having to deal with military tactics in order to play with these things . . . provided the price isn't too high.
Command or corrupt an entire galaxy in the definitive Star Wars strategy collection. It is a time of galactic civil war. Will you take up the reins of the Rebellion, assume control of the Empire, or rule the Star Wars Underworld?
Star Wars Empire at War:
From the lives of soldiers to the deaths of planets, you are the supreme galactic commander. It is a time of galactic civil war. Take up the reins of the Rebellion or assume control for the Empire. Whichever you choose, it will be up to YOU to steer your side to ultimate victory. Command everything from individual troops to starships and even the mighty Death Star as you execute campaigns on the ground, in space and across the galaxy. Forget tedious resource gathering – just jump straight into the heart of the action. You can even change Star Wars history! Every decision affects your next battle and every battle helps shape the fate of the galaxy.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
It was part of that giant Star Wars bundle I bought a couple of years back. However it wasn't entirely incidental. I'd seen this game being played before, and I thought it looked kind of cool, so it was a factor (albeit a minor one) in my deciding to get the bundle at all.
Expectations and Prior Experience
I'll admit, I'm not thrilled that the store page describes resource gathering as "tedious." Building a base economy is one of the main things I enjoy about RTS games (as contrasting with the things I don't enjoy about them - their "real time" and "strategy" aspects). On the other hand, if I really do get to control a Death Star, that might be pretty cool.
I won't bore you with yet another recounting of my ambivalence towards the RTS genre, but needless to say, it's a factor. If the game turns out to be easy, I'll probably like it. If it turns out to be difficult, I probably won't. What I want most of all is to feel like I'm playing with miniature Star Wars figurines in make-believe wars. That's what interests me about the game. The cool screenshots of AT-ATs and Star Destroyers, as things I can manipulate and command. I'm willing to pay the price of having to deal with military tactics in order to play with these things . . . provided the price isn't too high.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - 20/20 hours
Playing The Force Unleashed II for the fourth time in a row got me thinking about the value of novelty. I got into the bottomless gaming hole that inspired my blog because I kept buying more and different video games, but what is a video game, really. They're just a series of images, presented to you one after another, in response to which, you press buttons, and the buttons you press influence which images are presented next. In a story-driven action game like The Force Unleashed II, there is a larger sequence of images and pressing the buttons in the right way advances the sequence, whereas pressing the buttons in the wrong way makes you repeat certain sections of the sequence you've already seen.
And that's when it struck me - upon breaking it down to such a fundamental level, beating The Force Unleashed II a third or fourth time is really only a variant of failing to beat it for the first time. If I'm fighting the Gorog and it crushes me with its massive fists, I have to start the fight over, and attempt to beat the Gorog from the very beginning. And, now, I've fought the Gorog four times. . .
If I'd fought the Gorog four times, and three of those times, I'd gotten 99% of the way through, and only gotten 100% on the fourth try, how would that be different? Does that 3 percent really matter?
What makes the images matter is meaning. I play the game and understand that the Gorog is a monster and that defeating it is different than failing to defeat it, and this meaning is largely imposed by signs, but I do have to bring something to it. Especially when doing it four times in a row, I have to bring something to it.
I think this is a little credited gaming skill in general. It's the same basic problem that some people have with Minecraft - gathering and crafting and stacking blocks seems pointless without a concrete goal.
So what meaning do I usually bring to games? I once played the original Mass Effect four times in a row, and only stopped because I'd gotten all the achievements but one (and the one remaining would have taken an entire 5th playthrough just for itself). I had no problem, then, with finding meaning in repetition.
As near as I can tell, the secret for me is transformation and discovery - if each iteration builds on the last, or if each iteration is different from last, even in subtle ways, I can always find an appetite for another go round. It's why I could easily fire up and enjoy another round of Alpha Centauri, despite playing it almost every day for two years and getting so good I could beat its highest difficulty - I may know nearly everything there is to know about the game, and I would certainly cleave very closely to the optimal strategy I'd developed over hundreds of hours of practice, but my initial map position would never repeat, my enemies would not necessarily react in exactly the same way, the random events would never trigger at exactly the same time. Familiarity only increases my appreciation for nuance. It was when I knew the game less well that I was more inclined to say that each match was the same.
I don't feel that way about The Force Unleashed II. The more I played it, the more homogeneous my experience started to feel. It's possible that I plateaued in skill, and that if I kept at it for a half-dozen more times through the main plot, that I would come to appreciate the subtle variations more and more. It seems likely, actually. I still had a half-dozen platinum challenge medals to earn. However, I never reached the stage of playing meaningfully. The only meaning I found in repeating the game four times was in sticking with my self-imposed and rather arbitrary blog mission.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did it, but I'm not eager to do it again.
And that's when it struck me - upon breaking it down to such a fundamental level, beating The Force Unleashed II a third or fourth time is really only a variant of failing to beat it for the first time. If I'm fighting the Gorog and it crushes me with its massive fists, I have to start the fight over, and attempt to beat the Gorog from the very beginning. And, now, I've fought the Gorog four times. . .
If I'd fought the Gorog four times, and three of those times, I'd gotten 99% of the way through, and only gotten 100% on the fourth try, how would that be different? Does that 3 percent really matter?
What makes the images matter is meaning. I play the game and understand that the Gorog is a monster and that defeating it is different than failing to defeat it, and this meaning is largely imposed by signs, but I do have to bring something to it. Especially when doing it four times in a row, I have to bring something to it.
I think this is a little credited gaming skill in general. It's the same basic problem that some people have with Minecraft - gathering and crafting and stacking blocks seems pointless without a concrete goal.
So what meaning do I usually bring to games? I once played the original Mass Effect four times in a row, and only stopped because I'd gotten all the achievements but one (and the one remaining would have taken an entire 5th playthrough just for itself). I had no problem, then, with finding meaning in repetition.
As near as I can tell, the secret for me is transformation and discovery - if each iteration builds on the last, or if each iteration is different from last, even in subtle ways, I can always find an appetite for another go round. It's why I could easily fire up and enjoy another round of Alpha Centauri, despite playing it almost every day for two years and getting so good I could beat its highest difficulty - I may know nearly everything there is to know about the game, and I would certainly cleave very closely to the optimal strategy I'd developed over hundreds of hours of practice, but my initial map position would never repeat, my enemies would not necessarily react in exactly the same way, the random events would never trigger at exactly the same time. Familiarity only increases my appreciation for nuance. It was when I knew the game less well that I was more inclined to say that each match was the same.
I don't feel that way about The Force Unleashed II. The more I played it, the more homogeneous my experience started to feel. It's possible that I plateaued in skill, and that if I kept at it for a half-dozen more times through the main plot, that I would come to appreciate the subtle variations more and more. It seems likely, actually. I still had a half-dozen platinum challenge medals to earn. However, I never reached the stage of playing meaningfully. The only meaning I found in repeating the game four times was in sticking with my self-imposed and rather arbitrary blog mission.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did it, but I'm not eager to do it again.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - 15/20 hours
I've beaten hard mode, got a few more gold challenge medals, and have basically reached a point where I have nothing more I want to accomplish in this game . . . and I still have five hours to go. It's not really a problem, per se, but I will admit to feeling a certain malaise at the prospect of tackling this game a fourth time.
It's not so much that I expect it to be unpleasant. It's just that unless I want to grind away on the challenges, there's not much more to learn. It's just going to be more and more lightsaber/lightning/telekinesis hack and slash. The strange thing is that I played the first game for longer and didn't have much of a problem, and other action games for more than 35 hours while still craving more.
I think the issue here is that The Force Unleashed II is really, really short. It's not filled with secrets or alternate paths or complex character builds. It's just a series of straightforward enemy tubes. You march through the tubes and attack the enemies.
It's the sort of thing that can be nice for a break, but starts to feel like work after awhile. The main challenge I face is resisting the temptation to do something else.
I can do it, though! When I'm done, I'll have only 35 games to go!
It's not so much that I expect it to be unpleasant. It's just that unless I want to grind away on the challenges, there's not much more to learn. It's just going to be more and more lightsaber/lightning/telekinesis hack and slash. The strange thing is that I played the first game for longer and didn't have much of a problem, and other action games for more than 35 hours while still craving more.
I think the issue here is that The Force Unleashed II is really, really short. It's not filled with secrets or alternate paths or complex character builds. It's just a series of straightforward enemy tubes. You march through the tubes and attack the enemies.
It's the sort of thing that can be nice for a break, but starts to feel like work after awhile. The main challenge I face is resisting the temptation to do something else.
I can do it, though! When I'm done, I'll have only 35 games to go!
Friday, August 25, 2017
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - 10/20 hours
Replaying the game on hard mode, I noticed a curious thing about The Force Unleashed II - for a five hour game, it's awfully inconsistent. At the end of the second level, you fight this massive, multi-stage setpiece boss, a gigantic creature that makes a rancor look like a womprat . . . and it's the only thing remotely like it in the bulk of the game. Even the final fight against Darth Vader is tame by comparison. Most of the other levels don't even try. Like, there's a second major boss battle, but it's just a single mech, not much different than the elite enemies of later levels, but with a shield disarming gimmick, that still nonetheless has only one health bar.
It gets especially bad when you throw Dagobah into the mix - a brief platforming level with no enemies, no chance of death, and little to no plot significance. It makes me wonder if they ran out of money and/or time while making the game. Because while one could certainly make an argument in favor of tighter, more streamlined games that you don't need double-digit playtimes to get through, presumably, the advantage of such games is that they would have absolutely no fat on them. The wild inconsistency of The Force Unleashed II leads me to believe that its short length was unintentional.
Though it does have a few things that could pad out its running time to 20 hours. I spent a couple hours trying my hand at the "challenges," a series of mini-levels that you unlock over the course of the main story. Each one has a central conceit - survive for X minutes, get passed some moving platforms in X amount of time, etc - that requires a great deal of skill and precision. The better you do at the challenges, the more valuable the medal you win, and the cooler the stuff you unlock. I've got at least Bronze on all of them now, but I'm guessing that if I went for Platinums, that could easily take me my remaining 10 hours.
The only problem is, I'm not sure I want to. There's something uniquely frustrating about trying to shave seconds off a task you've already completed. Sure, there's the ladder of mastery, and learning to enjoy the sensory pleasure of perfection for its own sake, but there comes a time in every second-tier workhorse of an action game where you just want to coast.
I don't have to make an all or nothing decision, though. I'm about a third of the way through hard mode, and will probably finish it in another couple hours. Perhaps the greater demands of the higher difficulty will acclimate me to the game enough that I can grind out a few more medals.
Or maybe I'll just switch to easy mode and tear up the Empire like I'm a living god. . . I could go either way.
It gets especially bad when you throw Dagobah into the mix - a brief platforming level with no enemies, no chance of death, and little to no plot significance. It makes me wonder if they ran out of money and/or time while making the game. Because while one could certainly make an argument in favor of tighter, more streamlined games that you don't need double-digit playtimes to get through, presumably, the advantage of such games is that they would have absolutely no fat on them. The wild inconsistency of The Force Unleashed II leads me to believe that its short length was unintentional.
Though it does have a few things that could pad out its running time to 20 hours. I spent a couple hours trying my hand at the "challenges," a series of mini-levels that you unlock over the course of the main story. Each one has a central conceit - survive for X minutes, get passed some moving platforms in X amount of time, etc - that requires a great deal of skill and precision. The better you do at the challenges, the more valuable the medal you win, and the cooler the stuff you unlock. I've got at least Bronze on all of them now, but I'm guessing that if I went for Platinums, that could easily take me my remaining 10 hours.
The only problem is, I'm not sure I want to. There's something uniquely frustrating about trying to shave seconds off a task you've already completed. Sure, there's the ladder of mastery, and learning to enjoy the sensory pleasure of perfection for its own sake, but there comes a time in every second-tier workhorse of an action game where you just want to coast.
I don't have to make an all or nothing decision, though. I'm about a third of the way through hard mode, and will probably finish it in another couple hours. Perhaps the greater demands of the higher difficulty will acclimate me to the game enough that I can grind out a few more medals.
Or maybe I'll just switch to easy mode and tear up the Empire like I'm a living god. . . I could go either way.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - 5/20 hours
The Force Unleashed II makes the curious choice of depicting the dark side of the Force as more powerful than the light. It's something that has been an issue for the entire series, but it's especially pronounced here. The Starkiller clone is impulsive, overly attached, and driven by anger. He kills constantly and without remorse, and as near as I can tell, gives into his hate almost all the time. He also defeats Darth Vader handily.
I think maybe the game is unclear on the difference between a Jedi and a Sith. It seems like when it says "Jedi," it means "force user who is on the side of the rebels" and when it says "Sith" it means "force user who is on the side of the Empire." Other than that, they have no visible difference in methods, ideology, or goals - except at the very end of the game, where General Kota goes out of his way to persuade you to not kill the main villain.
I really don't get this guy. He did it in the first game, and that was a disaster, and then at the end of the second game, he's put in a near-identical position, and he does it again. I know that, on a narrative level, it's just that thing that stories sometimes do, where I can cut through hundreds of storm troopers and dozens of my brother-clones, and that doesn't mean anything, but put me up against a named character, and suddenly I'm supposed to care about the sanctity of life.
This game puts a strange spin on it, though. If you go with the light side ending, General Kota talks you into taking Darth Vader prisoner and putting him on trial, which is . . . how is that even supposed to work? Vader is canonically one of the most powerful Force users in history. Keeping him prisoner is likely impossible, and very dangerous, even if you could. And what exactly would a trial of Darth Vader look like? Does the Rebel Alliance maintain a court system? Who is going to be Darth Vader's defense lawyer? I mean, they captured him in the middle of a cloning laboratory where he was creating an army of dark Jedi, and, of course, he's the Emperor's right hand man, so it's kind of an open and shut case. And then you're going to execute him anyway? How does that have any sort of legitimacy?
Yes, it's important to get the Empire's crimes out in the open, so that the galaxy can begin to heal, but that's not going to mean a damned thing if the Rebels can't win the war, and winning the war seems pretty unlikely if they're going to keep interrupting their military missions to spare the lives of the enemy's most powerful space wizards.
But that's just the plot of the game, and seeing as how I finished it in five hours, that's probably going to be the least important aspect of the game. What's more important is how it plays, and that's been perfectly serviceable. You walk through corridors and brawl with Star Wars-style enemies and shoot lightning and such. If the levels were all different, I could easily do this indefinitely. So having them all be the same and play them four or five times each doesn't seem like that much of a burden.
I think maybe the game is unclear on the difference between a Jedi and a Sith. It seems like when it says "Jedi," it means "force user who is on the side of the rebels" and when it says "Sith" it means "force user who is on the side of the Empire." Other than that, they have no visible difference in methods, ideology, or goals - except at the very end of the game, where General Kota goes out of his way to persuade you to not kill the main villain.
I really don't get this guy. He did it in the first game, and that was a disaster, and then at the end of the second game, he's put in a near-identical position, and he does it again. I know that, on a narrative level, it's just that thing that stories sometimes do, where I can cut through hundreds of storm troopers and dozens of my brother-clones, and that doesn't mean anything, but put me up against a named character, and suddenly I'm supposed to care about the sanctity of life.
This game puts a strange spin on it, though. If you go with the light side ending, General Kota talks you into taking Darth Vader prisoner and putting him on trial, which is . . . how is that even supposed to work? Vader is canonically one of the most powerful Force users in history. Keeping him prisoner is likely impossible, and very dangerous, even if you could. And what exactly would a trial of Darth Vader look like? Does the Rebel Alliance maintain a court system? Who is going to be Darth Vader's defense lawyer? I mean, they captured him in the middle of a cloning laboratory where he was creating an army of dark Jedi, and, of course, he's the Emperor's right hand man, so it's kind of an open and shut case. And then you're going to execute him anyway? How does that have any sort of legitimacy?
Yes, it's important to get the Empire's crimes out in the open, so that the galaxy can begin to heal, but that's not going to mean a damned thing if the Rebels can't win the war, and winning the war seems pretty unlikely if they're going to keep interrupting their military missions to spare the lives of the enemy's most powerful space wizards.
But that's just the plot of the game, and seeing as how I finished it in five hours, that's probably going to be the least important aspect of the game. What's more important is how it plays, and that's been perfectly serviceable. You walk through corridors and brawl with Star Wars-style enemies and shoot lightning and such. If the levels were all different, I could easily do this indefinitely. So having them all be the same and play them four or five times each doesn't seem like that much of a burden.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - 2/20 hours
I really don't like this Starkiller guy. He's like if someone wanted to design Luke Skywalker, but hated his innocence, enthusiasm, and earnestness. I guess the Starkiller in this game is a clone of the original, but because both of them are so strong in the Force, the new Starkiller is picking up the old one's memories and personality, which kind of makes sense in that goofy, sci-fi way where the space magic has never done anything like this before, but the sort of things it has done before are similar enough that it doesn't feel entirely like a cheat. If young Anakin Skywalker can come back as a ghost (or, for that matter, old Anakin Skywalker can appear as a ghost in a purely hypothetical, non-cybernetic form) then a clone being possessed by the memories of the dead original is not so much a stretch.
It does raise all sorts of ethical questions that I'm not sure the game is going to go into, though. Like, what sort of culpability does new-Starkiller have for old-Starkiller's many crimes. The original Starkiller was an unrepentant murderer. It's one of the things that frustrated me about the first game.
He was kidnapped and brainwashed by Darth Vader at a very young age, so him becoming a Sith assassin doesn't necessarily make him irredeemable. He too, was a victim of the Dark Side. And yet, at every point in the story where it would have made sense for him to come to terms with his past, it's completely elided, as if the game itself didn't realize that there were some unresolved issues that needed to be addressed.
He just sort of conscripts ex-General Kota and insinuates himself into his life, and never once do we see anything remotely resembling a "hey, sorry about blinding you and throwing you out of a space station." Which is important, because it leaves me completely at sea when it comes to interpreting the cutscene at the end of level 2, where they have a tense argument in which Kota dresses Starkiller down for wanting to meditate and recover his memories instead of immediately joining the rebellion. Which, you know, is a pretty intense conversation to have with the clone of the guy who maimed you. What if new-Starkiller randomly gets back the part of old-Starkiller that was a heartless killing machine, hunting down Jedi with a single-minded obsession?
I should probably give it some time, though. The Force Unleashed II does seem more interested in exploring new-Starkiller's inner state, and thus is more likely to deliver a nuanced interpretation of the character. I'm not hopeful, however, because even in this incarnation, the game doesn't seem to realize that there is something problematic about him, and if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm expecting a half-baked romance plot with Juno Eclipse to take up most of the game's running time.
On the gameplay front, The Force Unleashed II is a worthy successor to the first game. The levels are prettier, but with less scope for exploration (not that the first game was great about this), and there are fewer Force powers, but the missing ones were mostly cruft and the controls are all-around smoother. I have no real complaints on that score.
I do, however, expect to finish the game in less than 10 hours, which makes me wonder if this is another case where I should have bundled a game with its sequel.
It does raise all sorts of ethical questions that I'm not sure the game is going to go into, though. Like, what sort of culpability does new-Starkiller have for old-Starkiller's many crimes. The original Starkiller was an unrepentant murderer. It's one of the things that frustrated me about the first game.
He was kidnapped and brainwashed by Darth Vader at a very young age, so him becoming a Sith assassin doesn't necessarily make him irredeemable. He too, was a victim of the Dark Side. And yet, at every point in the story where it would have made sense for him to come to terms with his past, it's completely elided, as if the game itself didn't realize that there were some unresolved issues that needed to be addressed.
He just sort of conscripts ex-General Kota and insinuates himself into his life, and never once do we see anything remotely resembling a "hey, sorry about blinding you and throwing you out of a space station." Which is important, because it leaves me completely at sea when it comes to interpreting the cutscene at the end of level 2, where they have a tense argument in which Kota dresses Starkiller down for wanting to meditate and recover his memories instead of immediately joining the rebellion. Which, you know, is a pretty intense conversation to have with the clone of the guy who maimed you. What if new-Starkiller randomly gets back the part of old-Starkiller that was a heartless killing machine, hunting down Jedi with a single-minded obsession?
I should probably give it some time, though. The Force Unleashed II does seem more interested in exploring new-Starkiller's inner state, and thus is more likely to deliver a nuanced interpretation of the character. I'm not hopeful, however, because even in this incarnation, the game doesn't seem to realize that there is something problematic about him, and if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm expecting a half-baked romance plot with Juno Eclipse to take up most of the game's running time.
On the gameplay front, The Force Unleashed II is a worthy successor to the first game. The levels are prettier, but with less scope for exploration (not that the first game was great about this), and there are fewer Force powers, but the missing ones were mostly cruft and the controls are all-around smoother. I have no real complaints on that score.
I do, however, expect to finish the game in less than 10 hours, which makes me wonder if this is another case where I should have bundled a game with its sequel.
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