force

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
$19.99
I'm a sucker for all things Star Wars, so I really wanted to love this game. I'd enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic and this was just going to be the same thing, only better, right? Nope.

This game is set in the Star Wars setting we all know and love, and the visual and audio effects for the lightsabers are fantastic, but the gameplay element of the game is absolutely atrocious. It's a bad game, with hideous camera and controls problems that suck all the fun out of playing. You spend more time wrestling the controls than you do slicing and dicing stormtroopers.

First off: targeting. Unbelievably, this game is worse at targeting than Zelda for the N64. Yes, it's that bad. You have no way to control what you are targeting other than facing towards it. No 'cycle through targets' button as is common in other games. This leads to the very common situation of you wanting to force grab or force choke an enemy right in front of you, but the game decides that really you wanted to pick up a box behind the stormtrooper on the complete opposite side of the room.

Dodging: Also worse than in Zelda. It's so bad that it's almost unmanageable. In order to dodge, you have to have an enemy targeted, much like Zelda. However, instead of simply 'locking on', you have to hold down R1 forever, as long as you want to have the enemy targeted. This quickly becomes unmanageable with the number of other buttons you have to hold down for lengths of time, such as R2 to grab. And you have to push the joystick, and L1, and still be holding R1 to dodge. Ridiculous.

And the game seems extremely sluggish and inconsistent in reacting to your commands. I had gotten used to the precision and speed with which the game reacted in Drake's Fortune or Assassin's creed. Here half the time, your 'double jump' command doesn't even execute the double jump. This is a shocking flaw, given that Super Smash Brothers for the Nintendo 64 managed the double jump flawlessly.

The platforming sections of this game are atrocious. It would have been much better if they had been left out entirely. Prince of Persia this is not. It's not even Drake's Fortune. It's just a clumsy, inelegant, imprecise mess. You can't have a platforming game without ledge grab, yet this is precisely what this game does. There are far too many 'one way slippery ledge to death' situations. Remember the sands of time in Prince of Persia which let you rewind? Yep, no such thing here. Instead, you get to start over at the nearest checkpoint. And it's usually not obvious which ledge you can safely land on and which one you cannot before you leap. Terrible design flaw. Especially given the fact just the merest nudge sends the character plummeting off to one side...in fact, just the forward momentum of executing lightsaber combos can send him hurtling off the edge. This is a terrible design decision. If you use attacks and get to close to the ledge in real platforming games, the character grabs on and doesn't fall. The platforming here is as bad as it was in the original 2D Prince of Persia, and that's saying a lot. The designers wanted to get cute with making you use your force powers to lower ledges you could jump onto, but the whole thing is terrible.

It's not made any better by the camera. They're trying to provide a nice cinematic experience, by zooming the camera out and putting it in a fixed position in many key scenes. Sometimes it works great. More often, it's an absolute mess. Frequently you cannot see your character at all, being hidden behind a protrusion or even by the body of the person you are fighting. It's like the tested half the fights to get the right camera angles and just made poor guesses for the other half. Having a triple A title like this with camera issues where you literally can't even see your character is unforgivable. The inability to easily see what is around you is also bad given the area of effect attacks several monsters launch, where a spot on the ground begins to glow and if you are standing near it after a set amount of time, it explodes and you take damage. It's entirely possible to be near enough one of these spots to be hit, but it doesn't show up in your field of vision. Indeed, the game seems to take delight in arranging the camera angle so this occurs.

Oh, and that leads us to another unforgivable omission, one I thought the games design industry had long ago accepted as standard (but Force Unleashed is a step back in so many ways). You cannot skip cutscenes. This is abominable, especially given how many cutscenes there are, often some right before a tricky platforming session or boss battle you must watch over and over again each time. The cutscenes are visually impressive, but I don't want to have to watch them half a dozen times. Speaking of cutscene failures, there are cases where a cutscene is split. There's a custcene, then you can control your character for a half second, including taking damage from foes, then it goes right back to the continuation of the cutscene. I can't believe this is intended, and it's a rather glaring flaw.

But the biggest flaw in the entire game is the abomination of Raxus Prime. This is literally one of the 5 worst levels I have ever played. The color palette is painful to the eyes, and the level design is insipid and uninspired. Raxus Prime is supposed to be the 'junk pile' world, so there' just random heaps of black and yellow debris everywhere, funneling you down a narrow linear path. The colors are atrocious, it looks like someone vomited over a pile of chewed up legos. Everything is just a kaledeiscope of yellow and black, near objects, distant objects, ledges you can hold onto, ledges that just send you to your death...there's no real discrimination or attempt to draw a visual contrast between important elements and the background. Moreover, this level is home to one of the absolute no-nos of gaming...a mini-boss battle without a save point afterwards. Combined with the aforementioned terrible platforming, compounded by the uniform black and yellow vomit pattern of Raxus Prime, it means you may have to repeat a boss battle two or even three times if the game's jumping engine betrays you.

Even navigating the menus is an exercise in tedium and frustration. Each and every click you make takes you to another 'loading' screen before the submenu shows up. I've never seen this before and it really slows things down and breaks up the flow of play.

In short, this game is a major, major disappointment. The visuals (aside from Raxus Prime) are superb, the soundtrack, blaster sounds, lightsaber hum, are all terrific. But the gameplay is severely lacking almost across the board. If, like me, you loved KOTOR and are looking for more of the same, don't bother. Watch the movies again instead. Or find a friend who has played the game already and get him to show you the unlocked cinematics. Don't waste your money or time on this one.

Invicta Men's Force Flight Multifunction Stainless Steel Watch #5747
$395.00
Listen i have the all black version of this watch. Its cool looking, slightly heavy, but i like it. I don't work for any watch companies or anything like that. just a regular guy who thought this watch was cool. the markings for the slide rule may be of slightly but not noticeable unless you are actually trying to use it. its been two weeks and the novelty has not worn off yet. but its not a very expensive watch so hey... i'm sure if you buy it you'll be satified....

I cant complain!

Irresistible Forces (Thorndike Press Large Print African American Series)
$30.95
I enjoy reading romances and erotic romances. I say that to let you know I'm a fan of the genre and give the authors a lot of latitude before calling a book awful. But, this I could not like or finish. The writing was too stiff and mechanical. I guess the erotic scenes could be considered hot but if you can't feel the characters doing the mattress gymnastics, it ain't very exciting. You know how some movies are terribly written but star one of your favorite actors who elevate the script and make it enjoyable? Well, this book was like a bad movie with bad acting: bad all the way around. Some of the diaglogue could have been more fun if the characters weren't so flat. When the hero said, "Now I give you my baby" just as he prepares to flood the heroine with love juice, well that was just too ridiculous, too unromantic, too robotic.

I really wish the writer could loosen up and let the characters flow. She's got the goods with a fun plot and fun characters and good handling of love scenes but when it all comes together it's flat, plodding and unentertaining.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
$19.99
the visuals are stunning throughout the game's entirety. after the first few levels all of the fights are completely repetitive. there was a major glitch in one level the first time i went through it and because i didn't know about it, i spent about five hours trying to complete a simple mission. when i went through the second time, though, there was no problem. gameplay is very simple throughout