Force Unleashed 2 Is Too Much

[Twad]

Instead, like you said, there was too much. Too much debris, too many flashes, too many explosions. I couldn't follow any of it. And, as you also pointed out, because the technology was so costly, the scenes themselves were only two or three seconds or a blinding explosion. Such a let down. So yeah, this even applies to Star Wars, although it's not the only problem with it.

In the third movie, there are like billions of these small colored explosions.. with no point of origin or any effect on the battlefield whatsoever. Just more s--- to distract the viewer. IIRC On Kassyk they were green and on the other planet they were pink-ish.
And the starting space battle have these countless warships just shooting at eachother at spitting range.. in space.. riiight. Looks cool? Yeah. Do i like it? Nope.
I mean, cmon. Why arent they fighting using smart military tactics for a change? The viewer is more than smart enough to understand and appreciate it.
But most battles in the SW films just look like medieval melee battles (with all the confusion and chaos) but with blaster guns, tanks, space ships and lightsabers. Universal maximum weapon range: 150 meters. Universal doctrine: You fight in melee with all and any weapon. Long range shooting and cover is for cowards.

When the power level is just too high, we just cant connect with the hero/story/world anymore. How can you justify that a trooper/door/boss is any problem whatsoever when you can force a billion-ton ship to crash where you want, at will. At that point just give us the "YOu WIN" screen and its over. There is no credible challenge that can meet that kind of power without being a god of some sort.

 

[ProtoChimp]

Fuck you George, you mentally bankrupt whorehopper.

Ladies and gentlemen I present the quote of the week.

 

[Ascarus]

Now I gotta Finish Force Unleashed 2 to find out the twist cuz I can't stand spoilers.
Dam it Yahtzee!

don't bother. the game is absolutely terrible. just watch the endings online and spare yourself the wasted time.

 

[Ascarus]

well by the official canon luke was supposed to the be the strongest jedi ever bar none, ...

that actually would have been anakin who would have been the strongest jedi ever -- he was just constantly conflicted and never reached his full potential.

luke became the strongest light jedi ever before he died of old age. i believe the strongest sith was exar kun, but i could be wrong on that.

Fuck you George, you mentally bankrupt whorehopper.

Ladies and gentlemen I present the quote of the week.

i like to say that nobody hates their fans quite as much as george lucas does.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

i dont exactly understand how a game can be "too awesome" i mean, look at Saints Row 2, that was ridiculous in almost every way but people accept that
or inFamous or Prototype, both very ridiculous but also a spectacle to be enjoyed.

besides that, i always thought directors were trying to go for less "flash" and "bang" because of the rise of "realistic" games like Cash-In Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto 4.

Have you even played any of the most recent COD's? The graphics may be on the grey/brown/dull-side but I wouldn't call it's action (one squad saving the world) by any stretch of the imagination "realistic".

Hence why I love it when MoH made it about 2-3 different squads, and then endgame wasn't abotu saving the world

 

[SpaceMedarotterX]

I want everyone to have a gander at Super Robot Wars, any of them really but I feel Alpha 3 makes it's point the most felt, now these games are by no means 'contained' it's a big universe spanning war between some of the most over the top robots in all of existance. But it works in THAT setting and even with your army the final battle still feels FINAL. Your cast come from every different walk in life, a highschool student who stumbled into this mess by accident, trained soldiers, those related to tragedy, an alien general, a cyborg and his AI robot compatriots all fueled through sheer determination. And yet they present this in a way that for this universe? it's believable.

I can believe that Shinji Ikari isn't a total wuss who's going to cry because the people around him are good, positive people acting as friends and mentors. I can accept that the premier Super Robot Pilot Kouji Kabuto can sit down and have a nice chat with Amuro Ray. Because even though there as different as night and day the universe makes it believable.

Now 'Believable' isn't the same as 'Realistic'.

I can BELIEVE that an alien race named the Balmarians actually exist in this universe with there own alien social structure and unique tech level. And I can believe that they present a threat to the heroes of the game. I am not under any illusion that it's 'realistic' it is NOT realistic for a delivery boy no matter how good a martial artist he is would ever be allowed to take his giant robot to go beat aliens. It's not realistic that so MANY fantastical varied robots can all exist with such varying tech levels.

Why use GM's when you have Jeigans? How is Daitarn 3 a 120 foot tall transforming death machine when a gundam is only 18 feet? and how can they fight along side Arm Slaves which are only a measly 8 or 9 feet tall?

But we accept it because the universe makes it believable, even if it's unrealistic.

In Starwars I can accept that a paladin with a laser sword can fight a deathknight with a laser sword. you made it believable even if those weapons could never really work and people could never really have those powers.

The Death Star destroyed by 1 ship and a missile? completely believable even in real life when such a huge target could be taken out by a single ship.

Force powers I'll buy, hell I even buy Cade Skywalkers healing/harm powers in the Legacy comics because it seems believable siunce NOBODY TREATS IT AS NORMAL, they treat it as a frightening force that should not be tapped and is so far off the slippery slope that it's not worth considering.

Cade can't kill an entire army, he's swayed more between the sith and jedi than most people sway between different meals for dinner and yet it's believable because deep down he's a frightened guy running away from his fears rather than confronting them.

Think of Megas XLR or One Piece, neither of them is 'Realistic' but both are 'Believable'

... well okay One Piece has the Cyborgs which STRETCH Belivability but for the most part it weeves a darn good narrative.

Megas is cheesy and over the top and is in no way realistic. But the characters, there interactions make it seem believable.

TFU and it's sequal weren't 'Believable' and when your not realistic or believable you have nothing.

People said he liked Shadow of the Colossus for the huge boss battles, but within SotC it was believable that a guy, frail and weak but cunning could take down something so large it was beyond scale.

 

[kael013]

Does this theory work for games based in the future? Look at Mass Effect and its massive Sovereign. Sovereign is a massive alien spaceship/alien himself. How can something like that be based in reality? Or even the citadel, that was a massive and ancient space station that a long, long extinct people built that hasn't been completely destroyed by some cosmic force over the insanely long time it has been around?

Or is it just the fact that people don't know what to expect from the future, so therefore they can accept it because they just don't know that something like this could be built sometime in the future?

Well, since Yathzee is talking about a sci-fi game and the sci-fi genre includes futuristic stuff, I'm gonna say yes, this covers futuristic games. As for your other questions:
Sovereign: Play ME 2, they explain this at the end.
Citadel: ME mentions a 'cycle of extintion". The last victims (the Protheans) were killed 50,000 years ago and the Citadel is the Reapers way of entering the galaxy from darkspace, so they could easily fix it up (or have the Keepers do it, that is what they were built for). Also, it is entirely plausible that the Citadel has super-strong shields.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

As usual another excellent article that isnt meant for mere laughs but to actually change the industry, a true observation of human fallacies.

Yahtzee Croshaw is the John Stewart of Gaming, give it a couple more years and I see Yahtzee leaving the simple internet media and branching out into the public's eye.

I look forward to that day. Yahtzee was the main reason I got into this site, and I've found it to be an incredibly insightful and respectful appreciation of gaming culture. And in Yahtzee's case, with lots of swears.

-snip-

Let us look at the history of star wars (the movies)

Episode 4: NO mention of the force giving telekinetic powers. "It guides us"

Episode 5: Yoda pulls a star fighter out of the swamp with great effort. Luke pulls his lightsaber from the snow with great effort... I know, budding appretice, but still)

After that it's basically playing a big game of "I one up'd you *****!" until starkiller reaches all the way into fucking space and rips a star destroyer out of the skies... This man couldn't beat the emporer or vader? COME ON!

Vader is all machine. THe force flows through all living things, hence why Anikin Skywalker lost so much power when he lost his arms and legs and had them replaced with metal... I mean... Spoilers... Oops...

And if you can rip a star destroyer from the sky, you can crush a man like a fucking bug... But they had to make epic fight sequences

 

[TiefBlau]

As usual another excellent article that isnt meant for mere laughs but to actually change the industry, a true observation of human fallacies.

Yahtzee Croshaw is the John Stewart of Gaming, give it a couple more years and I see Yahtzee leaving the simple internet media and branching out into the public's eye.

Actually, I kind of dread that day because he's still an amateur at game criticism. Almost all of his works are filled with fallacies, even now.
The problem with both of these cases is that they don't want to put fear, they want to empower. You're not supposed to be afraid with Kratos because he's a god killer with amazing strength. Plus, he's comparing this to Condemned, which is a Horror game. No duh you're more likely to be afraid. He misses the point of these games. I want to know what gave him the idea that a game where you beat up monsters, gods and titans wanted to instill fear?

If he's an amateur, you're not even in scratching distance of him.
Horror game or not, you want to feel your emotions evoked, to find yourself in front of a challenge that you may be apprehensive to approach. You have to be realistic and relatable if you want the player to feel even remotely connected to the characters and the process at hand. Games that pride themselves as ridiculous don't have to deal with this. Saints Row 2's reckless abandon of realism and Team Fortress 2's charming art style can attest to this. But any game that wants to have a semblance of realistic struggle needs to have some sense of scope. "Empowerment"? Hardly. Whatever empowerment God of War 3 grants is easily offset by the amount of detachment to the game you feel once you become to powerful.

To put this into perpective, can you imagine playing Grand Theft Auto 4 as the mayor of SimCity? No, you can't. You can't imagine that kind of gritty realism when you're conjuring up tornadoes. The struggles in Max Payne become laughable. When you're a god among men, there are no interesting men.

 

[Lord_Kristof]

Totally agree.
I'm a Star Wars fan, but I think the franchise is one of the prime offenders here. If you think about Force Unleashed, or The Clone Wars, or everything Yoda does in the second and third episodes... it's too much. It doesn't make any sense. Other SW games have symptoms of that, but in Jedi Knight when you use Force Lightning, it feels as if this is a bit over the top, but not too much. And then you've got Yoda crashing two space cruisers in the air using the Force. What the hell? It's just not fun anymore.

Fortunately, I don't think it's a common problem with video games. It does happen in titles like God of War because they are over the top by definition... I'm worried a bit about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, because it's one of those games which seem to work backwards in time. Human Revolution is a prequel, but the trailer alone features technology that is too advanced for the first game, and even the second. What, did they suddenly forget all about those cool upgrades and just started over? Like in Star Wars during the Empire era? Strange stuff, that.

 

[seekeroftruth86]

Let us look at the history of star wars (the movies)

Episode 4: NO mention of the force giving telekinetic powers. "It guides us"

Episode 5: Yoda pulls a star fighter out of the swamp with great effort. Luke pulls his lightsaber from the snow with great effort... I know, budding appretice, but still)

After that it's basically playing a big game of "I one up'd you *****!" until starkiller reaches all the way into fucking space and rips a star destroyer out of the skies... This man couldn't beat the emporer or vader? COME ON!

Vader is all machine. THe force flows through all living things, hence why Anikin Skywalker lost so much power when he lost his arms and legs and had them replaced with metal... I mean... Spoilers... Oops...

And if you can rip a star destroyer from the sky, you can crush a man like a fucking bug... But they had to make epic fight sequences

That's the inconsistency that Yahtzee was pointing out. You can rip a star destroyer, Vader is nothing, but he's the villain so you don't get to beat him easily.

Makes about as much sense as yippie dip skip-bo salad.

Really, KoTOR needs to be the standard for Star Wars video games. It doesn't even need to be an RPG. That game had internal consistency in regards to Force powers. Keep it like that and you are forced to make a decent story in spite of the flashy action sequences since the Force can't do that.

In writing, there's a rule: never make the hero more powerful than the villain. "STFU" has broken that rule. And then lied about it.

Fail.

 

[TaboriHK]

Yahtzee can't handle the Force!

Ugh, I was ashamed of that before I finished thinking it XD

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

Let us look at the history of star wars (the movies)

Episode 4: NO mention of the force giving telekinetic powers. "It guides us"

Episode 5: Yoda pulls a star fighter out of the swamp with great effort. Luke pulls his lightsaber from the snow with great effort... I know, budding appretice, but still)

After that it's basically playing a big game of "I one up'd you *****!" until starkiller reaches all the way into fucking space and rips a star destroyer out of the skies... This man couldn't beat the emporer or vader? COME ON!

Vader is all machine. THe force flows through all living things, hence why Anikin Skywalker lost so much power when he lost his arms and legs and had them replaced with metal... I mean... Spoilers... Oops...

And if you can rip a star destroyer from the sky, you can crush a man like a fucking bug... But they had to make epic fight sequences

That's the inconsistency that Yahtzee was pointing out. You can rip a star destroyer, Vader is nothing, but he's the villain so you don't get to beat him easily.

Makes about as much sense as yippie dip skip-bo salad.

Really, KoTOR needs to be the standard for Star Wars video games. It doesn't even need to be an RPG. That game had internal consistency in regards to Force powers. Keep it like that and you are forced to make a decent story in spite of the flashy action sequences since the Force can't do that.

In writing, there's a rule: never make the hero more powerful than the villain. "STFU" has broken that rule. And then lied about it.

Fail.

STFU and Fail popped out of that before I even read. Thought you were telling me off. Think they did it on purpose to give Force unleashed the same Acronym as "Shut the Fuck up"? SUMBLIMINAL MESSAGING!

 

[taltamir]

Now we see the point of the whole cloning nonsense. Boba Fett is a clone, Starkiller is cloned and reborn. Lucas has introduced cloning as freaking retcon white-out. And when these new Star Wars films come out supposedly set thousands of years in the future. What? Emperor Palpatine? They cloned him?

*facepalm*

Kinda makes you wonder why they didn't simply clone either an army of Starkiller or an army of Darth Vaders.

Why build an army of Jango Fetts when you could build an army of guy that can crush an AT-ST by waving his hand?

This is explained in TFU2 (my brother played it, not me, I wouldn't touch that abortion)... When starkiller explains his predicament to the other jedi, and that he is not really the starkiller they know from before, they refuse to believe him at first because "cloning jedi is impossible", therefore he must have somehow survived and is just confused or something.
AFAIK it is not explained how the impossible was done, if it was actually done, or why nobody can do it again.

 

[seekeroftruth86]

-snip-

That's the inconsistency that Yahtzee was pointing out. You can rip a star destroyer, Vader is nothing, but he's the villain so you don't get to beat him easily.

Makes about as much sense as yippie dip skip-bo salad.

Really, KoTOR needs to be the standard for Star Wars video games. It doesn't even need to be an RPG. That game had internal consistency in regards to Force powers. Keep it like that and you are forced to make a decent story in spite of the flashy action sequences since the Force can't do that.

In writing, there's a rule: never make the hero more powerful than the villain. "STFU" has broken that rule. And then lied about it.

Fail.

STFU and Fail popped out of that before I even read. Thought you were telling me off. Think they did it on purpose to give Force unleashed the same Acronym as "Shut the Fuck up"? SUMBLIMINAL MESSAGING!

Ha ha ha! I thought that "backronym" was clever actually. Just drop the W and that's what you get!

Considering Lucasarts' recent track record it wouldn't surprise me. George Lucas doesn't care about black people his fans. (Although when was the last time you saw a strong, black character that wasn't relegated to a bit part? Lando was awesome, where'd he go?)

Apologies if you felt offended at first. Not my intent, clearly.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to whom "Shia The Beef" has occured as a natural appelation to Msgr. La Beouf.

You complain that those bosses are too big yet a few weeks ago you praised shadow of the colossus. I see a little inconsistency in your ramblings.

In Shadow of the Colossus you are constantly in fear of being thrown off as this gigantic beast that you barely at the last minute are able to kill because you have a magical sword. It's not that unrealistic because you aren't some jumbo, overpowered meat man. You are a fragile youth that has to fight tooth and nail to climb up this giant and after climbing to it's weak point and stabbing it 3 to 4 times you finally bring it down.

As (starkly) opposed to Kratos, who regularly brings down such behemoths to work up an appetite before lunch.

 

[Netrigan]

Going way, way, way over-the-top can work, but it's really tough... you have to be really creative, consistently top yourself, and know how to quit when you're ahead.

And video games have the added problem of crafting a control scheme to pull it off. And mostly they just resort to the twin game-killers of gimmick boss fights and quick-time-events.

 

[Pinky09]

Spot on. This article was, IMO, spot on.
i much rather fight some human (or alien, but humanoid and man-sized) sith or jedi or whatever, then fight a huge monster. it makes no sense, and it's linear as s**t. you hit it a bit, then it slams the ground, then you pound at it, then it dies. Big deal. in TFU 1, in the dlc Hoth map where you fought Luke, you could toss him around like a piece of paper, or you could fry him up, or saber him, or whatever, and it felt cool! (not as cool as any of the saber battles in the Jedi knight games, but still...)

Loved the article Yahtzee.

 

[Choppaduel]

Magnificent article.

You should ask for a raise. Seriously.

 

[The Electro Gypsy]

Except for the following bit where Indy destroys a cannon by blocking the end with a bit of jagged rock that didn't even seal it properly, but what do you want, it's Hollywood.

Haha, that's exactly what I thought, even when I saw it the first time and was about 6-7 I actually thought "That rock hasn't sealed the hole, that won't work". :')

But yeah, I find that every time I read these on Tuesday I get some form of hope that humanity isn't toally screwed yet. There is hope for us in people like you, Yahtzee!