O Force Unleashed, Wherefore Mario?
Spent a good part of the weekend delving further into “Force Unleashed” and I’m pissed off. Sure, it’s great fun killing a jawa with one swipe of your saber, and the Force powers are terrific - particularly the lifting and hurling people at walls (can’t get enough of that). But why, oh why all the jumping?
Platform jumping is the reason why I never make it very far into Mario games. I hate platform jumping. You know what I mean - tricky little leaping feats, from cliff to cliff, up the side of a wall or across endless platforms - pointless crap you’re required to accomplish in order to proceed to the next part of the game.
In particular, I’m talking about an early level in which you’re supposed to destroy a reactor. You start in this large cylindrical chamber that has various decrepit platforms and cliffs leading up the walls. You need to reach a certain platform way up high where a huge opening has sunbeams pouring through it. (Get it? That’s where you’re supposed to go!)
To be fair, there are several ways you can get up there - you don’t necessarily have to follow a linear path in your ascent. But damn it, no matter which way I went I faced a frustrating bout of trial and error, tumbling to the ground over and over and over again. (Not me, the game character, Whatshisname Force Dude.)
I ruminated on that for a second.
I wasn’t having fun. I didn’t want to stop playing. But could I live by my own words, stop crying and just enjoy myself? (What I really wanted to do was hurt the bastard who decided that a Star Wars game needed a Super Mario element.)
I finally did make it up to that f***king ledge with the sunbeams. I won’t say how many times I tried, but I was sweaty and exhausted by the time I made that final leap and didn’t fall. Since then I haven’t come across any more platformy gameplay, but so help me, if I do … I’ll call my nephews.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I feel your pain. Now you understand why hockey was my sport of choice. It was the only legal way to channel my video-game-generated rage onto another human by way of either a hockey stick or my elbow (or both).
Even in the Force Unleased XBOX 360 demo, it must have taken me like 45 tries to figure out the stupid combo of jumping/lightsaber slashing that it took to kill the AT-ST in the Tie-Fighter assembly plant. Who knew that a Sith apprentice could throw a bunch of metal boxes at an Imperial chicken-walker to knock it silly, then jump from underneath it and literally bisect the thing like the worm you disected in 7th grade biology class? I mean, that kicks ass and all, but could they have made that any more frustrating to get to the payoff?
The point of the game is total carnage in a Star Wars environmnent, but if said carnage is impeded by funky camera angles, senseless combos, or having to jump like Mario in order to break more shit with the Force and/or the lightsaber, then it just takes the fun away. And if the game’s not fun, then it’s just too much like real life, and it makes you long for stupid games from the 1980s like Smurf! on ColecoVision or Intellivision Horse Racing, or Atari’s River Raid.