Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Investing in a Star Wars computer game as much of a gamble as watching one of the six films; will you get ‘Empire Strikes Back’ levels of genius like ‘Knights of The Old Republic’ or ‘Tie Fighter’, or just yet another tedious cash-in like ‘The Phantom Menace’?

The hype for The Force Unleashed boded well indeed, with promises that players would take on the role of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice and travel the galaxy, wielding near-omnipotent force power as you hunt the last of the Jedi. If that doesn’t sound cool, you should probably never have started reading this review. Not long after starting the game, however, I began to get a very bad feeling about the developers’ commitment to this idea as it quickly becomes clear that your character, despite being called ‘Starkiller’, is something of a wet lettuce.

In early cut-scenes, rather than glorying in his limitless Dark Side power, we see a moody boy racked with emo guilt about the missions he undertakes for his heavy-breathing boss. This disconnects somewhat with the initial glee that the player feels as you casually fling stormtroopers and rebels into chasms, electrocute them or crush them with a slightly camp gesture. Somewhat predictably then, Starkiller is going to go on a ‘journey’ and it isn’t much of a spoiler to reveal that he doesn’t take very long to swap his red blade crystal for a nice blue one.

On the upside though, the cut-scene videos are superb, and the story they tell makes the game worth renting all by itself, creating a satisfying bridge between episodes III and IV. Sadly, the game itself is something of a chore, a task you have to carry out just to get your next fix of cinematic goodness. Starkiller’s lightsaber is more of a glowing stick, requiring several blows to kill even weak enemies, his force powers are reduced to a game of scissors, paper, stone as you find most enemies will be somewhat unconvincingly immune to one of his powers, but vulnerable to another and you never really feel any kind of danger as even an unblocked attack from an enemy force-user will cause only an insignificant speck of damage on his rapidly-regenerating life bar.

In general, this is a middle of the road offering. It’s certainly worth picking up if you’re already quite into the galaxy far, far away, but I can’t imagine it would hold much appeal otherwise.

Tom Clancy's EndWar

Its World War III and the battles are voice-activated. In Tom Clancy’s EndWar, you use your Xbox360 microphone to issue orders to your Russian, American or European troops and then sit back and watch as the action unfolds – calmly giving new commands or frantically rescinding old ones as events on the ground dictate.

Far from a mere gimmick, the voice aspect makes this game a must-have for armchair generals and control freaks everywhere. Orders are given according to a specified syntax, such as, “Unit four, attack hostile three” and after a quick five minutes teaching my Xbox ‘Northern’, I had no problems making myself understood. I felt a real sense of glee marshalling the troops and the fact that they make relevant and varied responses to your commands adds greatly to the sense of immersion. Furthermore, when your carefully laid plans inevitably fall apart, screaming “Unit seven, retreat!” and watching your brave boys attempt to run away and fight another day engenders exactly the right feelings of shame and loss.

If there’s a downside to the game, other than the fact that joining the European faction means getting bossed around by a Frenchman, it is that the armies on offer are a little too simplistic. After being spoiled by games like Red Alert and Generals with their fifty different unit types for each wildly individual faction, EndWar’s seven options repeated across three factions with nothing but a lick of paint and a comedy accent to differentiate them can feel a little underwhelming.

That said, comparing traditional ‘point&click’ strategy games with this interactive offering is a little bit apples and oranges. Whatever is lost in detail and depth is, at least initially, more than made up for by EndWar’s immediacy and immersivity.

Dragon Age: Origins

The latest RPG from Obsidian studios, the people who brought you Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR and Mass Effect, raises the bar yet again for computer game roleplaying. Dragon Age: Origins is the first part of a new sword and sorcery epic, set in a more-or-less original fantasy setting.

Eschewing the wide-open worlds presented by their RPG rivals at Bethesda, as demonstrated in titles like Fallout and Oblivion, Obsidian continue their technique of offering players a choice of several discrete locations where events will occur according to a relatively limited tree of options. I’m unsure which of these approaches makes for a superior RPG experience, certainly the myriad possibilities present in a Bethesda game can lead to crippling indecision and loss of any kind of focussed narrative, but the occasional feeling of being railroaded along a set path can also lead to frustration with Obsidian’s style. In the case of Dragon Age, however, it would seem that Obsidian are refining their plot delivery and interactivity skills – without giving away any spoilers, the level of influence the player can exert over world events is, to my knowledge, unprecedented.

One Dragon Age’s best moments occurs right at the beginning of the game when, after proceeding through the usual RPG character creation elements (race, class, stats etc), you are taken through an ‘origin story’ directly influenced by the choices made in character creation. Furthermore, your actions during this prelude can have good or bad effects on later events in the game proper. This is a masterful addition to the RPG genre and one that ought to be widely adopted. The game’s setting is a fairly familiar dark fantasy world where prospects are grim and everyone has a headache. Those who remember Warhammer won’t be in for too many surprises.

Dragon Age quickly transcends this derivative background, however, with a barrage of morally complex situations, ‘grown-up’ plot elements (as opposed to merely ‘adult’, although there is some of that too) and genuinely engaging characters.