Lessons Learned

What I learned from missing the curve on the Treasure Island off-ramp on the Bay Bridge and slamming into the mountain/guard-rail:
-- Some turns are not doable at higher speeds.
-- When on the freeway, STICK TO THE FUCKING PLAN. All impulses and split-second revisions are bad unless they circumvent certain death.
-- Keep your cellphone charged; you never know when you're going to need to be on it for an hour or so. Also, an earpiece like a Jabra is indispensable when you're getting things out of your car.
-- If you have an accident on the Bay Bridge, you _will_ get towed by CalTrans; once you're in the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza lot, your usual tow truck company can come and get you.
-- A lot of people will stop to see if you need help or are injured. In fact, a lot more people than really should. I mean, it's really cool and reassuring that so many people are good samaritans, but if you're by yourself and you pull over to help someone on the side of the road, it might not end well. Be careful out there, folks. Not everyone's a goofy and friendly seven-footer with a heart of gold.
-- The CHP guys are really friendly once they work out that you're not drunk or an asshole. And anything that saves them paperwork makes you look good in their eyes.
-- The 9-volt battery LED flashlight is the greatest thing since sliced bread, bottled beer, and 16-gig flash drives. Get one of these flashlights, and put it in your glove compartment along with a spare battery. http://www.9voltlight.com/
-- Nothing, NOTHING is more important than coming home alive and (mostly) uninjured to your loved ones.

For the record: I'm fine, just a little sore. I was the only one in the car, and I didn't hit anyone else. The car's in the shop (yay total coverage and USAA), and we're just waiting to hear the verdict on it.

Most importantly, I'm in one piece. Everything else is gravy.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii)

Note the intentional spelling of Wii there.

So, there I am at the end of the game, my enemy crushed beneath my heroic fist, still twitching from the overdose of Direct Current I've given him, and while I should feel ecstatic about bridging the gap between Episodes III and IV, I just don't. It's oddly anticlimactic, and this is coming from a self-professed geek and Star Wars-lover.

Let me back up: I rented SW:TFU last Sunday, and I've been playing now and then through the week. II try to get to bed by 11pm most nights, so between dinner and hanging out with Yoko, I can't say I dedicated a whole lot of time to this game. And yet, just less than a week later, I've beaten the game and unlocked all of the Duel Characters apart from one. So: not a hard game. Just saying.

The gimmick to this, like most recent Star Wars Jedi games, is that you get to customize your powers, making each player's run somewhat different. That's nice, but let's face it: if you're not maxing Force Push, Lightning, and Pummel, you're really not getting the point of being a bad-ass baddie, are you? The only thing more Dark Side than beating people to a pulp with the flailing bodies of their friends is running enough juice through them to melt a Galactic Chancellor's face. And if you do max these three abilities, it's unlikely that a bunch of Stormtroopers are really going to slow you down, so there's half of the game right there.

The other half of the game is beating up on bosses, and these seem to come in two flavors: Jedi and Big'uns (and sometimes Jedi _and_ Big'uns, but not at the same time). Fighting Jedi is actually somewhat fun; your powers get a workout, and you get the impression that you're evenly matched. Fighting Big'uns is just plain frustrating. First (and this is specific to Big'uns), no matter how much you've boosted your powers, you only do a miniscule amount of damage per successful hit, so no matter how you play it, you still have to hit the boss the same number of times as any other Padawan. Second (and this is for nearly all bosses), once you wear your foe down to a certain health, you trigger the Dragon's Lair part of the game.

Now, this may just be a Nintendo Wii thing intended to somehow take advantage of the Wiimote's motion sensor, or it may involve button mashing on those other platforms. On the Wii, once you bring the villain down to a certain health level, the game prompts you to shake either the Wiimote or the Nunchuk. If you shake the right controller (and I'm not kidding here, you really have to shake it), you trigger a minor cut-scene during which your character delivers a series of devastating blows to the opposition. This is followed by more shake-prompts, and, as long as you follow them perfectly and in time, you'll work your way through to a final cut (often literally) scene; miss one of these cues, and your opponent knocks you down and regenerates some health. Better luck next time.

The end result of this is that you find yourself wondering why this isn't called Star Wars: The Spastic Maracas Unleashed.

Equally frustrating is these cues aren't necessarily easy to see. Or rather, yes, they're large, red, and on the screen, but if you, like me, occasionally get your left and right mixed up (or, gods forbid, are left-handed), you're going to need to concentrate more on which hand to shake than on the cut-scene that you're supposed to be enjoying while you beat up the bad-guy. Just to give you some perspective, note that I love complicated subtitles in movies and have no trouble following them and watching the actors' expressions at the same time. This game mechanic, however, forced me to unfocus my eyes so as to be sure to catch the right cue in my peripheral vision.

I have no bloody clue how the game designers have worked this into the game for other platforms; I imagine a series of Dance Dance Revolution-like prompts flashing on the screen, causing seizures, but I'm a cruel and bitter man.

In sum, the Wii implementation of SW:TFU left me disappointed, both in plot and in implementation. There is immense potential for the Wii to be THE platform of choice for a first-person Jedi game, but this third-person monstrosity comes nowhere near that. Heck, the so-called Interactive Star Wars Lightsaber Game does this better.

Having defeated the game, I now have the option to play through again with all of the powers I got from the first run-through. No thanks. Maybe if some other of my friends purchases the game I'll borrow it in a year or so and try again, but not now. Not for a long time.