Star Wars: Force Unleashed has been hyped up something fierce over the last year. Impressive physics engine, great AI, destructible environments — it has it all. Plus you play as Vader's apprentice which means you've got all kinds of deliciously evil force powers. The game had so much going for it and it came so close to living up to the hype, so close.
Force Unleashed takes place between Episode 3 and Episode 4 when Vader is going around hunting down the last of the Jedi. The plot starts out simple: hunt down Jedi. But from there it evolves into something epic. This isn't some stand-alone story that really doesn't matter and would be better left untold (I'm looking at you, Clone Wars), no the plot is one of the strongest parts of the game and enough to make you put up with the shortfalls.
I think the issues I had with the game could be summed up with "it lacked polish." It really feels like the game needed to stay in development for two or three more months and needed (a lot) more play-testing. The physics engine sometimes backfires (things getting suck in walls, specifically things you needed) and the controls seemed to not always respond as I expected them to (block felt very sluggish, to such a degree I gave up on using it). Not to mention the Star Destroyer battle which is a massively poor-designed battle. Kiera can attest to the swear-fests that this game caused, it got messy.
However if you're willing to look pass the glitches the game is actually very enjoyable. Nothing tops playing a Sith-in-training running around and killing everyone in sight. The combos you can pull off are a lot of fun, and towards the end your force powers actually feel powerful (in the past Star Wars games force powers have frequently felt…neutered). Mind you, it takes a lot of work to look pass the glitches, but if you can you're in for a great ride. Certainly one of the best Star Wars games in years.
"Yes."
More details after I settle in after a nice long vacation.
Woah, yeah, new site design. I’ve been griping about the old design for some time and finally sat myself down and set a deadline to get a new design out. The old layout punished me for posting too often or for posts that were short, which lead me to put off posting until I had a lot to talk about, which lead to neglect (well that and my general laziness). It was good-looking, but didn't work so well as a blog. Live and learn.
Of course with a new design comes a new back-end. This one is written on the PHP framework I've spent the past year falling in love with: Code Igniter. Up until a week ago I going to use Chyrp but I found it’s documentation severely lacking. There was no way I’d complete the update to the new design by my self-imposed deadline of labor day.
With this new design I’ve switched to using MobileMe for my photo gallery. The interface is pretty slick and it’s a lot easier to manage since it’s integrated with iPhoto. The latest addition to my gallery will always appear on the front-page. Along with photo gallery updates I've tied my Google shared items feed into the sidebar on the front-page. Odds are the links I share will be pretty interesting, so check them out.
I decided, as many others have, not to go out of my way to support IE6. It’s six years old now and time for that thorn in every web-developer’s side to die. This means if you’re viewing this site in IE6 the header will look a bit messed up since it doesn’t support transparent PNGs properly. Update your browser and the header will look much better.
The new design, Canvas, is still a work in progress and I’ll be tweaking things over the next month or so, but I’d say this is pretty close to what I have in mind overall. Pardon the dust.
