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...
