A couple of things about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. One, it makes a great first impression. The first level sees you touch down on the Wookie's home planet as none other than Darth Vader. One of the things that I enjoyed about this level was that contrary to using his character skin in Jedi Outcast, Vader has a purposeful stride that he maintains through the whole level. He never breaks into a run, which differentiates Vader into "Stoic Badass Evil Sith Lord" from the original Star Wars trilogy versus "Crazy Flailing Ninja Jedi" that have become the popular depiction from the new Trilogy. Of course level 2 places you in the shoes of a new school Jedi immediately after the great prologue. Hmm.
While the game still makes concessions to the more tangible game-iness of showing Force "waves" when Vader uses Force Push (for example) I was still overwhelmed by a feeling of "Classic Star Wars" in this prologue. Even when you fight the Jedi ninja at the end of the level, Vader still uses his economy of motion to put him down.
As for the rest of the game and Vader's Apprentice, well... it's actually better than I thought it was going to be. It still seems to suffer from average problems of games in this genre (mainly, camera control and keeping the enemies you want to attack on the screen), loose, floaty jumping, and frivolous combos that are never more useful than your bread and butter combos. I'm not sure how I feel about levelling up (as opposed to the genre heavies' method of purchasing new combos through currency earned by defeating enemies) but it seems pretty good and doesn't altogether limit the all-too-important feeling of progression. The combat has a nice solid feel to it, but the aerial combat feels slightly lacking, like it's not as well integrated into the general game flow. I may have to unlock more aerial combos and perhaps my opinion will change. I do like that the (seemingly mandatory in games these days) quicktime events flow presentationally, even if you fail. As opposed to being hit by a "Game Over" screen or a hard cut back to pre-quicktime battle, it flows/animates pretty naturally back to the beginning of the event. Hopefully that small but intelligent design decision is repeated throughout the game.
Oh yeah, one thing that bothers me is that man, game artists/modellers/texture artists/whoever CANNOT get human faces right. They end up looking all doughy and weirdly doll-like. At least the lip synching animation is done well, when the Xbox 360 can actually be bothered to synchronize the sound and the animation. Will have to install to the hard drive and see if it makes any difference...
Definitely more fun than I thought it would be. It's worth putting some more time into.
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