Elite Review: Star Wars the Force Unleashed (Wii)

When I got this game, I'll admit, I didn't do my research I would usually do for a game. I got it for three reasons: 1) It's Star Wars. 2) I saw some of the motion sensing capabilities and thought they were promising. and 3) My friend told me to get it. So I shelled out the 60 bucks without playing a demo, really reading too many reviews or watching videos. Let this serve as a warning for all Elite Wheelers...

Now this game isn't Jekyll and Hyde for NES terrible or anything, but it is nowhere near a good game. It is a good story, however, so let's have some background. The story takes place after Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and before Episode IV: A New Hope. Darth Vader finds a force sensitive child on one of his missions to purge the Jedi and sensing his potential takes him on as a secret apprentice. You, of course, are that secret apprentice and go around doing missions for Vader. The storyline evolves into Vader wanting to overthrow the Emperor with you at his side by inciting a rebellion, which obviously will come as a wtf moment if you've seen the movies. I won't spoil the rest of the story but you can read up on it somewhere on the internet.

The first gripe I noticed with the game was the camera. It is slow to center, meaning there are a lot of times where I'm standing there waiting for the camera turn so I can see if there's anyone in front of me. This results in me getting hit by a god damn Stormtrooper before the camera centers. I mean, fuck, I'm Darth Vader's apprentice, I should be able to kill these guys with zero effort. Which I can, if I could fucking see them. If they had added a camera centering button this game would have been 10x better. There is a lock on feature where you target one enemy, but this is useless 95% of the time as there are usually multiple people you're fighting and when you are going one on one you'd rather not have the lock on on so you could be more mobile.

Another thing this game got wrong is the linearity. The game is just mission after mission, usually you fighting through hordes of Stormtroopers or other footsoldiers then getting to the end of the level and killing a Jedi or someone else. There is literally nothing to this game other than fighting, the environments make the levels straightforward, and you can't go back to a level. It's quite frustrating and tedious.

I actually finished playing this game last night. And by finished I don't mean beat, I mean just finished. I got to the last level, on the Death Star, which ramps up the difficulty 1000%. It was late, I was tired, and I didn't really care, so I turned off my Wii. The only thing eating at me was how the story ended. So I just went online and read it. That's right. I was only playing the game for the story. When I was playing the latter levels I felt as if I was just pushing through the gameplay to get to the cutscenes. Now like I said I liked the story, and this is probably the best part of the game, but I'm not spending 60 bucks on a movie.

The one other thing that made this experience kind of enjoyable was the number of ways to kill someone. Lightsaber combos, force push, force grip, force choke, force lightning, throwing one Stormtrooper at another, tossing your lightsaber at a guy's chest, all amazing. There are certain points in the game where you need to kill a set number of baddies to pass on through the level. One of these is on a mission to Cloud City. I had one more guy to kill, and it being on Cloud City I liked force grabbing guys and throwing them off the side so they could plummet to their deaths. So I took this last monster, grabbed him, and whipped him as far as I could. He went off into the distance like an Albert Pujols homerun and turned into a speck and disappeared. I sat there for a few moments and waited for me to be able to pass this part of the level, but it told me I had to kill the last bad guy. I thought maybe I bugged the game but about 30 seconds later he died and it let me pass. Yes, I threw a guy so hard with the force it took him like a minute to land. This was the best moment of the game for me.

Multiplayer? Also not fun. Won't waste my time here. No online capability.

In the end however, a very disappointing adventure. Laborious, tedious, cumbersome, call it what you will, but I suppose it's my fault for not doing my research.

5.5/10

Elite Review: Burnout Paradise

Here's a confession: I fucking hate realism in video games. My fave sports game of all-time is still NBA Jam TE with the dunk-from-anywhere and always-on-fire cheat codes turned on. I'm crazy about shooters with unlimited ammo.

So there should be no surprise that given the choice between a real car simulator and an arcade racer I'll pick the arcade game every time (sorry, Gran Turismo).

For those not familiar with the Burnout series, it's basically a racing game where destruction of every kind is rewarded: taking out opponents during races gives you more boost (as do things like drifting around corners and taking your car off sweet jumps to do barrel rolls) and if you crash your wreck is rendered in painstakingly detailed slo-mo.

The goals of the game are simple: win events in different categories. You can straight up race, try a burning route (best time), smash as many cars off the road as possible, survive getting smashed or do a stunt run. These events take place in an open world filled with different scenery from mountain roads to congested highways.

I've loved all the games in the Burnout series and this one is probably the best so far. The gameplay is addicting - there are always new rewards waiting after every event you win - and even if you're not racing it's great just tooling around the different roads in the game.

The best part is that the original game is available right now at Future Shop for $20 as a "classic" game, and once you buy it you can download all sorts of free upgrades via XBOX Live, including a motorbike add-on. There's a lot of not free content too, and I've heard Critereon is planning on adding a whole other island to the Burnout Paradise world soon.

So if you're a fan of arcade racing games, you can't get anything better than this. I'd recommend it just so I can have some friends to race against!

Elite Review: Spore

Cpt Log: 62773.2

Here the quicky on Spore. I was excited for such a long time about this game when I first heard about it. I heard about it about a year before release. I got it the day of release. I stocked up on coke and snacks and was ready for however long it would take me to beat this game. I was bored of it within a Week.

Spore is game about creating and evolving life through several different stages beginning with Cell Stage and ending with Space Stage. I guess ending is not the right choice of word because this game will never end. Nevertheless, most will be bored with the game long before any kind of conclusion comes into the picture.I wait a long time for this game to come out and when I finally got my hands on a working copy, I felt awash with disappointment. Let us start from the beginning:

The first stage of the game is the Cell Stage. This is where you decide which planet and what type of organism you wish to create. From here on the game becomes repetitive while you wait, you eat, and you unlock various aspects that will evolve your newly created life form. The goal of this stage is to eventually develop a brain so you can progress to the next stage: Creature Stage.

In the second stage you've lost your sea legs and you'll never get them back. You are land bound from this point forward. The key word for this stage is tedious, the goal is to be either social or aggressive to other forms of life to unlock new attributes to evolve your species.....but you can also unlock those rewards for finding bone bits, so the whole process seems.....hmmmm......Tedious. Anyway, the goal in this stage is to gain DNA so you can advance to the next stage: Tribal Stage.

In the third stage, the game begins to mimic most real time strategies but on a simplistic scale. The key word for stage three is Annoying, the goal here is to socialize with the surrounding tribes by either becoming friendly, or the more fun choice, aggressive. That pretty much sums up this chapter as there isn't much to unlock....ie..clothing, buildings, weapons. Once you progress to stage four, most of your previous choices get tossed and you feel as all you've done thus far was for naught.

Let's move on to the Civilization Stage: This is the stage that most gamers will recognize as a typical RTS. Your goal is to either unite the world or conquer it, but conquering isn't much fun since the other cities are incredibly weak in comparison that this stage's key word is effortless. Even on hard. Just design some buildings, vehicles, and the land, conquer the world and move on to stage five: Space Stage.

You've finally reached the point where your creation can navigate the vacuum of space.....what is your reward? Some of the worst missions ever in any game, period. A planet is under siege and on the brink of extinction because of a global outbreak. Your mission is to eliminate a few animals to end the plague and save the world. You are not permitted to invade any other planet....the game has missed on all fronts, why put something fun in at this point? That game is open-ended, but all that means is more repetitiveness of the same tedious goals. The only positives I have for the game is the graphics and sound which were splendid, but with low replay value and a hype machine that was in full force, only to let us down, I can't rate it higher than a two.

All in all, FAIL.

2 Stars

Elite Review: NHL 3 on 3 Arcade

So I went on a demo downloading binge the other night and this was one of the trials I grabbed. It ended up being a semi-addicting experience so I grabbed the full game.

We've had some peeps over the last few nights and I think this game has been a big hit.

As the title implies it's a 3 on 3 (+ goalies) hockey game. Since it's arcade, some realism gets thrown out the window. The first thing you might notice is that the action doesn't stop from the opening "face off" (and by face off I mean everyone skating into each other trying to hit the other guy). There are no penalties (one of the more satisfying things to do is to rock the opponent's goaltender and score while he's flailing around), no icing, offsides, etc.

Hitting an opponent usually leads to them spitting out a powerup such as making your player super fast, huge etc. A personal fave of ours is Tiny Goalie which makes your opponents goalie well... tiny. But there's nothing like seeing that little guy make a stone cold save.

The thing that sets this apart from other arcade sports games however is that EA basically simplified the actual NHL games it puts out. Meaning that the controls and AI are as tight as you'd expect but in a less daunting package.

You have one game mode, Red vs. Blue, and can build your team from a bevy of superstars. They are all classified as "Fast" "All Around" and "Strong" which is similar to "Skinny Guy", "Normal Guy" and "Fat Guy" from the IceHockey NES game.

If you're looking for a good pickup and play party game for the 360 that actually has some depth, hook it up.

Elite Review: Dead Space

So I recently finished Dead Space on the 360. It was a really fun game. Keep in mind though that I'm a fan of third person shooters, especially of the survival variety.

I had waited to play this game on an HD TV since the graphics are top notch and I'm glad I did. The controls were tight. The difiiculty was a good balance too. I ran into fights that I needed a few tries to beat. I hate when I can blast through a game without really dying. The mix of enemy classes and weaponry gave the fights a nice strategic bent. Especially in the ammo usage department.

The game reminded me most of Resident Evil 4 in terms of gameplay. There is a store scattered around to upgrade stuff. There are also benches here and there to upgrade equipment and I really liked the upgrade system.

The main difference between this and RE4 was in the fighting. Rather than going for headshots the idea is to shoot off the limbs of your enemies. You can also move while shooting.

The other big difference is having two special abilites at your disposal: Stasis, which slows things (like enemies) down and Kinesis which can pick things up from a distance and hurl them. You'll use both to solve enviromental puzzles and during fights. You can use Kinesis to pick up enemy body parts that have been blown off and shoot them at other enemies to preserve ammo. Honestly though, I rarely did that other than a boss encounter.

Conclusion: Great graphics, tight controls, fun story. Little replay value. I'm always up for trading this one.

Grade: A