Unbearably HoT

If you ever bothered reading the “Why” section of Unbearably HoT, you probably know that I created this blog for a very specific purpose, and since then, we’ve seen a slew of great sites with similar drive emerge. I’ve incorporated a few posts about Writing 101 and my engagement, but beyond that, I’ve made a strident effort to stay focused on my original intent: providing information and perspective from a feral druid’s competitive raiding POV. Thus, there are very few things that will derail the druidstravaganza—except for THIS. 

 

That’s right—The Force Unleashed demo was out yesterday for downloading purposes on XBOX Live, and you can bet your ass that I played it as soon as I got home from work. I do play games (and have a life, surprisingly) beyond the scope of WoW, but there are very few that I’ve looked forward to with as much youthful exuberance as this one. Earlier this year, I wrote an article for another website detailing how the game was presented and what we could expect, and I’d like to share it with you before I go ahead and briefly review the demo. 

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Lock Consoles in Attack Position: Looking Forward to The Force Unleashed

There’s a certain sense of inevitability waiting at the end of the corridor. The young man’s parade boots echo sternly on the grated floor as he strides purposefully toward the blast doors. After a theatrical pause, the blast doors fly open and the snap-hiss of a lightsaber ignites the air with a sharp tang of ozone. With a nod, the TIE fighters in the hangar swerve into motion and systematically crush the scrambling stormtroopers clinging to each other for dear life. I’ve dreamed of this before.

Since early childhood I’ve been compelled by the darting lasers of interstellar battle juxtaposed with the serene mysticism of the Force–and I’m certainly not the only one. LucasArts has created a veritable empire, no pun intended, from the interest garnered from a simple desert farm boy’s destiny. Obviously the screaming TIE fighters, Mandalorian armor, wookiees, wry robots and promise of planetary destruction helped too, but since the spawn of Star Wars in the late seventies, we’ve seen three more (admittedly lukewarm) movies, PEZ dispensers, action figures, bed sheets, lunch boxes, over a hundred books, Legos and, more pertinent to this discussion, over seventy five video game titles.

I’m entirely stymied attempting to produce another franchise that has spawned as much collective hype and merchandise as Star Wars has–and I am totally a part of it. I have admittedly read almost all the expanded universe books, dressed up as Obi Wan Kenobi on one particular occasion, played both Rebel Assault 1 and II and TIE Fighter, obsessed over a mint condition Boba Fett action figure and own a lightsaber replica. So perhaps one can thus understand the intense anticipation I feel when looking toward a title like Force Unleashed that promises to trump the Force experience like “never before”.

After cleaning up the scratches on the film, fleshing out a few previously impossible to shoot scenes and completely upgrading the original trilogy to digital media, the next logical progression seems to be blowing the gaming industry out of the water. I haven’t missed any of the previous Star Wars titles, though I haven’t quite been sucked in. Most recently, Star Wars Galaxies emerged at a point in time when I was focusing exclusively on studies, Knights of the Old Republic was unplayable on a Macintosh computer, and Battlefront seemed best experienced when slightly under the influence with a group of friends. Force Unleashed, however, promises a fulfilling story line with an extraordinarily high level of interaction with the environment.

The player assumes the role of Darth Vader’s thus-far anonymous apprentice, a serious business young man with a penchant for stylish lightsaber handling. Yes, I was checking out his sword. The game aims to fill the gap between the third movie and the fourth at a point in time when Darth Vader sought to systematically destroy all Jedi in the galaxy. You, as the player, control his wayward apprentice as he hacks, Force throttles, and powers his way on a path toward self-realization, likely dismembering more than a few original characters on the way. Unfortunately, decent story line doesn’t make a game anymore.

In a world of “next generation” gaming where graphics and physics engines are being pushed to the extreme on new platforms like XBOX 360 and the ill-fated Playstation 3, a new title needs to look as good as it reads. LucasArts, however, was up for the task. To create Force Unleashed, LucasArts partnered with NaturalMotion (famous for Dynamic Motion Synthesis technology) for a chance to integrate “euphoria technology” with their Force experience. This new engine makes full use of the processing power of the newer platforms, essentially simulating real nervous-system responses for humanoid characters. What does this mean? Each play through will be a dramatically different experience; you have no real way of predicting how a foe will react. In a single scenario, a stormtrooper might A) run B) duck behind a stack of crates C) call for help or D) scramble to hold on to anything within his reach as he’s levitated. The entire idea is that game A.I. will function as a dynamic entity to interact with, which, of course, moves games away from the previous learn-the-encounter-and-move-on strategies.

Clever stormtroopers, however, weren’t enough to get LucasArts excited. In addition to the aforementioned A.I. changes, LucasArts teamed up with Pixelux Entertainment to take advantage of the physics engine they developed called Digital Molecular Matter, or, DMM. In most normal video games, items do not break, bend or stretch the same way they would in real life; this lends itself for an unrealistic and occasionally cartoony experience. DMM relies on Finite Element Analysis (FEA), a structural mechanics technique that assigns certain numeric values to physical elements–engineers might use it in a computer simulation to predict how steel girders will react under stress. Developers establish set values for each physical item in the game and, miraculously, the simulation engine translates those numerical values (I can only imagine how much calculus this requires) into real-world actions. Essentially, glass shatters like real glass, wood splinters, and rubberized items retain the same sort of elasticity as you might find in a rubber band.

Both of these systems will run simultaneously with the Havok physics engine, responsible for allowing realistic interaction between people and objects and made famous for developing ragdoll physics.

LucasArts seems to be giving players a chance to embark on an immersion journey through the Force, encouraging them to embrace the Dark Side and later, seek redemption. While Force Unleashed will be available on every platform under the sun, it’s pertinent to note that Euphoria technology and DMM will not be available on consoles such as the Wii or Playstation 2. Before I hear a collective groan from all the folks who haven’t gotten their $600 incentive check from the government yet, take heart: Force Unleashed will include a variety of extras on what are considered nonstandard consoles. This may include taking part in the original Jedi Trials or (my favorite) dueling your friends with motion sensitive lightsabers via Wii remote.

Will the play actually live up to the hype? I’m banking on it, and I’m trusting in LucasArts’ ability to deliver surprising and groundbreaking new content. I’m slightly disappointed that I’ll be missing out on all the “original content” available in the PSP, PS2, DS and Wii versions of the game (which, incidentally, delayed the game from releasing in May of this year), but am content knowing that, by the time the game actually releases in September of 2008, I’ll be swinging my lightsaber on a 360.

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After waiting expectantly for the demo to download, you’re given the option of delving straight into the demo or working through a brief tutorial. Erring on the side of wisdom, I went through the Force Grip tutorial, which essentially teaches you how to levitate and manipulate objects. In layman’s terms, pick shit up, throw it through glass/people, and hope you don’t move the left joystick back at the last second and have it explode in your face. Having been playing WoW for so long, the controls initially took a few minutes to get used to, but once you’ve mastered the basics, there’s a cornucopia of Force tricks you can use to defeat your…enemies.

Eager to use my new set of Sith tools, I exited the tutorial and chose “Apprentice” mode. After an intro with Darth Vader and a few strands of vague plot strings, we’re set loose with one objective: kill the Jedi Rahm Kota and bring Vader his lightsaber. Oh, and eliminate anyone who might have seen you. Darth Vader’s apprentice is dropped off into a TIE fighter hangar, and this is where we come in. Visually, the demo is stunning: graphics haven’t looked sharper and there’s dizzying detail. Force lightning looks better than it did in the original movies, crisp and crackling; objects break, bend, and explode in a very convincing manner; stormtroopers act and react in surprising ways; and the depth of “battle” is enhanced by the visualization of your destruction: scorch marks, fires, lightsaber gouges, dead bodies. In fact, different injuries to your person are reflected by torn clothing, burns, and rivulets of blood. 

If you read my article about the graphics/physics engines, the level of visual immersion is understandable, expected even. But the point of the game, the title, the whole marketing phenomenon, is that you’re supposed to feel like you’re “unleashing the power of the Force”. Do you? After destroying an entire platoon of stormtroopers and Empire militiamen, blowing open blast doors with a “gentle” Force push, and tossing around TIE fighters, let’s just say it’s a little like giving a kid an espresso and a sledgehammer and setting them loose in a room full of Swavorski crystal. Even if you’re a retard, you can blithely hack and slash your way through most of the level by mashing buttons—but the real joy is how you stack your moves and manipulate your own environment to your advantage. 

No, seriously. The demo necessitates multiple playthroughs, if only to master the controls’ nuances. The “Options” menu offers a helpful controller diagram when you have understandable “WHAT DOES THE LT BUTTON DO!??!?!” moments, and even lists a few introductory combo moves you can try. Don’t be wary of the word “combo”, which for many brings up angry memories of getting beaten by button-mashing siblings through Street Fighter or Tekken 3. The right combination of abilities produces immensely satisfying results and doesn’t look like a canned move that happens regardless of where you’re situated in the environment.

I immediately mastered the ability to levitate objects and sling my lightsaber (a whirling beam of death) at them; this works with items AND people, much to my delight. Similarly, you can use your Force lightning power to charge your lightsaber and electrify your enemies as you slice through them. You can even just stand in front of them like a champ, using your lightsaber to neatly deflect all of their blaster bolts right back at their faces. Oftentimes, I picked up any moveable object (like a TIE fighter) and Force pushed it through an entire group of troopers, eliminating any need for hand-to-hand combat at all. 

Though you can waste a lot of time literally destroying every single room (Force ripping cables and circuit breakers from walls), the demo ends a little quicker than I would have liked—and I won’t spoil the Cloud-esque Braver Limit Break finale. But despite my utter joy, there were a few glaring issues. With the kind of visual and physical detail you’re provided with in game, it doesn’t make sense that there’s no dismemberment as your lightsaber whirlwinds through a group of people. Additionally, the targeting system is hardly as intuitive as they tried to make it. A simple corridor often has a multitude of moveable objects all within close proximity to one another, and unless you’ve somehow situated your Sith self right in front of it, the targeting function will nearly always try to lock onto the wrong target. In “Apprentice” mode this isn’t critical, but in any sort of harder difficulty (and surely later on in the game), locking onto a passerby rather than say, a landspeeder likely increases your percentage of fail. 

Do you remember how you felt after the first upswelling of Episode 4’s fanfare? The demo offers the same grandiose nostalgia, but this time you’re stepping into the movies and wielding unspeakable power. Careening through a shipwide hurricane of blaster bolts, it’s difficult not to recall the epic, landscape battlefields—and quickly realize you better get your situation under control. If the gameplay in the demo looks and feels this spectacular, my anticipation for The Force Unleashed’s promised complex environments, characters, and storylines (including what looks to be makeouts and possibly high fives) only grows stronger. New recruits will not be disappointed, and longtime fans will be invigorated. Still not convinced? I find your lack of Faith disturbing.