Bad As I Want To Be

Last week I finished up my romp through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and I thoroughly enjoyed the game, as I mentioned on the latest Call Of Podcast. It's the type of game where you can see all of the seams, the load times in the menus are inexcusable, and it's probably a bit short for some, but it's cool all the same.  It has its one trick, and it does it well.  Even the QTE's, which I normally despise, were ok because they were so forgiving, and just required one button press, rather than the "test of strength" variety in some games.  I even played one of the bonus campaign levels (I have the special edition), the Jedi Temple, and enjoyed the cool fight at the end of that one.  One gripe I have though, is with the dark side (non-canon) ending.  It was just nowhere near as cool as it should have been, to set up Starkiller's further dark side missions post-game (the other two bonus campaign levels, Hoth and Tatooine).  I wonder if the sequel will be any good.

The biggest story for this blog update is that I finally started inFamous, which has been sitting on my shelf for probably a year, now.  I've gone from platforming and shooting lightning in Galaxy and SW:TFU to doing both at the same time in this game.  I mentioned being kind of "meh" about it on the podcast, and after putting in a few more hours, I'm starting to like it a little more.  I'm being as comically evil as I can possibly be.  I push people around with my force electric powers just for fun, and if I'm given the choice to help some people or do something rude and selfish, I'll go the latter rout, with total disregard and contempt for the citizens of Genericity (that's not it's real name, but it'll do).  In a way, I'm projecting my own jaded, seen-it-all gamer disdain into Cole, who is a perfect conduit for it, since he's kind of a cock, himself.  I want to see if willing him to be as evil as possible will actually make him into a bad guy, or if he'll wuss out and have a change of heart at the end.  More games need to let you be the bad guy, and actually be a bad guy.  Like, reprehensible.

The game does an odd thing where it sends you into the sewers to get through these very straight-forward platformy sections, only they're super duper easy; because Cole tends to suction onto whatever surface is nearby, it feels like a three-year-old could blow through those sections.  I would actually appreciate a little more of a challenge there, something more akin to the jumping puzzles in a Prince of Persia game.  I do like Cole's Spider-Man act out in the open city, though.  It makes getting to the rooftops a lot easier and pretty effortless.  I also like his power line grind ability.  That's just fun.  The electric scatter grenades and the gound pound thing are cool, as well.  Now that I think about it, Cole's powers have a lot in common with Starkiller's.

Apart from those two main things, I made just a little progress in The Witcher, moving into Chapter II.  This is going to be a pretty long game. It's very good so far, though.  I played a little more Bad Company 2 with Esteban after recording the podcast this weekend.  I think it's still my favorite multiplayer shooter.  I also went back to Super Mario Galaxy and got my star count up to 78 before shelving that game for a while to return to Monster Hunter Tri on on the Wii.  I got in one good hunt online, taking down a Qurupeco with one other player, and getting my Hunter Rank to level 6.  There's a lot left to do in that game, yet.