I've recently accumulated several little gaming-related things to talk about, so here they all are thrown into a single blog!

G4 video of The Force Unleashed Wii version Duel mode
Link

Neato. I won't be getting TFU for the Wii (I don't have one, and would rather get the PS3 or 360 version), but it's still cool to see this stuff. I can see the motion controls being cool, but this video made me a realize a problem with it. I can only imagine the controls working from a traditional 3rd person perspective, not this zoomed out camera. Will a left slash or a push forward work from a non-aligned perspective? Whether it's character relative or screen relative, I foresee problems. I dunno, we'll see, I guess.

Jedi Power Battles

Me and a friend were talking about Star Wars for a while, and for some reason or another, we got one the topic of the old PS 1 game, Jedi Power Battles. I'd never played it before, and he had it. Suddenly, we both wanted to play. So next time he went home he fetched it, and we played.

For the uninformed, it's an old beat 'em up where you play as one (or two, if you have a friend) of 6 Jedi, through the events of Episode 1, (events that only Qui-Gon and Obi-wan actually experienced, not Mace Windu and the others). Fun fact: This game is so old, that Mace Windu has a blue lightsaber. They didn't know yet.

It's basically fun. It's incredibly frustrating at times, with pretty terrible platforming and a few incredibly cheap enemies. But when you get down to it, beating the crap out of battle droids as Plo Koon or Mace Windu is really fun. And the combo upgrade system is actually quite cool. Many parts of the game are definitely antiquated, though, like the "Credits" system (lives). Nowadays, as long as your partner is alive, you can keep respawning, and beating a mission alone is just a matter of respawning at the last checkpoint until you win, but in this game, it's 5 lives and start the whole level over.

The worst part, though, was that the game crashes on PS2s and 3s. About half the time, when you beat a level, it just freezes and you don't get to sav,e and have to do the level over. As a result of that, and the annoyingness of the second level, we never got to play the third level or beyond. And to make matters worse, my friend's old Gameshark broke.

Galactic Battleground

Ah, good ole Age of Empires II -- I mean Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. It's the second Star Wars RTS, and it's amazingly identical to Age of Empires II. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just more than a little amusing. (It's practically a mod for pete's sake.)

Oh, but why am I talking about it? Well, me and my friends decided to resurrect this old gem, too. We've enjoyed a few LAN matches against computer opponents so far. It's a trip down memory lane, for me. I haven't played it in a while, and now I'm back into it for the time being. Fun times.

KOTOR II: The Sith Lords Restoration Project
Build 1.0b6!!
It's agonizingly close to completion!


Blog Links
In keeping with my game thing going on right now, here's Alpha Evolution's recent blog about hopes for one of the games I'm anxiously waiting the existence of, KOTOR 3.


P.S. Iron Man was awesome.