Force Unleashed: Dev Team were the Jedis, Managers took the project to the Dark Side

Dammit. I wanted to like it. Just another major release to add to the pile of disappointments this year.

The gameplay is still fun, don't get me wrong. Slicing through crowds of stormtroopers, throwing Wookies off cliffs, exploding TIE fighters, that's all pretty awesome and it'd take a whole lot of awfulness to make that kinda stuff NOT fun. You start the game feeling powerful. You don't feel crippled or weak. It'd be pretty hard to feel like you're a badass if you didn't start out with at least a few cool powers. The designers and artists and programmers did a fantastic job with this game.

The ones who fucked it up and made it disappointing are the people who decided it'd be a smart idea to let all those talented people go before they could finish up the project. There are just some absolutely BAFFLING bugs left in the game! The most obvious one I saw was a major FX bug in the very first opening level, where this gorgeous vista off a cliff, where you see destroyers and TIE fighters battling and exploding in the distance, is marred by the smoke FX being large blue squares in the sky. It's ugly and obvious and it's likely very easy to fix. There are no excuses for leaving something like that in a finished game.

And that's saying nothing about the floating characters, clipping and other issues I've seen, nevermind some of the game-ending bugs I've heard about elsewhere.

That's exactly why you need to keep a team around, to give a game polish, to make it look like it was a loved and cherished project. This could have been a great game if they'd had a chance to apply those little finesses. But as it stands, it's certainly not up to level of quality that most people would expect from a powerhouse like LucasArts.

I do have to say, one of the things I love most about working in the industry is working with tons of other passionate gamers. Lots more trading opportunities! I traded my copy of No More Heroes for my Lead Artist's copy of The Force Unleashed. I'm so happy I didn't have to shell out $60 for this game. The gameplay is fun and all, but I really don't want to support a company that treats its employees like that only to release a half-finished product.