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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in Video Games
Mar 1, 2020 (Updated Mar 1, 2020)
Wasted Potential
So I just finished Jedi: Fallen Order and it's left me feeling confused. Not because of some complex twist or story revelation, but because on paper I should have loved every minute of this game. You take the parkour movement and sense of adventure from a game like Uncharted and you give it to a Jedi, who we follow during some of the darkest days in the Star Wars lore and what do you get?
Apparently you get something that doesn't feel like Star Wars.
I have a fair number of problems with this game, so I'm going to go ahead and list them and explain why they bothered me so much during my experience playing through Fallen Order.
First of all, when this game dropped and did pretty well commercially and critically, EA were commended in the games media for having the guts to release a single-player, story based Star Wars game with no online play. When the reviews dropped just before the game's release, this news got me really hyped as I have never been much for online gaming and much prefer story based games over anything else. Now whilst EA did give us a single-player, offline Star Wars story, they did so in such a sloppy, janky, half-finished fashion.
I lost count of the amount of times that I had to restart my game because of loading errors or game breaking bugs. Almost every time I would enter a new area the characters would initially appear in a T-pose position and remain that way for a good few seconds until I approached them. Onscreen prompts would often fail to appear making the game's already confusing exploration methods even more unclear. I have not seen this much pop-in in a videogame since the first version of No Man's Sky. Almost every area was covered in murky textures upon initially entering them, with some entire structures and areas failing to render. During a few boss fights, the AI character would fail to attack me and just stand still and no matter how many blows I would land on them, their health bar would not budge until I fully reloaded the level. This sort of thing was present during every one of my play sessions and at a few points the game became almost unplayable due to it's glaring technical glitches. Also, I got this game as a Christmas gift, so it has been out for a decent amount of time. A game of this calibre, that has been out for months at this point, from a major studio like Respawn and a publisher like EA, not to mention being from a major franchise like Star Wars, - the fact that it is in the current broken state that it's in is frankly unacceptable.
The next issue I had was the story and characters in the game. The game's protagonist Cal, is an unsympathetic, whiny bitch of a character that got on my nerves every time he opened his mouth. The rest of the crew were also pretty bland, unendearing and lacking in much personality. I grew up loving the Star Wars universe, yet I found myself trying in vain to skip almost every cutscene and really not giving a crap what happens to any one of the characters. The villains were unengaging and the other side characters like Cal's master and the old dude that left holograms for Cal to find got increasingly annoying every time they appeared. The only character I found engaging throughout the whole game was Sister Merrin.
I always thought Jedi Knights were supposed to be extremely capable, powerful warriors, yet at no point in this game do you ever feel powerful in any significant way. The whole time, you feel on par with the non descript enemies that you are fighting. While I agree that the last major AAA single-player Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed was too easy, at least you felt powerful while playing as that character. The combat never feels as satisfying as it should due to the lack of dismemberment. The decision not to allow the player to chop off limbs makes it feels more like you are hitting enemy shaped piñatas with a big stick, rather than welding a laser sword of pure, raw energy. I also felt that there was a lack of variation in the combos and moves-set and found myself watching the same animations over and again no matter what combination of buttons I was mashing. Every fight in this game is hard and not in a fun,challenging way, but instead in a grinding, irritating way. The ridiculously long loading times also made dying even more frustrating. If you are going to design a game where the player is going to die frequently, you HAVE TO have a snappy respawn system in place à la Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami. (Especially when your fucking studio is called RESPAWN, but I digress.) They were clearly going for a more defensive, methodical approach to the combat system, which is fine, but they should have given you a choice between that and a more aggressive, offensive skill tree, meaning that more play styles could be catered to. Another majorly annoying thing was the way that the game justified unlocking new skills for Cal, with him having out-of-the-blue flashbacks at seemingly random points in the story where he would suddenly remember that he could wall-run or double-jump. I hate when games do this, it feels extremely lazy and unjustified within the context of the story that is being presented. Another thing that bothered me gameplay-wise was the checkpoint system. The whole refilling your health = respawning the enemies thing felt really arcady and often broke immersion.
Something else that I hate in games is when the game tries to pretend that it is an open world game rather than a linear experience, which this game does. I don't understand why you would want to masquerade as an open world game when that mechanic has been so oversaturated for this entire generation. After you play through the game's intro and get access to the ship, you are given the impression that you can choose what order to visit each planet and progress though the game. However this is not the case. When I was first given the choice to pick a planet, I chose Dathomir as I am a big Darth Maul fan and thought it would be cool to explore his home turf. I got there and was making my way through the clear-as-mud holomap when I got to a section where I could not progress. There was a jump that I just could not make no matter how many times I tried. After eventually getting fed up I had to look up a walkthrough to find out how to progress whereupon I learned that you actually need to go to the other planet first and gain an ability to make this jump. Now even if I did design my game so poorly that I let the player go to the wrong planet on their first travel, I would have at least had the decency to put in a prompt at the un-passable jump to let the player know that they don't have the skills to progress here yet and to go to the other planet and return here later. It could have been a voiceover from a crew member or even an immersion-breaking piece of text, but something would have been nice to prevent me having to look up a walkthrough to learn this fact. Witnessing this ineptitude in game design from such a major studio was shocking. So yeah, from that point on, - lesson learned, - I just followed the checkpoints to decide what my next planet would be to travel to, but then why even give players the illusion of choice in this? Why not just usher the player automatically to the next planet they need to visit after they return to the ship?
My final and biggest issue with this game is despite it being a Star Wars game, it never really felt like Star Wars. I noticed this during the first third of the game in the some of the character designs. Some of the side characters looked more akin to something from Ratchet & Clank than from the Star Wars universe. Then as I was playing through Kashyyyk and fighting spiders and giant slugs, I'm thinking to myself, I don't ever remember Luke Skywalker doing this and that dude lived and trained in a swamp for like a year. Then the shark was well and truly jumped. Upon revisiting Dathomir and finally being able to make some progress, a character literally raises bodies from the ground for you to fight. That's right, they put zombies in a Star Wars game. I thought since Disney had taken control of Star Wars, that they were way stricter than Lucas ever was about what does and doesn't get into the Star Wars universe, so whoever greenlit this zombie shit over at Disney should really get the boot. I can't quite believe that I'm saying this, but if you want a more authentic and higher quality Star Wars videogame experience, go play Battlefront 2. Sure it may have had an extremely messy launch and been marred with controversy ever since, but at least it feels like Star Wars.
There were a sparse few things that I did enjoy. As I mentioned above, Merrin was a fairly engaging and well acted character. The Lightsaber customisation was also pretty neat. I also enjoyed the music and (SPOILERS,) the brief appearance that Darth Vader makes. However the music is only great because it's the Star Wars score and whilst Vader's appearance as an unstoppable force was cool here, I personally feel like it was done better in Rogue One.
So yeah, I kind of feel like I played a different game to everyone else. I really wanted to fall in love with this game and I kept waiting for it to win me over, but unfortunately it never did. I think that there is potential here for something better, mostly owed to the interesting time period the game is set in on the Star Wars timeline, so I really hope that they take the few good elements that were present in Fallen Order and improve upon everything else for the sequel.
Apparently you get something that doesn't feel like Star Wars.
I have a fair number of problems with this game, so I'm going to go ahead and list them and explain why they bothered me so much during my experience playing through Fallen Order.
First of all, when this game dropped and did pretty well commercially and critically, EA were commended in the games media for having the guts to release a single-player, story based Star Wars game with no online play. When the reviews dropped just before the game's release, this news got me really hyped as I have never been much for online gaming and much prefer story based games over anything else. Now whilst EA did give us a single-player, offline Star Wars story, they did so in such a sloppy, janky, half-finished fashion.
I lost count of the amount of times that I had to restart my game because of loading errors or game breaking bugs. Almost every time I would enter a new area the characters would initially appear in a T-pose position and remain that way for a good few seconds until I approached them. Onscreen prompts would often fail to appear making the game's already confusing exploration methods even more unclear. I have not seen this much pop-in in a videogame since the first version of No Man's Sky. Almost every area was covered in murky textures upon initially entering them, with some entire structures and areas failing to render. During a few boss fights, the AI character would fail to attack me and just stand still and no matter how many blows I would land on them, their health bar would not budge until I fully reloaded the level. This sort of thing was present during every one of my play sessions and at a few points the game became almost unplayable due to it's glaring technical glitches. Also, I got this game as a Christmas gift, so it has been out for a decent amount of time. A game of this calibre, that has been out for months at this point, from a major studio like Respawn and a publisher like EA, not to mention being from a major franchise like Star Wars, - the fact that it is in the current broken state that it's in is frankly unacceptable.
The next issue I had was the story and characters in the game. The game's protagonist Cal, is an unsympathetic, whiny bitch of a character that got on my nerves every time he opened his mouth. The rest of the crew were also pretty bland, unendearing and lacking in much personality. I grew up loving the Star Wars universe, yet I found myself trying in vain to skip almost every cutscene and really not giving a crap what happens to any one of the characters. The villains were unengaging and the other side characters like Cal's master and the old dude that left holograms for Cal to find got increasingly annoying every time they appeared. The only character I found engaging throughout the whole game was Sister Merrin.
I always thought Jedi Knights were supposed to be extremely capable, powerful warriors, yet at no point in this game do you ever feel powerful in any significant way. The whole time, you feel on par with the non descript enemies that you are fighting. While I agree that the last major AAA single-player Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed was too easy, at least you felt powerful while playing as that character. The combat never feels as satisfying as it should due to the lack of dismemberment. The decision not to allow the player to chop off limbs makes it feels more like you are hitting enemy shaped piñatas with a big stick, rather than welding a laser sword of pure, raw energy. I also felt that there was a lack of variation in the combos and moves-set and found myself watching the same animations over and again no matter what combination of buttons I was mashing. Every fight in this game is hard and not in a fun,challenging way, but instead in a grinding, irritating way. The ridiculously long loading times also made dying even more frustrating. If you are going to design a game where the player is going to die frequently, you HAVE TO have a snappy respawn system in place à la Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami. (Especially when your fucking studio is called RESPAWN, but I digress.) They were clearly going for a more defensive, methodical approach to the combat system, which is fine, but they should have given you a choice between that and a more aggressive, offensive skill tree, meaning that more play styles could be catered to. Another majorly annoying thing was the way that the game justified unlocking new skills for Cal, with him having out-of-the-blue flashbacks at seemingly random points in the story where he would suddenly remember that he could wall-run or double-jump. I hate when games do this, it feels extremely lazy and unjustified within the context of the story that is being presented. Another thing that bothered me gameplay-wise was the checkpoint system. The whole refilling your health = respawning the enemies thing felt really arcady and often broke immersion.
Something else that I hate in games is when the game tries to pretend that it is an open world game rather than a linear experience, which this game does. I don't understand why you would want to masquerade as an open world game when that mechanic has been so oversaturated for this entire generation. After you play through the game's intro and get access to the ship, you are given the impression that you can choose what order to visit each planet and progress though the game. However this is not the case. When I was first given the choice to pick a planet, I chose Dathomir as I am a big Darth Maul fan and thought it would be cool to explore his home turf. I got there and was making my way through the clear-as-mud holomap when I got to a section where I could not progress. There was a jump that I just could not make no matter how many times I tried. After eventually getting fed up I had to look up a walkthrough to find out how to progress whereupon I learned that you actually need to go to the other planet first and gain an ability to make this jump. Now even if I did design my game so poorly that I let the player go to the wrong planet on their first travel, I would have at least had the decency to put in a prompt at the un-passable jump to let the player know that they don't have the skills to progress here yet and to go to the other planet and return here later. It could have been a voiceover from a crew member or even an immersion-breaking piece of text, but something would have been nice to prevent me having to look up a walkthrough to learn this fact. Witnessing this ineptitude in game design from such a major studio was shocking. So yeah, from that point on, - lesson learned, - I just followed the checkpoints to decide what my next planet would be to travel to, but then why even give players the illusion of choice in this? Why not just usher the player automatically to the next planet they need to visit after they return to the ship?
My final and biggest issue with this game is despite it being a Star Wars game, it never really felt like Star Wars. I noticed this during the first third of the game in the some of the character designs. Some of the side characters looked more akin to something from Ratchet & Clank than from the Star Wars universe. Then as I was playing through Kashyyyk and fighting spiders and giant slugs, I'm thinking to myself, I don't ever remember Luke Skywalker doing this and that dude lived and trained in a swamp for like a year. Then the shark was well and truly jumped. Upon revisiting Dathomir and finally being able to make some progress, a character literally raises bodies from the ground for you to fight. That's right, they put zombies in a Star Wars game. I thought since Disney had taken control of Star Wars, that they were way stricter than Lucas ever was about what does and doesn't get into the Star Wars universe, so whoever greenlit this zombie shit over at Disney should really get the boot. I can't quite believe that I'm saying this, but if you want a more authentic and higher quality Star Wars videogame experience, go play Battlefront 2. Sure it may have had an extremely messy launch and been marred with controversy ever since, but at least it feels like Star Wars.
There were a sparse few things that I did enjoy. As I mentioned above, Merrin was a fairly engaging and well acted character. The Lightsaber customisation was also pretty neat. I also enjoyed the music and (SPOILERS,) the brief appearance that Darth Vader makes. However the music is only great because it's the Star Wars score and whilst Vader's appearance as an unstoppable force was cool here, I personally feel like it was done better in Rogue One.
So yeah, I kind of feel like I played a different game to everyone else. I really wanted to fall in love with this game and I kept waiting for it to win me over, but unfortunately it never did. I think that there is potential here for something better, mostly owed to the interesting time period the game is set in on the Star Wars timeline, so I really hope that they take the few good elements that were present in Fallen Order and improve upon everything else for the sequel.
Kirk Bage (1775 KP) rated The Umbrella Academy in TV
Sep 19, 2020 (Updated Jan 22, 2021)
I came to this gloriously colourful, energetic and super smart comic book adaptation in August (when Netflix advertised season 2), at a time of lockdown where I really needed something cheerful and fun to keep me going. It worked so well I watched both full seasons twice over, back to back, and key episodes 3 times! A rare thing indeed for me and a TV show.
Since then the rigours of isolation have set me back with a really long backlog for The Wasteland – currently I have a list of over 40 cultural artifacts I want to talk about and share with you- but, I am very glad to be talking about this one today, as even though it wasn’t that long ago, it evokes such fond happy memories of becoming just a little bit obsessed by something. A phenomenon that only seems to happen when you go into something with low to medium expectations and come out feeling like you have found a diamond in the rough.
The concept of 7 children with mysterious powers being adopted and raised by a shady and strict, umbrella wielding, father has been around a few years in the form of several graphic novels, penned by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way. You can feel the vibe of something slightly emo and arty coming through – just cool enough but also self conscious; melancholy and dark in places but also lots of sardonic fun. But, unlike the books, which often look stark and minimal, the world created by show runner and director Steve Blackman is vivid and full to the brim with things to overwhelm the senses.
For the last few years, and especially of late, the Superhero genre has been so oversaturated that it is almost impossible to come up with anything original, but The Umbrella Academy together with Amazon’s The Boys, definitely manage to do that. It has enough mystique to be intriguingly confusing for the first few episodes, as we piece together the Hargreaves’ past that has led to the current situation, and discover the dynamic tension that exists between the adopted siblings. Oh, and there is a talking chimpanzee butler / guardian called Pogo, that feels like CGI gimmickery for a while, before growing into something truly wonderful.
The first thing you notice about this set of misfits, as they reassemble for their father’s funeral after years of bitterness and estrangement, is that they are all a little bit broken and uncomfortable in their own skins – their powers as individuals are all a bit, well frankly underwhelming, and their personalities are not exactly attractive in every case. Season one is all about re-establishing connections and working through identity crises. In many ways it is a coming of age story, as circumstances lead to them needing to grow up fast and join together to achieve true power. It works both on the surface and as a deeper allegory.
As each main character is introduced you inevitably get drawn into ranking them from most to least favourite, and the trick of it is how much those feelings shift as the story progresses. Everyone loves Klaus, the twitchy junkie who can see dead people, his completely non heroic yet hilariously stoned outlook gives him many of the best lines and most fun scenes. I changed allegiance several times with the others, but Klaus, played by the charismatic Irish actor Robert Sheehan, always remained my favourite, because of his hippie rockstar vibe. Although it’s hard not to have a soft spot for Number 5, the time travelling schoolboy that has been missing for years and re-emerges as a middle aged man still trapped in the boys’ body. Aiden Gillen is superb in conveying that he is older whilst always looking like a teenager, and in many ways he is the true pivot and anchor of the story.
I suppose before the show aired it was Ellen Page that was the “star” draw amongst the young and mostly unknown cast of “heroes”. As Vanya, the only Hargreaves child never to demonstrate a power, and held aside by their controlling father, she is the outsider and most insecure of the bunch. You sense her storyline is going to be crucial to the whole shebang, and so it turns out, but her fame as an actress of note never overshadows the show as a whole – it feels instantly like a group effort, and in that sense a true family, the deeper you get into it.
I could go on explaining each character and the details of the intricate plot forever, but I would never do it justice. The only way to see what the fuss is about is to watch it. Anything else would just sound like mad confusion to the uninitiated. All I can say is that it does an incredible job of unfolding its charms and secrets piece by piece. So much so that by the climax of season two I am still not entirely sure we have all the information necessary to know what is going on in a complete sense; there are several questions and mysteries still to be unearthed, and I like that very much.
I have recommended this show to anyone I know who enjoys something entertaining that has substance yet doesn’t take itself too seriously – so that is everyone then! I think it’s allure is that very thing: it manages to hit a zeitgeist of perfect balance between a smart script and plotline with many cliffhangers, and enough disposable moments of fun, to be exactly what the modern Netflix viewer is looking for. Super easy to watch with one eye or with both, depending on what mood you are in.
There is also the style of the thing – a veritable candy box of colours and neat visual tricks, mixed in with some of the best musical montage sequences I have ever seen. I understand from several interviews that Steve Blackman specifically wrote certain scenes around the feel of a piece of music he wanted to include. That is a clever way of building a cult following: find songs that both tell a story and appeal to the cool kids, then use them as mini music video segments that punctuate the heavier elements of storytelling. It’s not a new trick, but the song choices here are so good that it has rarely been done this well before.
It all works especially well as we move into season two and an historical context that brings up a lot of pertinent issues for some of the siblings regarding race, sexuality and other freedoms of identity that can be taken for granted in the modern era. I don’t want to spoil too much of that here, but suffice to say as a hook to pin the themes on it is a genius touch that makes season two a huge leap forward on something that was already pretty decent in season one. All the characters become more rounded and relatable, even the so called bad guys – an increasingly eccentric bunch of creations that leave you in no doubt this is a comic book world not to be confused with reality.
At time of writing, a third season has still not being given the greenlight. Considering the massive cliffhanger we are left with at the end of season two, and how big the cult following seems to be by now, it would be an absolute crime not to allow it to continue. The only reason I can see it wouldn’t is that the stories of the source material are now exhausted, and anywhere they go from here will need to be truly original. However, there is so much scope to do almost anything from here that I don’t see it as any kind of issue.
If you haven’t seen it, I urge you whole-heartedly to give it a go. There really is something in there to please everyone, except perhaps the most serious minded of realists. Even then, they’d be hard pressed not to raise a smile or tap a toe at some of the best musical moments of emo hero mayhem.
Since then the rigours of isolation have set me back with a really long backlog for The Wasteland – currently I have a list of over 40 cultural artifacts I want to talk about and share with you- but, I am very glad to be talking about this one today, as even though it wasn’t that long ago, it evokes such fond happy memories of becoming just a little bit obsessed by something. A phenomenon that only seems to happen when you go into something with low to medium expectations and come out feeling like you have found a diamond in the rough.
The concept of 7 children with mysterious powers being adopted and raised by a shady and strict, umbrella wielding, father has been around a few years in the form of several graphic novels, penned by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way. You can feel the vibe of something slightly emo and arty coming through – just cool enough but also self conscious; melancholy and dark in places but also lots of sardonic fun. But, unlike the books, which often look stark and minimal, the world created by show runner and director Steve Blackman is vivid and full to the brim with things to overwhelm the senses.
For the last few years, and especially of late, the Superhero genre has been so oversaturated that it is almost impossible to come up with anything original, but The Umbrella Academy together with Amazon’s The Boys, definitely manage to do that. It has enough mystique to be intriguingly confusing for the first few episodes, as we piece together the Hargreaves’ past that has led to the current situation, and discover the dynamic tension that exists between the adopted siblings. Oh, and there is a talking chimpanzee butler / guardian called Pogo, that feels like CGI gimmickery for a while, before growing into something truly wonderful.
The first thing you notice about this set of misfits, as they reassemble for their father’s funeral after years of bitterness and estrangement, is that they are all a little bit broken and uncomfortable in their own skins – their powers as individuals are all a bit, well frankly underwhelming, and their personalities are not exactly attractive in every case. Season one is all about re-establishing connections and working through identity crises. In many ways it is a coming of age story, as circumstances lead to them needing to grow up fast and join together to achieve true power. It works both on the surface and as a deeper allegory.
As each main character is introduced you inevitably get drawn into ranking them from most to least favourite, and the trick of it is how much those feelings shift as the story progresses. Everyone loves Klaus, the twitchy junkie who can see dead people, his completely non heroic yet hilariously stoned outlook gives him many of the best lines and most fun scenes. I changed allegiance several times with the others, but Klaus, played by the charismatic Irish actor Robert Sheehan, always remained my favourite, because of his hippie rockstar vibe. Although it’s hard not to have a soft spot for Number 5, the time travelling schoolboy that has been missing for years and re-emerges as a middle aged man still trapped in the boys’ body. Aiden Gillen is superb in conveying that he is older whilst always looking like a teenager, and in many ways he is the true pivot and anchor of the story.
I suppose before the show aired it was Ellen Page that was the “star” draw amongst the young and mostly unknown cast of “heroes”. As Vanya, the only Hargreaves child never to demonstrate a power, and held aside by their controlling father, she is the outsider and most insecure of the bunch. You sense her storyline is going to be crucial to the whole shebang, and so it turns out, but her fame as an actress of note never overshadows the show as a whole – it feels instantly like a group effort, and in that sense a true family, the deeper you get into it.
I could go on explaining each character and the details of the intricate plot forever, but I would never do it justice. The only way to see what the fuss is about is to watch it. Anything else would just sound like mad confusion to the uninitiated. All I can say is that it does an incredible job of unfolding its charms and secrets piece by piece. So much so that by the climax of season two I am still not entirely sure we have all the information necessary to know what is going on in a complete sense; there are several questions and mysteries still to be unearthed, and I like that very much.
I have recommended this show to anyone I know who enjoys something entertaining that has substance yet doesn’t take itself too seriously – so that is everyone then! I think it’s allure is that very thing: it manages to hit a zeitgeist of perfect balance between a smart script and plotline with many cliffhangers, and enough disposable moments of fun, to be exactly what the modern Netflix viewer is looking for. Super easy to watch with one eye or with both, depending on what mood you are in.
There is also the style of the thing – a veritable candy box of colours and neat visual tricks, mixed in with some of the best musical montage sequences I have ever seen. I understand from several interviews that Steve Blackman specifically wrote certain scenes around the feel of a piece of music he wanted to include. That is a clever way of building a cult following: find songs that both tell a story and appeal to the cool kids, then use them as mini music video segments that punctuate the heavier elements of storytelling. It’s not a new trick, but the song choices here are so good that it has rarely been done this well before.
It all works especially well as we move into season two and an historical context that brings up a lot of pertinent issues for some of the siblings regarding race, sexuality and other freedoms of identity that can be taken for granted in the modern era. I don’t want to spoil too much of that here, but suffice to say as a hook to pin the themes on it is a genius touch that makes season two a huge leap forward on something that was already pretty decent in season one. All the characters become more rounded and relatable, even the so called bad guys – an increasingly eccentric bunch of creations that leave you in no doubt this is a comic book world not to be confused with reality.
At time of writing, a third season has still not being given the greenlight. Considering the massive cliffhanger we are left with at the end of season two, and how big the cult following seems to be by now, it would be an absolute crime not to allow it to continue. The only reason I can see it wouldn’t is that the stories of the source material are now exhausted, and anywhere they go from here will need to be truly original. However, there is so much scope to do almost anything from here that I don’t see it as any kind of issue.
If you haven’t seen it, I urge you whole-heartedly to give it a go. There really is something in there to please everyone, except perhaps the most serious minded of realists. Even then, they’d be hard pressed not to raise a smile or tap a toe at some of the best musical moments of emo hero mayhem.