I Unleash My Frustrations on the Force Unleashed

My poor Wii, like the GameCube, has turned into a cesspit of less-than-desirable games.  The first console I get when a new generation comes out is one of the Nintendo variety (though, this time I have my eyes on the PS4, if nothing good for Nintendo comes out before “Kingdom Hearts 3”), and so only having one current console with which to occupy my time, I end up buying a bunch of games I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten just to have new games to play.  I have purged some of these games from my Cube collection, and now I have been working on doing the same with the Wii.

            First to go was “Donkey Kong Barrel Blast” (I really, really don’t know why I got that), this goofy racing game.  Then, “Sonic and the Secret Rings”, which is a game that would also surprise no one that’s played it that it’s on my sell list.  Besides simply being a rotten game, the worst part about it is the truly terrible controls, where you move Sonic around by tilting the Wiimote, a nearly impossible task if there ever was one.  Not tilting the Wiimote, controlling Sonic by tilting the Wiimote.  Not to mention the fact that having to hold the jump button to jump rather than tapping it is a pain, resulting in Sonic simply not jumping at all half the time, and I quickly grew sick of all the music that was clearly meant to be “cool”.  I also got rid of the really boring, really difficult “Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night”, despite the fact that this ruins my perfect trilogy.  And since I got rid of that, I decided to get rid of the very boring “A New Beginning”, as well, on the Cube (may as well, my trilogy is destroyed now anyway) leaving me with just the third game “Dawn of the Dragon”, the only one that is fairly okay, but may also get sold eventually, too.  I also got rid of “Sonic Colors”.  It’s just too childish, and I can’t stand listening to a grown man yell out silly things every time I use one of those special power-ups.  “Blue!”  “Frenzy!”  “Laser!”  How about “shut up!”

            And so that brings me to another game I am selling and the subject of this post, “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”.  This game was supposed to be awesome.  I know ads are intended to make their products look great, no matter how not-great they actually are, but despite that, this game should still have been great.  You can control Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, Starkiller, who has all these epic Force powers, and in the Wii version, you get to control a lightsaber with the Wiimote.  How could this not end up being awesome?

            Well, for several reasons.  It’s boring.  Yeah, it’s potentially cool exploring locations from “Star Wars”.  But, it’s boring.  It just is.  And funnily enough, while I found the game too hard at first, on my second time through, it was too easy.  I just stood there blocking shots, which would bounce back and kill everyone.  Or I would just stand there, and whenever an enemy ran up to me, I’d pick them up and toss them at someone else.  Or Force choke them.  The lightsaber was actually the most ineffective weapon of all, despite being possibly the coolest weapon of all time (after Keyblades).  When I used it, I’d get my butt kicked, but when I just zapped everyone with lightning or tossed them into walls, then, I’d do pretty good.  In the end, just running through each location, defeating silly enemies that are immune to being chopped up with lightsabers, but not a bump in the head, got boring after a while.  And then I get stuck fighting a bunch of bosses that I simply zap or toss things at because, once again, the lightsaber is useless, and you’ll get pounded to dust if you attempt to actually run up to a boss and slash at them with it (And how many frickin’ rancors do I need to fight?!).

            Also, since your character is with the Dark Side, well, he’s bad (Spoiler Alert: until later…).  And while I’m usually fine with controlling bad characters (I always prefer being Shadow the Hedgehog over Sonic, and I found controlling Organization XIII in “358/2 Days” to be awesome, despite the fact that their move-sets ended up being a lot more limited than I would have liked, but it was still a delightful disappointment, as far as disappointments go), there are just too many scenes of our playable character Force choking people or blowing them up, and it’s just weird.  Whether he is killing good characters or bad, I just am not in the mood to watch the main character torture others.  It’s one thing when a villain hurts someone else, but he’s the playable character, darn it!  Controlling this sicko, I almost feel like I’m naughty, too.  And I’m not!  I’m not a naughty duck!

            And one more thing.  I hear it all the time, and it’s true.  The novelty of the Wiimote wears off.  When I first played the game, I thought getting to Force push people with the nunchuck and getting to swing the lightsaber with the Wiimote was pretty cool.  It was the redeeming feature of the game.  And then, like many others before me, it got boring.  The Wii was pretty new to me when I first played this game, so getting to play in a different way was pretty great.  But, now that I’m used to it, I’m not satisfied to play a mediocre game just because the controls are unique.  And it doesn’t help that I’m sick of the motion controls to begin with.  I need buttons again.  Just trying to control the camera was a pain (it always faces your character’s back, so if you want to see something, you must face him that way and wait for the camera to take its sweet time to swivel around on its own).  I don’t know if the other versions of the game have buttons to control the camera, but this one does not, and the Wii controllers really have no possible way to control a camera anyway, the way they are set up.  I want buttons again!  Buttons!

            So I learned an important lesson with this game.  Motion controls can’t redeem a game.  The game must be good to begin with.  Of course, we all knew this, but this game illustrated it for me.  I no longer find the game worth keeping because of the different controls, as such controls are no longer new and fun.  Now they’re annoying, which further adds to the disappointment of this game.  It’s certainly not all bad.  The story’s pretty decent, and there is a nice variety of moves, even if I can’t possibly remember all those button combinations.  But, yeah, controlling a lightsaber with a silly wand you swing around doesn’t stay fun for long.  We pretty much all know that by now, as most who were going to play the Wii have already done so by now.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet that a lot of people, just like me, are now getting rid of Wii games they thought were great when the Wii was new, but now realize are not worth keeping.  “The Force Unleashed”, you’re being added to the get-the-heck-out-of-my-house pile.  The money GameStop will give me for it (I hope they still take Wii games….) will go towards a game controlled with buttons.  Oh, lovely buttons.

The Duck Unleashed

The Duck’s Thoughts on Video Games

Sana requested a post in which I tell you guys about what I like in video games and what’s not my cup of tea.  Sounds fun.  Thanks for the idea!  Here I go!

THE GOOD

            The things I like are pretty obvious.  Of course, a game must be fun, but what makes some games stand out from others is when they have a good story and good characters.  These are pretty important.  That’s why I love games from the Kingdom Hearts and Jak and Daxter series so much.  Good stories, awesome characters.  And lots of fun.  The cut scenes are often as much fun as the game.  They get a very special place in my heart.  Like a nice apartment.  With a view.  Because I can’t fit houses in my heart.  I still, of course, like games that don’t have good plots, or plots at all, such as those from the Mario or Donkey Kong series because they are still fun and creative.  They are just not quite as special to me.  But, still special.  They get a slightly less nice apartment in my heart.

            Good graphics and music are always nice, but not super important.  Good, or at least, not bad dialogue helps, too.  Other things that make me happy are when you have a lot of places to explore, items to collect, new moves to learn, which is why I like Metroid games better than Halo, even though both are awesome.  In Metroid, you get upgraded weapons and moves as you play and can collect things to upgrade your health and missile capacity.  Plus, there are many places to explore.  Unique ideas are fun, too.  In “Okami”, for example, you drew things with a brush, which was neat.

            I also like when you can save often enough, don’t have to redo a lot when you die, and can skip cut scenes.  “Kingdom Hearts”, for example, made you rewatch cut scenes, and it was annoying.  Square Enix must have realized how annoying it was because you get to skip them now.  I also like when games are a challenge, but not ridiculous.  I hate absurdly hard games.

            Specifically, my favorite games are platformers, RPG’s, and other such things with action or exploring or whatever.

THE BAD

            Now for the things I hate.  These are the things that will cause me to sell or not even buy a game.  One is dirtiness.  Some games think that because they’re rated M, they need to have as many bad things as they’re allowed.  When I was looking at new games for the XBox 360, the only games that looked good were rated M, so I checked the back, and they had things I didn’t want.  So I’m not even going to try them.  What’s nice about the Halo series is all they have is violence and a little bit of swearing.  Being rated M, they could have more, but there is no dirty things and minimal swearing.  In fact, “Halo: Reach” doesn’t even have swearing.  I’m proud of you, Bungie.  On the other end of the spectrum, I don’t like super corny games.  I can only handle a small amount of corn.

            I was also kept from getting a game because I heard it had a limited number of saves.  That would be so annoying.  I also hate it in games when you can’t save at all.

            I also hate bad controls, like when the camera won’t obey you or you can’t control it at all, and you often die just because you can’t see where you’re going.  I also hate that “Sonic and the Secret Rings” is only hard because the controls are so bad.  They tried something new, where Sonic is always moving, and you tilt the Wii remote left or right to go left or right, forward to speed up, and back to slow down.  I think you can make Sonic stop, but it’s hard.  I feel like I have very little control over him.  It’s very aggravating.

            This next thing is tolerable or horrible, depending on what game it is.  I don’t like when games have battles start randomly.  Most games, you can see the enemies and choose if you want to fight.  In games like “Final Fantasy X” and “Quest 64”, you never know when a battle may start because you can’t see any enemies.  You’re just walking, and then suddenly you have to fight things and can’t easily get away.  In the former game, though, it’s a good game so it doesn’t bother me as much, but the latter is already not a great game, and this is pretty much the worst part of it.

            Also, like I said, I hate super hard games.  I really hate them.  It’s bad enough that the final bosses of “Vexx” and “Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep” are insane, but when a whole game is a chore…  No way.  I also hate having to do stupid things or you can’t move on, such as beating the super annoying “Donkey Kong Arcade” in “Donkey Kong 64” not once, but twice, in order to get a necessary item.  I also hate when you must fight zillions of enemies or when they take super long to kill.  All this fuels the duck’s feathery rage.

            The types of games I dislike are sports, really simple games like pinball or Pacman, and fighting games that aren’t “Super Smash Brothers” and racing games other than “Jak X” or “F-Zero”.

THE UGLY

            And now, the things that simply disappoint me.  For one thing, when things don’t feel complete.  In the 2006 version of “Sonic the Hedgehog”, it was a good game, but they left some things unfinished.  For example, things would fall in the water without a splash.  Such a simple thing to fix.  I felt like they sold the game before they were completely done with it.

            I am also disappointed by bad graphics and bad music, but that’s not a big deal.  I am saddened when games are too short, especially good ones.

            I also don’t like bad dialogue and skimpy outfits.  Too skimpy, and this nears the Bad.  I also don’t like when you get to the end of the game and aren’t allowed to return to previous areas, like in “Okami” and “Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier”.  I don’t mind when it’s a kind of game where there’s nothing to collect, but in these, there is, and I couldn’t go back for what I missed.

            I also don’t like when they think they’re too cool.  I’m talking to you, Sonic.  And the characters in “Jak X”.  I don’t think they were as obnoxious in the previous games….

            Well, there you go.

An Opinionated Duck