Star Wars

Just completed the new Tatooine DLC for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on Xbox 360. As my co-podcaster Tim Spaeth so eloquently put it, it's another piece of "stealth DLC" arriving with no forewarning or fanfare, much like Mass Effect's Pinnacle Station. However, unlike Pinnacle Station, this add-on is pretty sweet.

Starting out, the mission assumes that the player became the Emperor's new disciple at the end of The Force Unleashed proper. (This was only one of two possible endings.) Seeing main character Starkiller as a desiccated metallic husk consumed by the dark side was a bit of a shock, but still pretty cool, regardless.

Polished off Star Wars: The Force Unleashed this afternoon, and it was a pretty fun thrill ride from start to finish.

I have to admit that I had heard the gameplay had some problems before I started it, so I set the thing to Easy and I'm glad I did. The developers have a real over-reliance on snipers and people firing from a distance which wouldn't be so bad except that it's far too easy to get knocked down and fall into a gang rape as you bounce back and forth between enemies. There's nothing more frustrating than getting ping-ponged without the chance to really do anything, and even on Easy it happened to me more than I like.

Lightsabers can cut through 20cm thick metal, but a stick? That's too much.

HIGH Force-throwing and crushing things is a blast.

LOW Camera severely hampers you in several areas, especially in small spaces.

WTF How does a stormtrooper with a stick block a lightsaber?

Like most of the civilized world, I downloaded and played the Star Wars: Force Unleashed demo today, and I was a little surprised by what I found. There were a couple of surprises, at first pleasant, and then soon after, decidedly less so.

It satisfies in small doses, but there's no denying that neither the engaging characters nor the Star Wars license are enough to conceal the fact that Star Wars: Lethal Alliance is thin and underdeveloped.

Game Description: LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is a comical take on the Star Wars Trilogy, the movies that revolutionized pop culture forever. LEGO Star Wars II follows the Rebel Alliance's battle to dismantle the Galactic Empire and rebuild a galaxy in pieces. From Darth Vader's pursuit of Princess Leia aboard her Blockade Runner to a showdown on the reconstructed Death Star, the game includes the family-friendly LEGO action, puzzles and humor that earned the original LEGO Star Wars such popularity and acclaim. Drop-in/drop-out feature enables friends to join easily and engage in multi-player action.

In late 2004, Microsoft spent so much money marketing the upcoming release of Halo 2 that national press outlets started doing reports about it as if it were actually news. Unsurprisingly, these were generally awkward and horribly researched, as mainstream coverage about niche subjects tends to be.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Cartoon Violence, Crude Humor

After blasting through all three "films" in the Lego Star Wars game, I walked away from the experience feeling that these stubby, super-deformed and cartoony characters had just provided me with more entertainment and a deeper sense of satisfaction than George Lucas and the entire Skywalker Ranch could manage with their insanely powerful computer graphics and hundreds of millions of dollars.