The best thing about being born in the early 80s--aside from all the street cred--is that I completely missed out on the Star Wars phenomenon, which has kep both my childhood and my nostalgia glands safe from a franchise that's been circling the drain for over 20 years. If I had been born a decade earlier, I'd probably go nuts over anything George Lucas farted out of his diseased mind; but, growing up in the decade that I did, I was aware of Spaceballs before I was aware of Star Wars--and to this day, Mel Brooks' parody remains the superior product. Let's not talk about the cartoon.
It appears that The Escapist's Yahtzee may be of the same persuasion, what with this week's Zero Punctuation being a total evisceration of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. While I'm not quite sure how he feels about Spaceballs, there's one thing we definitely agree on: the new trilogy was crap, and should be regarded as such. TFU may do a fine job of connecting the old trilogy to the new one, but is this what we really want? Shouldn't Episodes 1-3 be forgotten by the world until they become nostalgia for the Star Wars fans who were youngins during the late 90s/early 00s?
Don't laugh; in 10 years, countless 30 year-old men will be paying big bucks for double-sided lightsabers on eBay.
I'll admit that I didn't play the version of the game that Yahtzee did (Wii), but he makes a claim in his review that the PS3/360 version seems superior. From the sound of things, it is superior; but in the same way that Episode 2 was better than Episode 1. I downloaded the 360 TFU demo and played it for about 10 minutes before I experienced the ennui that accompanies any Star Wars product; it was competent, but really nothing more than a swimmy physics engine with a Star Wars skin wrapped around it. Half Life 2 ostensibly built an entire game based around a physics engine four years ago, and managed to make it not rely entirely on falling crates and gravity gun hijinks.
What, exactly, do we need to save Star Wars as a gaming franchise?
Related Links:
Screen Test: Star Wars – The Force Unleashed
Star Wars, Lucasarts, Bioware: You’re Doing It Wrong.
Why Wasn’t The Clone Wars A Video Game?