*Post-Play* Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

CONS:

So with The Force Unleashed completed, I'd have to say that I was sorely disappointed with the game. Now back when this game came out, I got two copies for free because I worked some media events with LucasFilm but I was only given the version for the Wii and the Playstation 2. The PS2 game went to Wal-Mart, and the Wii game was the one I kept, and I had a lot of fun with it. It wasn't a great game, but it was at least playable and enjoyable, and probably one of the better 3rd party games for the Wii that you're going to find. A little over a week ago, I was walking through my local GameStop and saw the XBOX 360 version of this game laying in their used selection for only $10, I decided that I'd pick it up and give it a go since I had never played it outside of 5 minutes at a friend's house. When I finally put the game in, I was a bit disappointed with it overall....

The first thing that got to me was the loading times, holy shit it took forever to get anything going. Even from going to your Options it took at least 5 seconds to load and get back to the main page, and I don't even know why... the main page shouldn't have to load what so ever when entering it from a subfolder. In game loading is also a disaster when going from mission to mission, it takes much longer than you'd prefer; while running from area to area, you actually get to see the buildings and terrain growing around you, awful.

Now the controls.... whooooo doggy, fuck them. The controls are so clunky, that you will kill yourself by slipping off ledges and cliffs more than any enemy would. Often I am attacking a stormtrooper or something and my combo of repeatedly pressing the X-Button makes me take steps forward which launches him off of a ledge, which means you start the fuck over. The controls are also quite unresponsive, in the middle of a battle you'll be trying to target onto someone but can't, and if you target onto something you'll often grab onto some rock or boulder. Pressing your Force Attack buttons like lightning often won't work unless your character is in zero motion, same with the enemy you're attacking.

The combos are also an awful part of the control scheme, there are about 20 different combos that you have to memorize, but they're not easy.... often it's like "x,x,x,b" but then you get to some complicated ones like "x,x,x,x,LB(a+y)"...srsly....wtf is that. I honestly don't have the patience to figure some of these combos out, so I just unlock them for the shit of it because I have the points, so whatever; never used 'em.

The level designs are also a flaw, with a jumping/platforming game like this, you'd think there would be a shit-ton of things to land on...right? Well no... instead you just slip off something if the game doesn't want you to land on it. The level designs are way too linear, really doesn't give you much room to explore; other than to go find Jedi Holocrons to give you more force points or lightsaber crystals. Often times stormtroopers will get stuck in the layout, you'll think you cleaned an area but you will still hear "ptew...ptew....." but can't find the motherfucker, so you can't just leave him there.



PROS:

What was pretty cool was the fact that you could customize your character based upon lightsaber colour and outfit. When it came to the lightsaber colour, you could get "compressed, regular, or unstable" in any certain colour. Difference? Fuck if I know, I didn't see anything different about them, and I really don't care to google it. The outfits were pretty neat, about 14 or so in the game, but what sucked about them was that you couldn't change it during a level or else you'd go back to your last save point.

The alternate endings were pretty neat, the only choice you had at the end was to either attack the Emporer or attack Vader, one way is good the other is bad if that makes any sense.

GTA 4 - The Ballad of Gay Tony

With The Ballad of Gay Tony completed, I have now completed the entire GTA 4 series.  With Gay Tony, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect based on the title, and I didn't do any research into the game before I played it.  When I started, I felt like the game took one step back and two steps forward.

I enjoyed the fact that this game expanded the city and interactions with the other characters, my favourite new part of the game were the inclusion of many new weapons to purchase.  I loved all of the new guns, in fact I didn't use any guns from the vanilla GTA or from any of the gun vendors; I loved the sticky bombs, they were much easier to use and much more dependable than those stupid pipe bombs, same with grenades.

I didn't enjoy some aspects which I loved a lot in The Lost and the Damned however, I only did one gang war and it wasn't even that fun, so I never did any of the others.  The Base Jumping was too hard to land as perfect as the game was expecting, so I gave up on those near immediately.  The other part about the game I disliked was that I couldn't get two achievements because I was expected to get my "Completed Percentage" up to 80% for each mission, then 100%.  Now it's not easy to get yourself past 30% with some of those, you' can be getting attacked by 50 dudes and they want 20 headshots, 70% accuracy, 10% damage to your car, and only taking 15% damage yourself; do they think we're Rambo here?

Most of the missions were also extremely predictable, when starting a mission you can automatically assume that you have to fly a helicopter at some point, and when in the helicopter you know that you are assumed to either chase someone, land it (lol fuckin impossible), or jump out of it with a parachute... good times.   The missions didn't even seem that unique, to me it just seemed like we were tying loose ends with the main GTA 4 story.

The game is still recommended, but I would suggest playing this one before you play The Lost and the Damned.  To me, that game was more enjoyable and it really made you love all of the characters you interacted with.  About the only new character I liked in The Ballad of Gay Tony was Yusef, the Saudi Arabian rich dude, he was funny as shit and always made the dialogue awesome when he was in a scene.

GTA 4 - The Lost and the Damned

I just finished the first DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and the Damned, and wow.... what a great game.  For years, we've had to deal with the same old GTA with the same shit different game, but this DLC here took a style of gang and really did a great job with it.  Biker gangs have always been pretty badass, and I loved the idea of being able to play as one in a Grand Theft Auto.

The gameplay, as you'd guess it the exact same as the original GTA4, but the subtle changes are what I really liked the best.  Such as if you lost your bike, you'd just call up one of your buddies and they'd bring you a new one, seems a lot more realistic than just grabbing the nearest car you see and speeding off.  Also if you didn't have enough ammo for a certain gun, just call up another buddy and your gang supplies them for you!  It seemed like it really revolved around the biker's brotherhood which I liked a lot, in traditional GTA games you just don't seem to have a connection to other NPCs, but this one did a great job with it.

Now time to play The Ballad of Gay Tony.

Grand Theft Auto IV Review

Grand Theft Auto IV

Completed.

Now that GTA4 is completed, I thought I'd little review on what I thought about the game.  Now I know that it's a bit old, but I was a bit slow to jump on the XBOX 360 bandwagon, so I'm a little behind on some of my gaming.

I've been playing GTA ever since the Playstation 2, but never having the console for myself it was hard for me to really play the game.  However, when I did some commercial and stage work for Sony they took care of me buy giving me a PSP and a half-dozen games along with a large sum of cash, so I ended up purchasing Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, both of which were great games in my opinion.

I'm not going to go into the story of the game, if you've played it you know it all ready so I'll save my breath. When I first put in the game I felt a little disorientated due to the many changes they did to the game, driving was VERY strange at first but the uncomfortable feeling went away soon after a few hours of driving, but luckily the game added difficulty gradually so I wasn't expected to do any crazy driving until later in the game when car chases and racing were required.  The amount of guns were limited in my opinion, and I was sort of hoping for a better way to categorize them, it felt a little clunky to change weapons mid-battle.

Not even midway through the game I noticed the flaw that irritated me most, which was the radio.  It's really fun to listen to the radio sometimes, but when it comes to having to hear a conversation on-top of it, it is almost impossible.  Such as when you receive a phone call, it's impossible to turn off the radio while the cell phone is displayed, it would be great to have the ability to shut off the radio during a phone call but that isn't a possibility.  The other flaw about the radio I discovered was the fact that you have to turn it off by holding the D-Pad Left or Right for a few seconds.  Now I'm sure that it doesn't sound that bad at first, but when you're trying to chase someone down you want that shit off quick, so having to take your thumb off of the L-Stick which steers your vehicle to get rid of the radio, it is extremely annoying; not sure why they didn't use the Back Button for this function.

All in all, I really enjoyed the game, it was a fun experience and I really liked the ability to interact with friends and having the ability to control your relationships with people.  The characters in the game were great, even those I didn't think I'd like at first such as Dwayne or Packie, but GTA always has a way to make characters unique in their own ways to make them fun to be around.

I have yet to play the two DLCs in order to complete the entire game, but The Lost and the Damned is my next game to play.

GameStop Purchase - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

All right, so I finally bought The Force Unleashed for the XBOX 360.  I actually owned two copies of this game once before, one on the PS2 which I sold back to Wal-Mart and one copy on the Wii which I still own.  From my understanding, three versions of this game exist, one being the 360/PS3 version and the other being the PS2/Wii verson, along with the Nintendo DS game.

I got the copies of the games originally for free as a gift from Lucasfilm for doing some commercial or stage show for them, I forget which, but that was prior to me ever owning the PS3 or the Wii, so my two free copies (why 2, I don't know) ended up to be the crappiest ones, guaranteed.

Now that I finally spent some hard earned $9.72 on the game, it is now time for me to give this game a shot.  The Wii version was all right for what it was, and it actually has different levels; guess we have to buy two versions of the game to get the full stories.  I will chime in again after I get started and complete the game, and give my insight on how it was.