Yearly Archives: 2014

Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II – LucasArts – 360

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A bit of an almost-retro game review here today. On the eve of 2015, I’ve just played 2010’s Force Unleashed II, which is of course the sequel to 2008’s Force Unleashed. I’ve had this game sitting in my backlog for a couple of years (at least) now. On checking my receipts, I see I bought it in June 2011, for 16 quid, which would have been around AU$22 or so at the time. So not too bad a price. One might wonder why the first thing I’m looking at is the price – the reason for that (aside from it being in the invoice with the date) is because I was wondering if I got ripped off or not. Seeing that I paid what amounts to AU bargain bin prices (typically AU$20 or less) I’m ok with it.

I’m going to skip recapping the story in any detail, as it’s a convoluted and uninteresting mess featuring the emo clone of Starkiller from the first game looking for his girlfriend across the galaxy and whining more than Anakin and Luke combined. (Or is she his ex if she was his original’s girlfriend?) Whatever. And to quote my television’s sport-channel advertisement about 20 seconds ago “Such drama, such terrible, terrible drama.” (How’s that for serendipity?) The story as it matters is that you have lightsabers and force powers and motherfuckers are standing in front of you.

The game’s highlight: Carving up Stormtroopers with lightsabers in the rain. I’m not being ironic.

The thing about FU2 (heh) is that it’s a real mixed bag. The 3rd person gameplay is pretty bog-standard. The graphics look good (a friend who arrived at one point remarked that it looked like a movie at the point I was in), and the cutscenes are actually reasonably well done, with those featuring space battles and the like being pretty impressive indeed. The variety of Force Powers available to you pretty much from the get go do a good job of making you feel powerful – in fact your character is pretty incredibly overpowered compared to anyone in any of the films. Still, the powers are pretty satisfying to use, and despite the lack of challenge, the quality of the visuals helps immensely somehow.

The bad – well, there’s only like 4 levels in the game. Five if you count the return to the opening one. And back down to 4 if you don’t count the 2-minute interval to Dagobah, that seems mostly like it was put there so they could feature Yoda on the back of the case. Kamino looks pretty good in its exteriors, and they do a good job with the atmospheric effects/rain. The ship levels are ok, but very very samey, and the one level that’s not blue-grey is the reddish-brown Not-Geonosis/Tattooine level, which is at least a bit more varied, while being incredibly derivative of both planets and featuring a really tedious and ridiculous boss battle ripped off from/inspired by the God of War series that inspired so much of the poorer parts of FU2.

The number of enemies seems to have decreased from FU1, the length of the game has definitely decreased from FU1, the number of mini-boss types seems to have decreased from FU1, and (I think) the variety of (painful) quicktime event boss kill methods for those mini-bosses seems to have dropped as well – pretty much down to one canned animation for each. Speaking of painful quicktime, the final battle is an exemplar of painful and tedious quicktime events interspersed with bad and tedious gameplay. In order to get to that final boss fight, you need to play through two (!) sets of near-identical incredibly tedious and boring platforming levels.

Quick! It’s Time for a quicktime event on the Red-Brown Level

My initial plan was to play through it twice – a second time to pick up the holocrons for upgrades and such that I missed the first time around. Sadly, the end game was so unsatisfying that I’m simply not going to bother. I played through the Endor DLC a couple of hours ago, and while the change of scenery was very welcome (green!) – it was incredibly short and linear, and featured a final boss fight that was only “better” than the main game’s final fight in that it was shorter (and easier – so it was over faster!) I bought the DLC a couple of years ago for either free or next to nothing. Not sure if it’s still there for that price. Really, though – the DLC should have been included in the base game for all the value that either of them have.

The game also features a bunch of unlockable costumes, some you get as you play through the story, some you get if you have a FU1 save on your console, and some seem to be unlocked either from the shitty challenge modes or from cheat codes. I played through using a few different costumes, and a chunk of the mid-game as Obi-Wan and the final chunk of the game as Boba Fett. The challenge modes unlock additional lightsaber crystals, but I doubt I’ll ever be arsed doing those after the tedious test I did.

But is it Fun?

Well, sad as it is to admit it, I still had fun with this game. Given that it cost as much as a couple of lunches, and lasted a little bit longer than a couple of lunches (I finished it in three short sittings, four if you count the DLC). It would be fair to say that I enjoyed it mostly because slicing Stormtroopers up with lightsabers and force lightning (and making them fight one another with mind trick) is fun, despite the many, many other shortcomings in the game. There were enough off-putting things about it that I’m unlikely to play through it again to max out the powers and achievement whore, but it’s possible that I will. If I do, it speaks to the fun in the aforementioned slaughter combined with the short length of the game.

It’s not what I could call a good game, but it’s far from the worst game with this licence slapped onto it. Make no mistake, I’d have much preferred a longer, better game with less tedium in the boss fights, more variety in enemies and locales. But as a deep bargain bin discounted way to spend a few hours slicing up and electrocuting Sturmtruppen, it’s kinda-sorta recommendable, if you’re a bit of a Star Wars tragic. And apparently, this makes me one of those too?

Verdict: Rent it – or buy it only from the deep discount bargain bin – and only if you’re a big SW fan. Otherwise skip it.

Kickstarter Experiences: Part 4 – 21 months on!

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I haven’t done any KS updates for quite awhile. Mostly because I feel like they turn me into a raging angry arsehole when I look at just how much is owed me by various incompetent businesses and/or suppliers. I’ll do this one as I’ve had a couple of requests on them now.

From oldest to most recent:

Kings of War (Mantic Games): Delivered everything in the end. Their quality control was, frankly, awful. Bait-and-switch on things like the troll sculpts, which I’d gone in big on based on the concept art. Lots of mispacks and miscasts. More than a few shitty sculpts. The Plastic Men-at-Arms are particularly notorious. In the end I swapped out my trolls for way too many Ogres, which are still pretty average sculpts for anyone who wants to build an army with (I’ve talked about them a few times in my Ogre Army building posts). So now I don’t have a troll army, and have a pile of Ogres (way more than I’ll even use) in a box. Yay.

Sedition Wars (McVey Studios): Shitty game with bad rules. Nicely sculpted figures in a sub-par material (restic!) for the first wave. Shitty sculpts in restic for the second wave. Ended up destroying many of them in exchange for a partial refund from CMON in the end. Apparently there are now better rules somewhere on the net. Maybe somewhere on the McVey website. McVey and CMoN passively blamed one another for all of the problems, but McVey’s shit-awful communication has resulted in me not willing to buy anything from his company again. I hope he sticks to boutique resins from here on out. If he tries to go the board game route again I wouldn’t be upset if he went out of business after the line of bullshit he fed us and how much (of my) money essentially got flushed down the toilet.

Reaper Bones 1: Turned out to be a great deal, especially with the shipping. Their communication turned out to be worse than nothing once shipping started, and RoW backers got shunted to the back of the queue, despite all of their previous promises on shipping. ReaperBryan tried to do what he could, but whoever is actually in charge decided that communicating with their backers wasn’t really important. Still. A lot of models for cheap.

Stonehaven Miniatures Dwarven Adventurers: A solid deal, overall a bunch of nice miniatures, and genuinely nice people to deal with. Good communication and delivered on time (or close enough to it that I don’t remember them being late!)

Red Box Games KS1: This one has been well documented, I’m sure. Trollforged was the producer. It seems that poor communication between the two, poor quality checking of figures on both sides, and a rogue employee trying to defend Trollforged (but naturally stirring up even more shit) all led to this becoming a massive clusterfuck with pledges being delivered incredibly late. I got my figures in the end, but still haven’t QAed them to this day, since the whole thing turned me off bigtime. And no, Sky, I’m not fucking giving them to you for free.

Dreamforge Leviathans (Dreamforge Games): still owes me a shitload of stuff and haven’t shipped anything since September last year – so over a full year since they shipped anything. Imperial Guard? Well, with my declining interest in 40k, they’re just models at this point. Wargames Factory make quality stuff, but they’re completely fucking incompetent in getting anything out on any kind of timeframe. Result is any KS getting stuff by WGF is an automatic no-go for me. Mark tries to update every so often with information on new shipping dates from WGF, but it always turns out to be bullshit that they’ve fed him. WGF are also inflexible in terms of part-shipping stuff for backers, offering some sort of coupon etc to make up for the inordinate delays or anything else.  It’s become a bit of a meme with the guys I talk to about it. China says No.

Wargames Factory customer service.

Dreadball Season 1 (Mantic): Got all my stuff in the end, over 2 waves. Got some of it after retail, but that’s par for the course, apparently. Apparently it’s a very good game. Unfortunately, I spent an awful lot of money on what turned out to be shitty figures made of restic garbage, which basically destroyed all interest I have of ever playing it. (When I look at it, it just makes me want to play proper Blood Bowl instead). Shelf fodder.

Bombshell Babes (Bombshell Miniatures): Got the figures. They were sub-par. My postcard also got fucked up since they used the cheapest packaging possible (stuff all the metal models into one zip-lock bag, then stuff that tightly into a padded envelope with no protection whatsoever for the postcards. One was broken. Then send internationally. Then don’t reply to my email that was actually quite polite by anyone’s standards. That’s the kind of customer service that $150+ gets you from Pat Keith, apparently.

Judge Dredd Miniatures (Mongoose Games): Figures still trickling in every so often 2 years after the fulfilment date. Sculpt quality varies, though Matt is personable when fixing up mispacks, etc.

Project Eternity (Videogame): No idea. I kinda lost interest and forgot about this one. I’d track it down, but I find I don’t care much, and being a videogame it’s probably another 2 years off or asking for “founders packs” or some other bullshit. I guess I should track it down sometime.

Assimilation Alien Host (Trollforged): 18 months late. He’s started to deliver on some stuff in the last few months, but no doubt it’ll be another 4-6 months before he gets up to Queen level, and even then it’ll take him months to fulfil those. My lack of interest in new 40k makes them probably not going to be a Tyranid Army anymore, so they’ll end up being some sort of greeblies. The worm-things are mostly nice, but the humanoids are a big disappointment after the excellent concept art.

Imbrian Arts: Boy I dodged a bullet with this one. Jody is a talented sculptor, but seems to be a terrible business owner, and possibly a terrible human being as well. I’m sure he’s got his “you can’t rush art” sycophants, but he really hasn’t shown any responsibility or acted like an adult to the people who gave him $63 thousand dollars. (He hasn’t updated for 4 months, again). 21 months overdue. He tried to start up another game with alternate figures while claiming that those figures weren’t Imbrian Arts figures since they belonged to another game (of his). Apparently he decided to redefine IA as a line, rather than his brand/company. He’s got an endless series of excuses, and while I have no financial loss to this shitheel, I would like to say Fuck that Piece of Shit right in his ear. Fuck you, Jody! And to anyone who feels like defending him – fuck you, too! 🙂

Hell Dorado (Kai Nesbit): This one was – as usual – a number of months late. There was talk about an illustrator having broken his hand, but apparently there’s also some connection to Ninja Division/Soda Pop Games, which no doubt had some connection to this one becoming clusterfucked. The French Language version still hasn’t fully shipped due to some kind of chain of events that I tuned out of months ago now. I bought a bunch of extra HD figures to play this with when it looked like delivering vaguely on time (and I had some free time off work to learn and play it in!), but as with many other KS, when it finally arrived, it was during a busy time at work, and now it’s all in a box somewhere. Figures do look nice, though.

Zombicide Season 2: Shipping in Wave 1 was an absolute clusterfuck. When they finally shipped my stuff, more than half of my stuff was missing. Their CS was worse than useless. In the end I was lucky enough to have a fellow forum member kindly help me out with a personal contact, and my missing stuff got delivered. Wave 2 simply arrived on time, complete, and with no drama. Good stuff. The game is great, as well.

Loka (Mantic Games): I only backed for the “River Horse” model, as a bit of support. It was, of course, miscast (the halves of the metal model would not fit together properly). I got in contact with Mantic and asked for just the two pieces – and please make sure they fit together properly. They sent me: Another full model, with the exact same miscast. Into a tub with the first one it went, along with the knowledge that no-one should back Mantic for multipart metal models, either.

DeadZone (Mantic Games): Mantic were good in letting me add a lot to the second survey. Unfortunately they forgot to send me all of the rulebooks, and the models turned out to have the same quality control that we can expect from Mantic’s restic offerings, so instead of spending my week and a bit off work learning to play DeadZone, I almost set the fucking box on fire, and did other things instead while the whole lot sits in a couple of boxes. Wave 3 is of course, horribly delayed at this point in time, but they’re apparently going to start shipping it in December. So I’ll most likely see mine in January, if I’m lucky. Apparently it’s a good game. I dunno. I’ll find out for myself sometime next year when I can possibly make myself give enough of a shit to find out.

Secret Weapon Miniatures: Tablescapes: I actually got my SWM stuff a week and a bit ago (how late? 6 months? a year?), though it’s the middle of a super busy time at work right now, so I haven’t even had the time/inclination to look at them in any kind of detail, and sadly won’t have the time to work on then until the mid-end of December. With the spacers that at least one of the delays were related to not being a thing anymore – until maybe after? – I’m not sure about painting them since trying to store the painted tiles without causing severe damage to them is going to be a real bitch. Remember what I said about Wargames Factory earlier? Yeah.

Robotech RPG Tactics (Palladium Books): “To help ensure realistic deadlines, we have completed the vast majority of our development before launching the Kickstarter. Sculpts for the game pieces are almost entirely complete. The rulebook and game components are deep in development and will be ready for layout soon. Our manufacturers are also ready and have reserved factory time for the project. This means that as soon as the project is funded, we can lock down a timeline with our manufacturers to get the game produced.” Fulfilment date was December 2013. I Understand that some people have started to receive part of their first wave items. Of course, the figures are awful, too many pieces, and no dates projected for Waves 2 or 3… (waves only became a thing around February 2014, as I recall)

 

More in the next update.

And in response to the obvious reply/comments about backing KS being a risk, etc.

You’re (largely) correct. KS at this stage isn’t for me. Despite a few of the projects above having been backed before “lolkickstarter – expect it 6 or 12 months late at minimum” was really a thing – so blaming backers for being pissed off at multi-year delays because the creators turn out to be in competent in various ways isn’t exactly kosher. Still, when we get up to things like Palladium and Raging Heroes, I think Victim Blaming of the backers is pretty poor form. While companies like SWM and DFG got fucked around royally by their Chinese suppliers, companies that have outright lied to us in order to secure funding deserve the derision that they receive. I’ll talk a little about some of my “$1 projects” in another KS update at some point, and talk about why I pulled my pledge down to the $1 value, and/or never got back on board via pledge managers.

For the majority of things at this point – I’ve recently decided that I’m pretty much done with KS at this point. I may back rare campaigns run by those who have shown competence, or have something I really want – but for the rest of them, I’m happy to pass and just buy retail items from Perry and Warlord and a variety of other small producers and occasionally from GW and FW (and videogames) for the 2 years they’ll take to come to market.