I thought the Force Unleashed (Wii) was broken.
By Meowayne 15 Comments
Played the Wii-version of "Force Unleashed" today.
And boy, was I surprised. I played the game on the 360, thinking it fun but forgettable (waste of a great art direction), but never touched the Wii version, because all I heard of it (as ususal) was about the bad graphics and (as usual) some control issues. With my impressions from the 360 gameplay, I could very well imagine a bad port control-wise, so that's how that game became fixed in my head. Until today.
I didn't play for a very long time (30 min perhaps), but in all honesty, this game benefits tremendously from the Wii controls; I would put it on par with RE4 in terms of "how much more fun this is on the Wii", maybe higher.
Now I am one of the Wii guys on this board, and I enjoy the console, but at the same time I am one of those that have always (and continue to) mourn the way "Motion Control" turned out to be, and I still harbour a lot of disappointment over the hardware Nintendo shipped and what most games do with it. There are many games on the console I like very much, but only a handful that I'd say really are awesome because of the controls.
The apprentice usually controls the force with his left and the lightsaber with his right hand and so do you. Slashing right, left, up, down or lunging forward are all properly recognized by the motion of your right hand; lightsaber combos are very entertaining that way. Wanna throw the lightsaber? Then throw the lightsaber. Wanna block? Then just hold the Wiimote sideways in front of your character. Wanna just frantically waggle the Wiimote when enemies come close? That also works, but don't expect to fare very well, or do combos.
Pushing with your left hand does a force punch. The big "Z" button initiates the grab and holding items/enemies in the air. Maneuvering them around in this position is where some of the criticism came in, I think: The altitude is controlled with the vertical angle of the nunchuck, which works great - But the Position is changed with the analogue stick. That's slightly irritating, and it makes you wonder why they didn't use the Nunchucks horizontal angle for left/right maneuvering.
This takes getting used to, but it still feels great. Especially combined with throwing, lightsaber throwing, force lightning (C-Button), slicing and all the other violent stuff that makes this game fun on all platforms. Only in this version, you're doing the stuff physically, and it works incredibly well (including the swordfighting!), making the virtual use of the force as satisfying and close-to-life as never before.
Then there's the Quick-Time-Events. While still QTEs, what you're doing is much closer to what is shown on-screen, and it's not just moving the right hand at the right time or as fast as possible (as it is often in Wii games), but doing the right motions in the right angles, most of the time mimicking what the Apprentice is doing with his right/left hand during the Quick-Time-Event sequences. It's really, really cool.
Now the game still looks very bad. As in, very bad. Even by PS2 standards, the game looks pretty bad. Considering what should be possible even with the Gamecube-hardware alone, looking at the PS2/Wii-Version of "The Force Unleashed" is very depressing. If you cannot get over that fact, the controls most probably won't do it for you, either.
But damn, controlling the force and the lightsaber this way is awesome. I must've looked very silly, coming at the game with a very negative attitude and than grinning from one ear to the other just because I could physically throw stormtroopers around.
I just saw that the Wii version actually got a higher score on both metacritic and gamerankings than the PS3/360 versions. I thought it was scored waay lower. Where did that impression come from?
Yeah well. I guess you're all long over that game anyways and I'm just late to the party. I could've borrowed the 360 version from a friend of mine whenever I wanted, but I never felt like playing more of the game. But the Wii version I will most probably get back to.
You should try it.