From Gametrailers


Oh wow. I am really in awe at how well these people "get it". How to handle a big, all-platform IP, how to implement Wii motion sensitivity, the style of gameplay you should have on a portable platform, how to get the most out of the PS2, how to respectfully put new content to an existing setting. It all looks like it is done just right. Between this, the new Indiana Jones game and Fissure, LucasArts could very well making a very big resurgence in the next year or so. I can't see myself getting any less than two versions of this game in all honesty. I am a SW nut so I was always going to get this so long as it wasn't offensively bad or I deemed it somehow sacrilegious to the existing source material, but what we seem to have get is God of War with a lightsaber and force powers (it even has red orbs coming off dead enemies!) That is to say an empowering romp through hoards of weak enemies, enough that they can hurt you, but no so many that you can't tear them all apart before that can happen, and topped off with more challenging and even more satisfying boss battle. I should probably acknowledge that this reaction may partially be fanboy optimism and excitement at seeing something shiny and move on.

It was at the last (and sadly I really do mean last) GDC London that I first saw what would become Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. We didn't have any details on the story, which itself is pretty compelling and seems to be aiming to repeat the success of the "Everything but the movie" approach taken by the Shadows of the Empire project.

What we were shown(a similar presentation can be seen here) was an impressive new engine, a combination of tried and true Havoc physics (used well, thankfully, I'm sure a lot of us are tired of seeing it clumsily tacked on) Digital Molecular Matter, which simulated the behaviours of materials , and NaturalMotion's Euphoria animation engine, the part I will probably gush the most over.

So what are these things and what makes me think it's so important they have been brought together like this? I'm sure most gamers already know of Havok, pretty much top-dog where it comes to physics engines, games with even the most trivial use of any kind of physic simulation seems to use it, especially when ragdoll is needed (in so far as it is ever needed)

Euphoria has quickly become quite a big deal, we will be seeing it in GTA4 soon, and is a way to dynamically animate within a game. It is used to simulate a character's body and animate it on the fly rather than use pre-made animations, meaning it can perform actions that would have used a single animation and look a little different each time. When walking, the feet will land appropriately on uneven ground, and the arms can brush against things. In terms of gameplay this does nothing but potentially look cool, but when you consider the engine is causing characters to try and keep their balance, more potential emerges. An example was shown of Indiana Jones stood on a rope bridge, which the demonstrator could jiggle, or throw rocks at him. As the bridge moved, Indy shifted his balance and even grabbed at the hand-ropes, and I have read that GTA 4 will include a section where you must fight to keep balance as you walk home drunk. Not that this sort of thing can't be done without dynamic animation, but it makes what you see quite a lot more 'real', makes the characters behave like they really are part of the world they are seen in.

One of the most apparent uses of Euphoria, certainly in TFU, is the way it replaces conventional ragdoll. Characters can be knocked down into a heap, but then roll over and get back up, without a jarring shift into the first frame of a fixed animation, and they can use parts of their environment to help them get up. Further, characters will try to stop themselves falling by grabbing for support from surrounding objects, even other characters. It all seems together and makes AI characters seem more 'alive'.

Add to this the Digital Molecular Matter and you should have something that simulates just about everything in the world as we see it. The people and the objects within it react against each other appropriately, as can the player. It might not be a huge step forward in gameplay, most of what it does can be done with potted animation, but it just won't look as good. Part of what makes a game rewarding and fun can just be what you see in it, even if the player does not need to act against it.

Should I be concerned that I think it's so cool that technology is coming about that allows for better simulation of corpses being thrown through things?

Oh, and Gametrailers? Less of the RAS Syndrome please?

AJM

I have been looking forward to No More Hero's for over a year now, longer than I have owned (and sadly often neglected) my Wii. Whilst it was made clear in the first EDGE article about it that this would not be the Wii Lightsaber game many envisaged when they first saw the Wii Remote, it would at least offer a well-thought out Remote-driven control scheme for the combat, rather than mapping the the entire movement of the Remote to the weapon in game (which I can imagine being exhausting and challenging for both developers and players). And not only does the game star a trendy lightsaber-swinging Japanophile geek, but a trendy lightsaber-swinging Japanophile geek who gets to do Tiger Drivers on people. Suda 51 appear to have placed a great emphasis on wish-fulfilment here, aimed at a particular target audience, the hardcore gamers that saw the gameplay potential of the Wii. Though the game may very well have been possible, sans Remote-swinging, on the other consoles, it probably would attract attention only as “the game from that fellow who did Killer 7”, whilst here it can be a game driven by it's control method.

It is worth pointing out that I played Killer 7 once and returned it, finding just about everything about it uncomfortable. This did not stop me being excited for NMH for as long as I have known of it. My only regret right now is not knowing the Wii FreeLoader would be coming when I ordered my European version of the game, rather than importing a gory American copy. I know it's a bit philistine but I really liked the aesthetic of the US version with it's Hong Kong movie blood fountains and enemies being split lengthways, rather than all bursting into (albeit stylish) clouds of coins.

This is not a game to be over-thought, a point the game makes itself a number of times. Though a story is present, it is gleefully and deliberately glossed over, with the forth wall-breaching Travis telling us that gamers tend to have short-attention spans, so lets contend ourselves to swing a lightsaber around and kill some cool-looking bad guys. Travis fights because he wants to be the top assassin, make some money to feed his geeky habits and potentially get laid, and later because he really has little other choice if he want to live himself, and later it becomes just the thing he does, without giving it much though, as is the case of his opponents that are not simply insane. It is both strange and amusing that a game that makes a point of minimising plot can provoke so much thought about it, as evidenced by Cowzilla3's brilliant blog on the matter. Really, the story is only there to give the game a start (how and why Travis started fighting up the UAA ranks) a middle (why he had to continue to do so) and an end (I will leave that a secret for anyone who hasn't played yet) rather than have the game arbitrarily stop at a given point.

The gameplay has always been the big focus of the game, namely through it's control scheme tailored for the Wii Remote. Basic movement, camera and attack controls won't be difficult for anyone, but where the game stands out is it's use of the motion sensitive remote and nunchuck. Tilting the remote will switch between making high and low attacks, and besides an optional special attack activated by a shake of the nunchuck, this is the only part it plays in regular play. Controller gestures also drive deathblows against weakened enemies and wrestling moves on stunned ones, which makes them much more satisfying than if you just pressed a button, perhaps because they are more involved that just hitting the A button as you do most of the time, and because the motion can be seen to be reflected somewhat by the action on screen, making it more involving. You can get by with the basic guarding and attacking methods, getting stuck in straight away, but you will certainly be encouraged to pick up evasion techniques and mix strike and grab attacks into your combos to make life easier.

Motion detection is also used for a number of mini-games such as using dumbbells at a gym and flicking litter into a bin on your back. All these games seem well thought out and do not require you to do them for too long , and are optional so people that find them gimmicky need not worry about them too much (fortunate since a couple of them are pretty lousy). However completing most of these tasks at least once will be advisable for most players wishing to progress, as they unlock the stuff you are really playing for, a metaphor for doing what you must before you can do what you love.

I must take issue with a couple of attempts at motion detection use though, I have no problem with Wii Sport Baseball but I have hit the ball twice in all my attempts at the baseball minigame here, and twisting the remote to make sharp turns on the bike seems very unwieldy.

No More Heroes is a game that focuses very much on it's boss battles, everything else is a lead in or preparation for that. Whilst they are all fun experiences in their different ways, I found it annoying that that most of the time, even when they were committed to a convoluted attack animation, they are invincible, your weapon making a load clanging noise as it hits them, and they only become vulnerable after completing their attack. What's
more, it seems you can rarely get more than two or three hits on them at a time, save for openings and speed boosts generated by using the dodge move. Travis refers to the other Assassins as "his own kind", so this seems like they should appear to play more like him, guarding against attacks and trying to find openings. It is probably just me, but I don't really like how all the boss fights end with a regular slash move (I'm not sure it's even possible to finish them off with a grab attack), which is followed by gameplay stopping and a cut scene showing the end of the battle. I would have liked some motion-driven interactivity like you get when killing grunts. I think the use of what are basically quick time events would be excusable here, how about following the screen instructions to deliver the final series of slashes to deliver the wounds we see in the NIM? Or a special and more sofisticated wrestling finisher? It's a smallish detail, but I think they missed a trick.

It's unfortunate that the main game seems a little lacking variety outside the ranked assassin characters. Whilst the bosses all have characterful designs and attacks, there really only seems to be one basic enemy type through the whole game, they just keep showing up in different clothes depending on the level. Though they may carry swords, knuckledusters, sledgehammers or street signs, these don't really seem to make them behave differently, they attack with the same speed and power and reach, are around the same hight and build. I think I could have done with the big slow guys that take loads of damage, and the nippy little guys that can be hard to hit, just to mix things up a bit, even if only at a basic level. I have a short attention span after all. Add to this that there are only a handful of combat-based side-mission in even fewer locations, and it won't take long until you may feel you have seen everything outside of the main part of the game

Since Travis is supposed to be an assassin himself, I think there should have been optional side missions to dispatch additional boss characters for more cash. These need not be as powerful or characterful as the ranked assassins, but it would give Travis something appropriate to do beside wade through more identical grunts. I would also have liked a little more customisation of the Beam Katanas available. I like that each has it's own style, one being more like a club whist another is like a traditional katana, each only has two upgrade parts, on for power and one to increase the battery.

It seems strange that a game that has had so much attention paid to it's presentation, such as it's retro game-style GUI and stylised characters seems so bland in other regards. The same J-Pop song plays in every single shop in the game (even in that of the engineer of Travis's Beam Katana weapons, who chides Travis for being an otaku whilst apparently wearing a cosplay outfit) which is perhaps nitpicking but a little boring.

Though Cowzilla3 made a point about it in his blog, I can't help but think Santa Destroy could have and should have been made a little more interesting, especailly with the efforts made to make everything else look cool, such as the neat fade-in and -out effects the cover loads and 3D versions of retro-style game icons marking things. Much of it looks very bland, and the places you actually need to go (besides to look for bins to open for hidden shirts and the Lovikov Ball items) seem quite spread out. Certainly it could have done with more pedestrians and traffic, but that could be a hardware issue, as I suspect the poor draw distance and pop-up problems are (I have actually crashed because objects appeared too late for me to avoid them) There is also some problems with the camera, especially in confined spaces where Travis may be left off screen, and most annoyingly when it switches from fixed camera to chase camera, as it does every time you leave Travis's room, sending you back up the stairs you just went down as it shifts. It is, at least, a non-children's game that goes for a stylised look rather than generic 'realism'. Again, almost certainly a hardware constraint anyway, but it is done with aplomb. Besides all the wonderful character designs, on of my favourite visual features is the effect of the Beam Katana's. Rather than blur in the way you would expect a lightsaber or glowstick to if swung, the beam leaves an after image, the way such an effect would be achieved in a 16 bit game of olde.

The fruit machine mechanic activated on using the deathblow mode to kill an enemy seems underutilised. For one you can't get it outside of the levels leading to the ranked assassins, and the Anarchy In The Galaxy result never came up in my first play through. At the same time, when you do get one, it may be at an inopportune time, such as when you kill the last enemy in the area and have to move through a door, loosing the reward immediately. One example I can across saw me win the special projectile attack mode, only to find no more enemies were around and there was a box I could not open until the mode wore off, since I couldn't target the attack on the vertically at all, so I couldn't open it even stood next to it. Still, the Cranberry Chocolate Sundae mode, besides being the funniest to hear being yelled in anger by Travis, is a very neat feature, that lets you brutalise grunts with impunity, whilst challenging you to get the most from it by matching the required buttons quickly.

I actually feel a little guilty complaining about lack of variety and a mostly bland game world, since given the points made in Cowzilla3's post maybe this is the exact way Suda wanted it to be. Certainly it didn't stop me playing, and I didn't get so bored that I put it down for any great length of time before completing it, and maybe that proves his point. Maybe if I had my way the game would become overcomplicated and loose some of it's charm. In spite of the games flaws, Suda should be applauded for making a game that has a simple, undemanding joy to it, and which utilises the hardware as well as I have seen so far. He made a gamble by putting a game aimed at an older audience on the kid and casual gamer-centric Wii in order to implement the style of gameplay he wanted. Hopefully it will pay off, since his is an attitude that should be encouraged, if not by Japan, then at least by the western markets.

The only way I can think to sign off here is to thank Suda, Grasshopper and anyone who made this game possible, it shows that whilst games are not obliged to be art, they certainly can be, and for all the flaws I have tried to highlight here, I love the game dearly, it has validated my decision to buy a Wii.

AJM