Solo4114
Master Member
Can't argue with that!
There were some good ones that snuck out in LucasArts' waning years, but by and large, I found that their post-2000 releases were generally mediocre at best, and often pretty lame.
Star Wars: Battlefront
- Thread starter ghostryder
- Start date
Can't argue with that!
There were some good ones that snuck out in LucasArts' waning years, but by and large, I found that their post-2000 releases were generally mediocre at best, and often pretty lame.
I remember being slightly excited by Force Unleashed, the story not so much, but to wreak havoc with force powers? Why not? Then I picked it up and played it and it was abysmal!
I attribute that game for killing any excitement for me for future Star Wars games.
Wolfsburg
Master Member
Yeah. I was somewhat apathetic about playing Fett but a game that played like Uncharted in the SW galaxy sounded pretty fun to me.
I liked the first TFU, but I'm glad it's not canon. It diminished Luke's arrival as the most powerful Jedi since Order 66. Otherwise it would be no big deal when he joined the Rebels. The last really good SW game before that was Empire at War/FOC. I just hope they don't totally abandon the good series (X-Wing/TIE, Dark Forces/Jedi Knight, Republic Commando - sequel already..., etc.) in the name of a fresh start.
Solo4114
Master Member
Oh, that happened for me with Jedi Outcast and how its multiplayer ended up working. God it was HORRIBLY balanced and supported. Raven Software (the developer -- because, remember, at this point, LucasArts wanted to be a publisher like EA) released a patch where a particular move became not only unblockable but also the most powerful move in the game...after having fixed a previous unblockable, most powerful move. Of course, that would be pretty much anyone would do. But what made it more absurd was that the move was a backstab, meaning you would attack the enemy directly behind you. This resulted in hordes of people running around BACKWARDS to attack each other. It took them another 4 months to fix that.
Then, with the development and management of Star Wars Galaxies -- especially with respect to the Smuggler class during the Pre-CU era, I just gave up entirely. That game, along with the focus on clone-wars era stuff only and the DVD releases of the OT which sucked, all basically killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars for probably about 7-10 years.
I've never played the Uncharted games, so I have no idea what that'd involve. I was just bored by the idea of playing Boba Fett in comparison to opening an opportunity for new characters.
The "canon" nature of TFU was pure marketing, and pure bull****. Pulling freaking Star Destroyers from the sky is just flat-out ridiculous.
Empire at War was...ok. I played it years later, and while the space battles are great, the ground battles are a real chore. I'm also not a fan of real time strategy games, and prefer turn-based, so that was a disappointment. Easier to deal with in the space battles, though, because at least you could maneuver.
I'd love to see the X-wing series return, but I doubt it will. Larry Holland, the developer who created all of the games, formed his own game company that now pretty much just does mobile games, I think. Dark Forces/Jedi Knight was a fairly lackluster series, in my opinion. The first two games were pretty good. After that, it was the same old crap, and the Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy games played more like the Quake 3 mods they were rather than true Star Wars games, to me. And I can't comment on Republic Commando, since I haven't played it.
I would, however, expect all of these games to be ignored for future development purposes, if only because LucasArts will focus more on selling for the new films and new canon. Games like Battlefront don't "have" to be canon, because they're basically just multiplayer arenas, but any story-based game will likely be canonical.
I remember that. It was so ridiculous it was funny, but avoidable. The worst thing was in Jedi Academy when people would use the Strong lightsaber style, then they would run up and kick you to knock you down, then immediately perform the special attack which instantly killed you. There was a guy doing it over and over and finally the entire server went after him, but he was still killing everyone. Otherwise it was fun. :lol
Solo4114
Master Member
My major gripes about those games were:
1. The lightsabre combat treated the sabre more like a bat than an actual sword. It was never really cinematic (although I vaguely remember there being mods to make it somehow more cinematic?). This basically taught me that there is probably no effective way to do actual swordplay in a multiplayer game, since they'll always basically treat swords like bats.
2. The guns weren't really "star warsy." They were Quake clones. Now, to some extent, that's a holdover from previous games, but I always wished there could be a Star Wars FPS that only focused on different kinds of blasters, rather than rocket launchers, flak cannons, and other weapons cribbed from other non-Star Wars games.
3. At least in Jedi Outcast, you spent half the game NOT having Force powers and having to level everything up. TFU, at least, got that mostly right, and JA was decent about it, too.
Personally, I think the glowbats thing is just totally played out. I'm ready for a blaster-focused game where the blasters handle at least the way guns do in, say, the Battlefield series. Aiming down iron sights or scopes, different performance for different weapons, that sort of thing. I have no illusions that Battlefront will do that (it never has in the past), and I'm ok with it, but I'd like to see further development of Star Wars gaming properties to focus on that. And to be honest, I'd like to see a move away from multiplayer. But, you know, they'll never make my ideal game. They just won't.
1. The lightsabre combat treated the sabre more like a bat than an actual sword. It was never really cinematic (although I vaguely remember there being mods to make it somehow more cinematic?). This basically taught me that there is probably no effective way to do actual swordplay in a multiplayer game, since they'll always basically treat swords like bats.
2. The guns weren't really "star warsy." They were Quake clones. Now, to some extent, that's a holdover from previous games, but I always wished there could be a Star Wars FPS that only focused on different kinds of blasters, rather than rocket launchers, flak cannons, and other weapons cribbed from other non-Star Wars games.
3. At least in Jedi Outcast, you spent half the game NOT having Force powers and having to level everything up. TFU, at least, got that mostly right, and JA was decent about it, too.
Personally, I think the glowbats thing is just totally played out. I'm ready for a blaster-focused game where the blasters handle at least the way guns do in, say, the Battlefield series. Aiming down iron sights or scopes, different performance for different weapons, that sort of thing. I have no illusions that Battlefront will do that (it never has in the past), and I'm ok with it, but I'd like to see further development of Star Wars gaming properties to focus on that. And to be honest, I'd like to see a move away from multiplayer. But, you know, they'll never make my ideal game. They just won't.
Wolfsburg
Master Member
I totally agree with this. Of course I know the explanation is that in the GFFA there are probably all kinds of weapons we've never seen that do all sorts of nasty things but I do agree that when they stray too far from what we see in the movies, it does bother me a little. Even then, those mini-Death Star lasers seen on the gunships in the PT seemed corny to me. If DS lasers were around in miniaturized form, why the heck didn't the Empire make extensive use of them later? Seemed pretty powerful and effective to me! I guess it shouldn't bug me but it does. I think one of the worst culprits was the carbonite gun from Mysteries of the Sith and later games. I mean, really? Carbonite is simply used to freeze Tibanna gas and was experimentally used to freeze Han to test the viability of freezing Luke. Video games seem really keen on weaponizing it probably because of the "ooh-ahh" effect of being able to freeze an enemy. Still, I never liked the idea that carbonite was commonly used for freezing living things.
Solo4114
Master Member
Mostly I think the weapon design boils down to the fact that FPS game devs have been basically recycling weapons for several generations now. I mean, there's very often the pistol/shotgun/machinegun/rocket launcher thing, and occasionally some sniper rifle clone. Dark Forces had one mildly inventive (but crappy in practice) weapon with the fusion cutter. Unreal Tournament (the original) had some interesting weapons, one of which was added to Jedi Outcast (the flak cannon), but basically it boils down to lack of vision, to me. FPS games, especially of that era, tended to follow a predictable path of gradually upgrading in firepower and explosiveness, probably for that ooh-ahh factor you mentioned. They also predictably have the hero gradually get stronger to take on tougher and tougher opponents.
I think this is where your FPS/RPG hybrids really tend to improve things. Rather than simply face bigger/tougher bosses with flashier powers, they tend to give you a wider variety of options to tackle a situation.
You ask me, the ideal game in the SW universe would feature skill based progression for your character, and offer a range of different blaster-based weapons that perform different functions for generally different prices and with different performance and pros and cons within a given class. So, you could buy a Merr-Sonn Power-5 heavy blaster pistol, and it'd be less expensive and offer higher initial damage than a BlasTech DL-44...but it wouldn't be as customizable, and the DL-44 would offer better armor penetration with mods/customization that you could buy for it. Likewise, you could get an EE-3 carbine, which would offer a range of customization options, but it would have lower accuracy and come at a higher price than the less powerful but more accurate DH-17. And so on.
I know Star Wars Galaxies focused more on blasters, but that game....sheesh...I could go on at length about what was wrong with it, but the short version is it was always half-baked and unfinished.
In JA there was a code you could enter that would enable you to hack off heads and limbs. Much more satisfying to force levitate a trooper and send the saber spinning into him!
Solo4114
Master Member
Yeah, they had that in a few games. It was...ok. I was talking less about the "bonk them to knock them down" aspect, and more the fact that the way the sabre worked made no sense. I mean, ok, it's an omnidirectional blade that can cut through just about anything but another blade. Fine. By why does swinging it harder mean (A) swinging it slower and in wider arcs, and (B) mean that it damages more? That part never made sense to me. The stances and the way they worked were never really thought through to me. For that matter, many of the moves were kinda dumb. Particularly the "red/heavy" stance moves which featured huge, slow movements.
I'll put it this way. If you use a real sword, taking big swings may allow you to batter through an enemy's defense, but it also leaves you really open. Moreover, that has nothing to do with the lethality of the blade itself, which is pretty much the same no matter what you do. It's more about where you strike and how far you penetrate than how hard or fast you swing (although that factors into it). The amount of damage being related to the force of the swing makes sense for blunt objects, but not for an omnidirectional laser blade.
I'll put it this way. If you use a real sword, taking big swings may allow you to batter through an enemy's defense, but it also leaves you really open. Moreover, that has nothing to do with the lethality of the blade itself, which is pretty much the same no matter what you do. It's more about where you strike and how far you penetrate than how hard or fast you swing (although that factors into it). The amount of damage being related to the force of the swing makes sense for blunt objects, but not for an omnidirectional laser blade.
I think the lightsaber in MP was the only possible way to do it. If they acted like real lightsabers everyone would just flail wildly hoping for that easy one hit kill. As for the guns, I agree. I think the guns in Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight were a lot more fun. They had a rocket launcher, but the secondary mode would attach to anything. So you could tag a rocket onto someone or as I used to do, fire one ahead of me into the ground or into a wall and someone trying to chase me down would get it. I think it would be hard to do anything too out there because it would feel too scifi and not like SW. Then if you went solely by the movies at that time, you only had lightsabers, blasters, bowcasters, and thermal detonators to pick from.
Like UT's redeemer. First time using that thing, it definitely made me go : "oh wow"Still waiting for a single game to feature a real lightsaber. Where you can cut through anything and everything.
A locked door? No problem, just go Qui-Gon Jinn on that door and melt it!
They already made that game.
Still waiting for a single game to feature a real lightsaber. Where you can cut through anything and everything.
A locked door? No problem, just go Qui-Gon Jinn on that door and melt it!
It's called, Fruit Ninja.
Solo4114
Master Member
Certainly at the time it was the only way to do it. Nowadays I think it could be done...better...but still not quite right. I honestly don't think you can do real melee combat in a FPS game. The FPS approach just doesn't really work for that, and a third-person perspective doesn't really work either. The way I'd expect it to work these days is that instead of a button press equaling a single swing, you'd be more, like, activating animations through combinations of buttons and/or timing. There'd need to be a heavy emphasis on blocking and parrying through animations, if you were to make the blade really a one-hit-kill weapon.
As for the weapons, yeah, it'd basically be a very limited set. That's why I'd say you should distinguish based on other factors instead of defaulting to "Traditional FPS loadout."
Still waiting for a single game to feature a real lightsaber. Where you can cut through anything and everything.
A locked door? No problem, just go Qui-Gon Jinn on that door and melt it!
I think The Force Unleashed sorta tried to do that, but frankly, I found it boring. This is why I'd rather see an underworld/smuggler game.
