Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: platformer

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

When I borrowed this game from work on Friday, I didn’t expect to beat it this weekend. But beat it I have.

I was relatively excited to play through this, as I had enjoyed The Force Unleashed despite its shortcomings. And while the strengths of TFU are still evident in the sequel, I feel like the game has now overstayed its welcome.

I spent about 5 and a half hours completing the campaign and that was enough for me, thank you. I beat it on easy, although I started the game on medium. I switched to easy halfway through the first or second level and I’m glad I did, despite the hit to my ego. The difference between easy and medium seemed like a chasm – on easy, your health regenerates if you don’t take multiple sources of damage in quick succession. In medium, it doesn’t. I’m not sure if the game is designed to be an optimal experience on easy, but I can assure you that I would have probably would not have finished the game and would have been much more frustrated.

Regardless, there were two primary things I enjoyed about this game: the cutscenes that told an interesting if rather shallow story in the Star Wars universe, and the areas where I got to kill hundreds of stormtroopers without breaking a sweat. Everything else felt a bit like slogging through a Dagobah swamp.

Boss fights, which were already a bit tedious in the first game, either got worse or my tolerance of them lowered. Larger enemies became a boring 30-second montage of the same saber-throwing repeated ad naseaum. Even the final fight of the game felt like the same 4 minutes of gameplay repeated 9 or 10 times. And let’s not forget that I had jumped from identical platform to identical bridge to identical platform for the 15 minutes prior to that in order to get there!

I did beat the game. I did deem it enjoyable enough to devote over 5 hours to it. But in the end, the entire experience was all a bit boring. Who knew that a game where you play as a Jedi could actually be boring?

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

I actually finished this game the same day I finished Puzzle Agent, but didn’t feel like writing two summaries in one day so I put it off for a long time. I’m backdating this entry so it falls on the correct day I beat the game, but having waited a good three months, I’ve forgotten most of my impressions right after finishing the game.

In general, I remember never being disappointed in the game. It was a Ratchet and Clank game that did what I expected: relatively unpunishing but solid shooter mechanics, lots of weapon upgrades for a large arsenal that ranged from practical to silly, and a moderately humorous storyline. Having been a fan of the R&C series for a while, there was nothing in this game that turned me off the series.

The only complaint I might lay against it is that for a game that seems to not subscribe to lengthening the game by making it more difficult, the difficulty of certain portions of the game are uneven. I remember a few boss fights and on-rails jumping puzzles being unusually hard. Even so, it never felt like the game was being mean.

Like other R&C games, I still suffer from falling/drowning deaths every once in a while when the game doesn’t adequately show depth/collision on the edge of a platform, but because death is usually quite innocuous, it was never a huge deal.

So there you have it. It was a fun game and I’m glad I beat it. I almost immediately started Crack in Time, the next R&C game, so it certainly kept my appetite for the series both fed and hungry for more.

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