Sulphur on 15/10/2010 at 15:37

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Right. Star Wars. A universe famous for X-Wings and Tie Fighters and Jedi Knights, all of which, ironically, have never quite been Lucasarts' forte. Though they did contribute heavily to the golden age of adventure gaming, which had just about zilch to do with Star Wars. And then that golden age ended, and they just put out a bunch of mediocre movie tie-ins and faded into obscurity. Recently, though, they finally got off their asses and made something with a bit more effort.

To wit, The Force Unleashed.

The original TFU was a bit of a mess, to put it mildly. Aggravating combat and slow controls and jerky combat plus a godawful PC port that weighed in at 24 GB that had loading screens for when you switched menus. The art and the story were pretty damn good, but you could be forgiven if you'd never experienced much of either after being turned off by the gameplay.

Anyway, Lucasarts seem to have realised the error of their ways. They've recently released the PS3/X360 demo of TFU2 for download. If you haven't tried it yet, I'd suggest you do.

It fixes just about all the issues most of us would've had with TFU - runs as smooth as silk, looks gorgeous, controls fluidly, and adds light-sabre dismemberment. Yes, lads and lasses, heads will roll. Amongst other things. Plus there's some seriously awesome anti-aliasing going on, because I could find nary a goddamn jaggy through my entire runthrough of the demo.

There are still QTEs, and still slightly cumbersome platform-combat. But apart from this shit, it's like a Star Wars fan's dream come true.

And the story, well, from the little glimpse of it in the demo, it seems to be a darker game, and not just in terms of colour palette.

Looking good, Lucasarts. I for one can't wait to see how the full game turns out. It's been a while since we've had something actually worthy of the Star Wars universe.

Sulphur on 15/10/2010 at 15:47

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Never played the SNES games, Duckeh, but pretty much all of those were published by LA and developed by another studio. I did namecheck X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and the JK series in the introductory paragraph, you know! What kind of PC gaming fan would I be if I didn't know about those? :D

Also, go download that demo, man. Seriously, you ought to try it.

henke on 15/10/2010 at 17:00

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I had to doublecheck this and holyshit you're right! The X-Wing and TIE Fighter games were developed by (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totally_Games) Totally Games. LA did however make Dark Forces and the first Jedi Knight game(aka Dark Forces 2, for the pedants). Two shining examples of Star Wars done right.

They also developed Republic Commando themselves, which was pretty good.

And yes, I'm downloading the demo as we speak.

And no, dethtoll: The KoToR, X-Wing and TIE Fighter series were also totally worth playing.

edit: played the demo. It looks great. The story seems decent. There were some nice setpieces. But the gameplay failed to impress me. It's no "Jedi Knight".

Morgoth on 15/10/2010 at 18:35

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According to the GI review, TFU2 is completely devoid of a proper plot.

But that fits right into Lucas' new SW: Making it technically impressive, but completely shallow.

SubJeff on 16/10/2010 at 20:37

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The demo was quite good fun. I don't see that much difference from the first one tbh, but then I did only play the demo.

As to stormtrooper dismemberment - this was already in previous PC Star Wars games (Outcast? I forget names). Was it not in TFU1?