Jedi

Game Review: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Robert LeeLeave a comment

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Oh Star Wars, just when I thought we broke up and we were done, you come along knocking on my door looking all sexy in a new outfit and I fall for your Jedi mind tricks all over again. Yeah, I got no illusions, we’ve gone our own ways, we’ve stayed more or less friends after a time of heated fights. But I guess now I’m just that booty call you make whenever you’re in town. Well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for being your side guy from now on.

Personal Perspective

Let me be upfront and declare I am not very good at video games. I don’t play well online in games such as Call of Duty or Destiny. And frankly only a couple of my real life friends even own video game consoles, let alone play online games. So going in and playing with a bunch of strangers is just not all that fun fore me. I’m not the best at action or fighting games either. I’ve always felt most at home and got the most enjoyment from story driven games. Some of those games have been great games such as the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age series. Yes, I love my role playing games. So long as it had a compelling story, I was often ready to give a particular type of game a go. As far as action games go I’ve loved all the Uncharted games and the latest Tomb Raider reboot, and amost of the Assassin’s Creed games.

Let me also be upfront and say that I’ve not played a lot of Star Wars games in my lifetime. I’ve played X-Wing, and even Tie Fighter. And I’ve never actually been good enough to finish either of them. The Empire Strikes Back game on the old Atari 2600 got repetitive and boring. I never managed to get into the classic and much revered Knights of the Old Republic either because my computer was not able to run it and later on I did not own an X-Box which was the console platform it was exclusive to.

When it was announced a few years back that one of the most hated companies in America, Electronic Arts, would have an exclusive contract with Disney and Lucasfilm to develop Star Wars games, I was not enthusiastic to say the least. Sure enough, EA’s first Star Wars game was Battlefront a multiplayer online game with absolutely no single player story driven campaign. It’s followup was Battlefront II which had a middling story campaign but was universally panned for its use of micro-transaction or pay to win gameplay.

It did not help that EA kept making headlines for cancelling several Star Wars games in development that were in development. Things were not looking bright for a genuinely good Star Wars game that wasn’t just a loot hoarding arena game.

“Ya Did Good, EA”

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a game that is developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. And against all the odds and EA’s own track record, it is a single-player only, story driven game with no in-game purchasing transactions. Not only that, it is a melee based style of gameplay and not a shooter. How Respawn was able to push this idea through must have been a miracle and we are all the better for it.

No, Fallen Order is not the greatest game in the world. It is not very revolutionary in gameplay. It is, however, a blast of a game to play. There are a few caveats. You will die. A lot.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order takes place five years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. The player assumes the identity of Cal, a young human working on a scrapyard, breaking down wrecked ships. When he accidentally reveals that he is a Force user, he must get out of Dodge. Unfortunately it’s too late and very quickly (a little too quickly maybe) he has drawn the attention the Empire’s Inquisitors, Force users who hunt on-the-run Jedi.

He is conveniently rescued by Cere and Greez with their ship,the Mantis. They hope that he can use his Force powers to unlock a secret hidden away by Jedi Master Cordova that could lead to the rebuilding of the Jedi Order. Thus begins his journey to find clues to other clues so that will take place across several planets back and forth to basically unlock a vault. The soon learn that the object of the quest is a holocron that contains a list of names and locations of Force sensitive children throughout the galaxy. It’s very reminiscent of the first story arc of the second season of the Clone Wars animated series.

What Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order lacks in complex story, it makes up for in the gameplay and the characters. Cal Kestis’ back story of how he survived Order 66 and the slaughter of the Jedis is very emotional as it is shown in flashbacks. The main villain, known as the Second Sister, has her own tragic story that is a more interesting “good person turned the dark side” character than was done in with Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy. Voice acting is impeccable across the board.

The game itself is not the smoothest experience, though. Armed with only a lightsaber, and Force powers in a skill tree that develops as Cal levels up, action is strictly melee based. If you have played any of the souls type games such as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or especially Sekiro, battles can be quite brutal for the player. These games are known for tough enemies with sprawling maps, but as a concession, you do have the option to reduce the difficulty level of the game.

However, no matter how easy you set the game, it won’t help you when you are often wall running, jumping, climbing, or sliding your way through the different terrains and situations. Grabbing, climbing, and jumping are not as smooth as an Assassin’s Creed or Uncharted game. In fact it can sometimes be downright frustrating. You’ll find yourself falling off cliffs and edges and dying very often.

And as you traverse from planet to planet, it immediately becomes apparent that almost every native animal really hates you and wants to kill you. Seriously, some developer at Respawn must really hate spiders.

Besides the lightsaber focused combat, along the way, Cal will unlock more powerful Force skills. No, teleportation of objects and Force healing are not Force powers (I’m looking at you, Rise of Skywalker!). Your skill tree is ced to push, pull, and lightsaber skills. As you level up, you choose which to become more adept at. Healing is performed in the form of stims provided by your companion droid.

Very early on in the game, you will get a sidekick droid known as BD-1 which not only follows you around hanging on your shoulder but is genuinely helpful. Not only is BD-1 the second cutests and endearing mascot in modern Star Wars (darn you, Baby Yoda). Along the way, not only will it provide health stim injections when you call for them (there is a limit, however), it will point out points of interest that it can scan to level up your experience and also treasure boxes. Don’t get too excited for these loot boxes, though, as most of these boxes only provide cosmetic skin changes to Cal, his lightsaber, BD-1, or the Mantis. Honestly, I did not care or Cal’s pink poncho as one of the skins, but that is just me. But the lightsaber customization is rather cool.

I think the developers may have lost an opportunity here. As Cal traverses the planets with his companions, the other crew members tend to stay behind at the landing site with basic lines such as. “Well, it’s up to you now, we’ll just wait right here while your ass is in danger around every corner.” It would have been nice, evn logical to have some backup on some of the missions.

The game is not perfect, in fact there are points were it is downright clunky. The ability to lower the difficulty level is nice because at higher levels it can be quite brutal. The storyline is not wholly original if you have watched Clone Wars. But it’s a fun ride and a step in the right direction for Star Wars games. Hopefully they can improve on some of the mechanics in the sequel sure to come. But it is a solid game to play and you’ll spend a good 40 plus hours or so in a galaxy far, far, away.

Final Score: 8.5/10

 

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So…Uhm…The Rise of Skywalker

Robert Lee3 Comments

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is not a great movie. It’s not a horrible movie either. It is, however, filled with so much pandering fan-service that it’s as if someone took a tee-shirt cannon filled with Star Wars tees and shot it on full auto into your face. Some folks may love that. I did up until a point. Your mileage may – no, it will – very. It serves its purposes only well enough to close out the Skywalker saga — and for better or worse, that’s the end of that. Now can we get on with telling other stories?

I’m going to keep this as spoiler free as possible which is hard since there is so much going on.

In the opening crawl we are told that supposedly dead Emperor Palpatine is still alive. So the return of the Original Trilogy’s biggest villain is introduced via a Star Wars version of a tweet. Kylo somehow tracks down the hidden secret base of Palpatine. Finn and Poe Dameron are off on a mission in the Millennium Falcon getting information from a mole within the First Order and make a daring escape from a squadron of Tie Fighters. Rey is furthering her training in the forest of some planet that is the current home of the Resistance and Leia is her Jedi trainer. Yet she is still haunted by her connection with Emo Ren — I mean — Kylo Ren, and memories of her parents dumping her. This is in the first few minutes of the movie.

What will follow is revelations that yeah, the Emperor is somehow: alive, cloned, magically resurrected by dark sorcery — take your pick because that’s literally how they explained it. Multiple choice. So, the Emperor is not only alive but it turns out he has his own fleet of ships and army called…are you ready? The Final Order! Dude shows a lack of imagination for sure. But he sure knows how to make conplicated and convoluted evil plans. So in a proposed merger between the First Order and the Final Order, details are worked out. There is literally a boardroom scene where someone asks what can they Sith have to offer in trade.

Rey, decides to go off on her own to go kill Palpatine because I guess being a space sorcerer really doesn’t equate to high IQs. Finn, Poe, Chewie, BB8, and Threepio(?) join her because going alone would be stupid, and because — you know, friendship. But no need to worry about Rey, there will be plenty of moments for her to rush off on her own without her friends. Now in order to get to the Emperor who is on the mythical and of course uncharted Sith homeworld of Exegol, they need a map, and in order to get the map, they must go on a mini-quest. They fulfill the mini quest, but in order to decipher the map, they must go on another mini-quest. And along the way we are introduced to more side characters and land on more planets and we have more cameos of actors who get to brag to their kids they were in a Star Wars movie. This is what happens when you have a generation of screenwriters raised on RPG video games.

In the middle of their mini-quest, we also run in that old smoothy, Lando Calrissian who drops in and points the way towards the film’s maguffin. But playa still has some swagger as he says “Give my love to Leia.” Yeah, dude, I know you’re thinking “What’s up, Princess? I heard Han’s gone now.”

There are chases in the desert and even an escape from a Star Destroyer that looks eerily familiar. Now where have we seen this before? And there are quite a few lightsaber duels, more than in any Star Wars movie to date.

Meanwhile, Rey and Kylo Ren still have that Force bond version of Skype going on and so they continue to troll each other with Kylo trying to turn Rey to the Dark Side and Rey saying she’s gonna destroy the Emperor and that Kylo is still Emo.

The characters and their interactions with each other are genuinely good and especially the trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe. There is genuine sense of chemistry between them. Too bad it took three movies to get them all together on screen. These are all top actors doing the very best they can with the material that they have been given. Richard E. Grant as Fleet Admiral Pryde is quite menacing as a First Order leader and just as Domhnall Gleeson seems most comfortable and least over the top in his roll, it’s the end of the trilogy. And of course Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine stands out as well. This time around they at least got the makeup effects right on him as opposed to that monstrosity of a Halloween mask look he had in Revenge of the Sith. And believe it or not, even Anthony Daniels’ Threepio gets a moment. Too bad that moment was given away in the trailer.

But we must address the presence of Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa. She of course died before filming could start on Rise of Skywalker and through many tricks of editing and writing, she was added into the film from unused footage from The Force Awakens and maybe The Last Jedi. It is not entirely seamless but in the end it works. Carrie’s spirit does seem to haunt the film as every scene that she is in is a focus of our attention whether it is intentional or not. If internet rumors can be believed, and of course we should never doubt internet rumors, Leia’s role Rise of Skywalker was supposed to be major. They did the best they could do with what they had. Should they have totally scrapped the idea and gone without Carrie Fisher in it or write her off in the crawl? I don’t know, the answer to that. But I will say it was done respectfully ad with genuine heart.

John Williams returns for what he has claimed to be his final Star Wars score and he does not hold back as the music is exceptionally grand and lush when it needs to be. No matter what fans may end up feeling about the new Disney movies, I think that we can all agree that John Williams’ scores have always been consistently good.

The script by Chris Terrio and JJ Abrams is exactly would you would expect from one of the writers of Justice League and Batman v Superman. It’s filled with odd choices in narrative and plot threads that were unnecessary. New Force powers are introduced that basically locks these guys into the category of space wizards now. I know it’s just fantasy. But I read enough fantasy books to know that good ones have well thought out magic systems. Why do you think that there are so many Dungeons and Dragons rule books?

Yet somehow it works as big dumb entertainment the same way that Aquaman — or even Godzilla King of the Monsters — works as trash . Because once you start thinking about he film everything falls apart. The action and the character interactions are totally watchable. And that is the main reason to watch it. And on a technical level, the film looks and sounds great. The space battle is massive, yet even though it is bigger, still doesn’t compare to the fleet battle in Return of the Jedi. 

Does Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker make a fitting entry into the series? I guess it does. It hit the story beats it set out to do and hopefully the studio can move on from the heavy baggage of the Skywalker (and Solo) name, because Rogue One and The Mandalorian are both examples of how well Star Wars can be done without that heavy burden. As it is, there is a line in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman where the main character tells Jimmy Hoffa just before his demise “It is what it is.” That phrase and the meaning behind it about sums up Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. 

Final Score: 7.5/10 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯