Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - mini review

Last night, after the 3-hour installation/update (which had been going on and off all day), I played Jedi: Survivor. The (~60FPS) Performance mode was like someone had smeared vaseline over my TV, so the 30 FPS Quality mode is the only way to play on a console. It's probably the best and most Star Wars-looking game yet. It's not perfect and I'm still on the early levels, but it's quite amazing to walk around Coruscant. I didn't exactly imagine it looking like LA from Blade Runner, but it's still a nice Star Wars experience. I wish it was more immersive (clearly nobody on the dev/design team played Halo ODST), but overall it's good and I expect it can and will improve. The music works (very) well; soundscapes aren't as immersive as they could be. Again, there are so many other games and films that did this right, so it's strange that the developers somehow dropped the ball on these "basic" game world creation/development/immersion aspects. The combat (fighting gameplay) is fun and rewarding... I plan to play more soon and will add to this mini review as I go along.

I have played for a few days (~6 hours), and I can say that if this game had not been set in a well-presented Star Wars universe, I would have deleted it and been done with it. As it is, I enjoy experiencing the Star Wars aesthetic, the music is good and the (core) combat is fun. Unfortunately, the level design, storytelling and dialogue are mediocre at best. The levels and environments have a feeling of amateur design that fails over and over again to communicate where to go and how to get there; including the awkward map. The jumping puzzles are just bizarre nonsense; how did the stormtroopers get into the temple/structure or areas that I just opened? And yes, it was all locked for centuries or so the story tells me. It is clear that the writing and the design teams had little or very poor communication. There are already endless areas of total nonsense; you can jump on this ledge, but this other ledge of the same height or lower you cannot. Areas that a five year old could climb are impossible to access for seasoned Jedi that can do endless jumps and walk on walls. There are just too many inconsistencies in this game-world. 

But now I can truly say that Horizon Forbidden West is a Masterpiece and I am thinking of getting back to finishing it so I can play the Burning Shores DLC story continuations.

If there is a wrap up, it would be; Unreal Engine 4 may have been the wrong engine for Jedi: Survivor, or at least the development team was unable to harness its potential. I can only imagine what Guerrilla Games or an experienced developer using Decima engine could have done with a (jumping/climbing puzzle, story, combat...) Star Wars game. It is sad to see an amazing IP like Star Wars die a miserable, slow death. And unfortunately, Jedi: Survivor is yet another one of the thousand cuts...

This November Xbox 360′s voice chat is getting a much needed upgrade...

Jerry Johnson (Xbox Live Studios) has revealed that the Xbox 360′s voice chat will be significantly improved; raising the quality of the player-to-player communication over Xbox Live.

At the Edinburgh Interactive Festival he said:

"The codec we used when we first launched was a low bit rate codec and we stuck with that"

"We launched and we said we required broadband. We required a 64k connection, which not many people think of as broadband any longer. But that was the minimum requirement to run the service at the time."

"It's time for us to move on. Especially if we want to think about broadening – a crackly headset on the top of your head – not what people think of when they talk about popular entertainment."

So in November, I'll be hearing all the misguided racial and sexual epithet in even clearer detail?

Thanks Microsoft and thanks for the new instant mute function!

Bungie working on a whole new (halo like) universe...

Bungie working on a whole new (halo like) universe... ? ... well that's music to my ears!
let's hope this time they do not sale it to microsoft.

APB (All Points Bulletin)

I had some time to listen to a few of the GDC 08 presentation. I tell you I am quite impressed with APB and the (high quality) no bullshit approach of David Jones. The 1^st 20minutes of the presentation; the visual demonstration of the character customization do not make much impact as audio only, but after that when David gets into explaining the overall concept it becomes quite interesting. I can only hope that Realtime Worlds is up to the task of keeping a game world like this fresh and exciting. I envision the tie-in with last.fm will take game audio into a new direction, quite excited about that. Well if Crackdown was the 1^st step then we are in for a wild APB ride. Most of the presentation is out on youtube, I suggest having a look.

Forza 2 GUI (Grand Unthoughtful Idiosity)

I remember the original forza, how much I liked playing it and I also remember what drove me up the wall about it: the unintuitive user interface, there is not much point in getting stuck into it now, because we have a somewhat better but still unintuitive menu system in forza2. Just to get it out of the way forza2 is without doubts the one of best driving simulator I have played, extra so with the superbly tunable wheel controller.
But still the confusion of the menu system is so frustrating that it makes the question what the UI designer at turn10 is smoking or not smoking? Again no direct access to my cars (the garage) why? there are at least 16 buttons on the xbox 360 controller ... this like the dark ages of GUI. Race limitation (horsepower, speed, manufactures,..) are clear on the race/event page …stay with me… but changing or upgrading a car is four back clicks and two left nudges, then it is unclear what needs to be changed (upgraded/downgraded) to be able to race in the particular event. We do have this nice (home) button but that will not take me to my cars, why, why… I could literally write pages about how unthoughtful the UI in forza2 is. And at the end of all that I will still have to recommend forza2, it is a fantastic race simulator with no equal.