The Force Unleashed 2 trailer & new website "game"

[foxbatkllr]

I loved the Battlefront series and although it wasn't a great hit and got not so good reviews I really really enjoyed Bounty Hunter. I'm still holding out for a polished sequel to Bounty Hunter.

And how could you forget the KOTOR games?? Those are IMO not only some of the best games ever, but definitely the best SW games.

 

[Solo4114]

Oh, right, well, I never actually finished KOTOR 1. I liked it when I played it. Didn't try KOTOR 2 because I heard it was pretty weak and largely unfinished. The Battlefront games were a reasonably entertaining diversion, but I felt like they really kind of missed the boat in terms of what their full potential could've been.

Never played Bounty Hunter, though. I only had a PC when that came out (and I don't think it was released for X360?).

Thing is, pre-1999, a LucasArts game was almost guaranteed to rock. Post-1999, a LucasArts game was more likely to be "fair to middling" at best. That was right around the time they started purging their in-house development teams and decided to become a publisher. They used to have some of the best created talent in gaming. Larry Holland, Tim Schafer, and Ron Gilbert were all under one roof once upon a time.

 

[Dave Ward]

Bounty Hunter was great, the physics felt nice and chunky and brutal, the jet pack was fun, and the story was suprisingly involving given that you were playing the bad guy.

I'm looking forward to the Force Unleashed II, but the problem I had with the first one was that although you had this amazing, "canon" story going on, you also had these ridiculous monsters like the animated junkyard giant thing that looked like they belonged in a kids cartoon.

 

[foxbatkllr]

Oh, right, well, I never actually finished KOTOR 1. I liked it when I played it. Didn't try KOTOR 2 because I heard it was pretty weak and largely unfinished. The Battlefront games were a reasonably entertaining diversion, but I felt like they really kind of missed the boat in terms of what their full potential could've been.

Never played Bounty Hunter, though. I only had a PC when that came out (and I don't think it was released for X360?).

KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2 are great. KOTOR 2 was not weak or largely unfinished. Basically the deal with KOTOR 2 is it ends a little too soon. But up until the ending, in many ways it improved on KOTOR 1. If you ever did finish KOTOR 1 I still consider KOTOR 2 to be a must play.

Bounty Hunter only came out for Gamecube and PS2. I played the Gamecube version. If I had a Wii still or a backwards compatible PS3 I'd probably pick it up again for old times sake.

 

[Solo4114]

KOTOR 1 seemed fun. I may go back to it at some point. But I'm also pretty much over the whole Jedi thing.

Gimme a smuggler game.

 

[Dave Ward]

Playing Saboteur last night, i was thinking, where's the Star Wars Grand-Theft-Auto sandbox style game? In Battlefront, you couldn't even go from a ground battle to space battle, they were completely different levels.

 

[Solo4114]

I'll pass on a Grand Theft Auto style game. I found GTA IV to be ridiculously overhyped and had horrible controls. I would love to see a "living universe" that I could romp around in, but I don't need to have my in-ship email constantly going off because my Wookiee buddy wants to play Sabacc with me.

Now, that said, I'd LOVE a game where I could just fly around, running missions, delivering legit (or illegal) cargo, working as a merc, or whathaveyou, all within a living, breathing universe. But I kinda doubt that'll happen any time soon because it deals with the seamier underbelly of the SW universe, and isn't Jedi-centric.

Star Wars = Jedi now. Not pilots, no soldiers, not smugglers, not wookiees. Jedi. All Jedi, all the time. If you dig that, hey, you're in fat city. There's never gonna be a shortage of those games to play. But if you want something different...


I tried DarkStar One, hoping to recapture the feel of games like Privateer and such. No dice, though. It was a valiant attempt, but feel flat in many ways. Basically, I think it'd be too much of a perceived risk to dump the amount of money into a Star Wars "GTA" style game and have it turn out profitable AND good. Hell, like I said, GTA IV was overhyped garbage to my way of thinking, and that game had a HUGE budget.

 

[foxbatkllr]

GTA IV is one of my favorite games of all time, so to each his own.

If it had been more fully developed, Bounty Hunter could have been that sandbox smuggler type game. It did allow you to hunt bounties and such but there was little reward for it. Still though, as Jango you never once pull out a lightsaber and the story was quite good.

 

[Solo4114]

Yeah, but that's the exception.

As for GTA IV, it was an impressive technical achievement, but the actual gameplay itself was lacking, I found. I only played it this year, so it was WELL after the hype had died down. While driving around randomly was fun, the missions could be a right pain in the ass, and the controls were crap. I swear the in-game camera was actively trying to kill me. I found myself more often irritated or frustrated with the game, than saying "This is so cool!!" And so much of it was mundane junk, too. Look! It's a game where you can go on a dating site! Or surf the web! Or play darts! Or go bowling! Uh....great....I can already do that in real life. And while it's nice that the game took pains to make the world seem alive (which it mostly succeeded at), I found that it came at the cost of some of the fundamentals of gameplay (like camera and in-game controls).

I've been having far more fun with Just Cause 2, which strips out a lot of the extraneous stuff (IE: no radio stations, no "casual" activities like bowling) and exchanges it for all-out destruction and craziness. The result is a game that controls well, is nicely focused gameplay-wise, but still a ton of fun.


One of the things about sandbox games that I find ends up being problematic, though, is that they're never truly sandbox games. For all the freedom the game gives you, it's not like you can literally go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING. Sometimes that makes sense, but often it comes across as "The game prevents this because it is a game" not "because it wouldn't realistically happen." I can break a window of a car to steal it, but I can't break into someone's house. I can drive around the city...but not to the places that I haven't "unlocked" yet.


Anyway, Bounty Hunter sounds cool, but apparently it wasn't much of a success. Or at least didn't fit with the direction the company was headed, if it was. Nowadays, the only way you'll find a game where you can play non-Jedi characters is if there are ALSO Jedi in the game. Just as nobody's gonna make a smuggler game any time soon, nobody's gonna make a bounty hunter game any time soon unless you can become a bounty-hunting dark jedi in it.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Bounty Hunter was awesome. If they fixed the mechanics, improved it, and had Boba Fett in the sequel it would be cool. If it got the same treatment with graphics like TFU it would rock. ILM actually did the cutscenes on that game.


As for KOTOR2, in some ways I think it was more fun. The story wasn't as good and it was definitely released unfinished with a bad ending slapped on. It's still a fun game up to the last level, but you can tell where there's things that they omitted to presumably meet a release date.

 

[clancampbell]

We NEED a new, decent first person action/adventure SW game. Simple.
No Starkiller. No Reublic Commando with their amazingly underpowered weapons. Let's steer away from Jedi and Force users.....it was novel 15 years ago, but now it's just predictable and dull.....like the sword play in the prequels.

Hell, i would even buy an updated HD version of Dark Forces!!!!!(Xbox Live Arcade anyone???)

Rich

 

[Solo4114]

We NEED a new, decent first person action/adventure SW game. Simple.
No Starkiller. No Reublic Commando with their amazingly underpowered weapons. Let's steer away from Jedi and Force users.....it was novel 15 years ago, but now it's just predictable and dull.....like the sword play in the prequels.

Hell, i would even buy an updated HD version of Dark Forces!!!!!(Xbox Live Arcade anyone???)

Rich

For 800 MS points I'd be there.

 

[Qui-Gonzalez]

You gents are aware that Star Wars IS about Jedi, right? Always has been. That said, some of what you are saying does make sense. Aside from the smugglers not being able to smuggle, SWG had much the same experiences people in this thread have said that they want.

 

[Solo4114]

Lies!!

I played SWG for a year when it first came out. It was always a turd.

SWG had all of that in THEORY, and was ADVERTISED as having all the stuff we said we wanted. However...

- Much of it was broken or only partially implemented at launch, and eventually stripped out.

- The world itself was largely static and non-interactive. It was like walking into a theme park with animatronic puppets that will say a pre-programmed line when you press a button, but that's it. It wasn't particularly dynamic.

- It was a year and a half before you could fly a spaceship. Although JTL itself was fairly impressive (especially at the time) for an MMO space combat game. Shame it never became Privateer Online as I've heard it was originally intended to be.

- Smugglers weren't able to smuggle. Eventually, smuggling "missions" were added (think pizza delivery + mugging), but you were never able to smuggle for the players because there was nothing that was illegal outright, and nothing that was taxed.




As for Star Wars being about Jedi, sure, as a result of the prequels, it is. But it wasn't always JUST about Jedi. In fact, it was about one particular would-be Jedi, his fallen-Jedi dad, his Jedi mentors, and a whole bunch of regular people. Lest we forget, the ORIGINAL Star Wars had the Jedi as being EXTINCT. There were, in the films, only three in existence at most at any time (no, Sith don't count, and there were only two of them anyway). Meanwhile, Star Wars was about a smuggler, his wookiee copilot, a princess who also happened to be a political dissident, a roguish former gambler turned mining administrator, some automatons, regular people fighting a corrupt regime (including some DAMN good pilots, some ground troops, and various commandos), a bounty hunter, a crime lord, and a guy who really really loved his ice cream maker.

The original Star Wars was an ensemble piece, NOT a jedi-focused story. The Jedi were basically non-existent in the galaxy, and the story focused on some of the few remaining ones AND regular people, all of whom existed in an otherwise non-Jedi galaxy that felt alive.


So there.

 

[Qui-Gonzalez]

And yet the crux of the story you've just told was all about Jedi as the primary characters. Jedi were "all but extinct" in Star Wars. I'll even give you that Luke wasn't Vader's son until Empire. Yes, there was an ensemble cast, but after SW, the story was all about Force users being the lynch pin to any conquest. This is why Luke was the hero, not Han. Yes, he was needed, but in the end, Luke is who brought them all together to overthrow the Empire.

On to SWG. JTL was a jewel of an expansion pack, to me. It brought space combat to an otherwise, as you so well put it, a static environment. It was the first TRUE sandbox MMO.

You forgot a few things about it:

-The PvP was utterly meaningless. It did not matter if you were Rebel or Imperial. Your conflicts could not change the story. You could not magically make the Empire bow to the Rebellion, no matter how many fights you'd won.
-There was no sense of balance about the game.
-Buggy...even after a year, it was buggy.

All that said, if you got into the role play of the game, it was a fun experience. Again a true sandbox. The development staff gave you the tools to make your own adventure. What they forgot is people, a majority of people, do not like that. They want to be spoon fed content, not make up their own stories.

Oh, and say what you want, there is one unmistakable sound in all of entertainment: The sound of a lightsaber.

 

[Darth Fetty]

Nice to see all the love for Bounty Hunter! That one was always one my favorites despite the negative reviews. If you want something focused on the seamy underbelly of Star Wars, Bounty Hunter is perfect. The last three levels were quite creepy too. Those Bando Gora were tough little buggers.

The game is probably a bit outdated at this point, so a sequel with Boba Fett would be excellent even though I doubt that will ever happen.

 

[foxbatkllr]

Nice to see all the love for Bounty Hunter! That one was always one my favorites despite the negative reviews. If you want something focused on the seamy underbelly of Star Wars, Bounty Hunter is perfect. The last three levels were quite creepy too. Those Bando Gora were tough little buggers.

The game is probably a bit outdated at this point, so a sequel with Boba Fett would be excellent even though I doubt that will ever happen.

I am glad to hear I'm not alone in my Bounty Hunter love. After the negative reviews I thought I was the only one who really liked it. It was quite difficult, but it was cool. The cutscenes were really well done and it was awesome to have the actual, real actors of Jango and Zam doing the voices. I hope for a sequel but I agree its unlikely due to the semi-failure of the first game.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

That's why I said to make the sequel with Boba Fett. You can't go wrong. People would buy it just because he's in it.