A Nippy Day in Hell - Star Wars: Legends

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A Nippy Day in Hell

Jace_Varitek

Date: Tuesday, 14 May 13, 11:01 PM | Message # 1

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I don't want to alarm anyone, but I recently played The Force Unleashed II and actually quite enjoyed it.

Yes, they're busting out the scarves and fingerless gloves in hell today.

The story was compelling enough that I actually forgot for most of the game what a boring, one-dimensional poon that Starkiller was in the first game. The Force Unleashed II really gives it a rest with the Great Man crap from the first game. This time around, all Starkiller knows or cares about is that he's obsessively into this chick he barely remembers, and being clueless and kind of stupid suits this character a lot better than being a rebel leader. Yes, the Rebel Alliance is still annoyingly referred to in the game (more than once) as "your Alliance," referring to Starkiller, but mercifully he's barely involved in the rebellion this time and it does reasonably well without him. And I'm just going to say it: crashing that Nebulon B onto Kamino was just awesome. Undeniably so.

Don't get me wrong, the story is dumb in all the ways people say it is. The business with Yoda is uncalled for and somewhat infuriating. It's incredibly stupid that Vader is captured. But I admire how the story is told; namely, whether this character is a clone of Starkiller or is, in fact, Starkiller. It would be nice if I cared, but still, the game drops lots of hints for both possibilities, some of which you need to look closely for. Good storytelling like this is a sign of respect for the player, and in the end, it's the player who has to decide what the truth is. This is quite unlike the over-indulgent story of the first game.

I argue that the gameplay is an improvement, too. The Zeus-like Force powers continue to be, frankly, boring. But there are fewer varieties of enemies this time around, giving The Force Unleashed II some much-needed simplicity; there are stormtroopers, stormtroopers with jetpacks, stormtroopers with sniper rifles, a reasonable number of Force-trained goons and a couple of varieties of robot, and that's it. No rancors, Force-animated "junk gollums," or the many redundant and tiresome varieties of stormtrooper which I refuse to remember from the first game. That said, I do understand now why they did that; the fewer varieties of enemies in The Force Unleashed II makes them dreadfully tedious after a couple of hours of gameplay. I'm willing to endure the tedium, however, for the sake of sanity in the Star Wars canon.

Indeed, much more attention is paid to the canon this time around (anyone notice the R-41 Starchasers in the rebel fleet? An unnecessary, but nice detail, and another sign of respect for the player and Star Wars fans in particular). Cato Neimoidia is also an intriguing and imaginative choice for the game, especially since there are so maddeningly few levels. In addition to being beautifully-rendered, it's also fit nicely into the canon with in-game voice-overs that explain the recent history of the planet just in case the player wants to know. And there's wonderful attention to detail in the game's databank feature.

Setting aside the glaring and annoying problems, it's not a bad game in my opinion. Even the short length of the game doesn't really bother me; an appropriate amount of time was taken to tell this story, I think—anything else would have been unnecessary (and mind you, it already had that Yoda business in it). Then again, I only paid $10 for it unlike people who paid $50 or $60 when it came out. It's definitely not worth that much.

Jace Varitek