More Bang for Your Buck?

Two games knocked out this weekend. I don't know if I will be able to do that again. It's a weird feeling.

Before this current generation of systems, most video games were released at a $50 price point. When the 360 hit, games went up to $60 each. The PS3 followed suit. That's quite a price increase, $10. No $55 rest stop, just ten smackers extra down.

For $60, you should really get more steak than sizzle. And, sometimes you do. This week, unfortunately, you don't. Or at least, I didn't.

Let's start off with game number one, or what I did on Saturday.

Game Title: Enslaved, Odyssey to the West

Developed By: Ninja Theory

I started the weekend with Ninja Theory's "Enslaved, Odyssey to the West," a post-apocalyptic take on the old Chinese myth "Journey to the West." Now, I'll be honest, most of my knowledge of Journey to the West comes from knowing it was one of the inspirations for Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball" series. Son Goku has a tail, an extending staff, and a flying cloud. All of this is present in Enslaved too, Monkey has a "tail", his staff can shoot plasma bolts, and his has an electronic disk that can skim over certain types of terrain that he calls "Cloud."

In our story, Monkey has been captured by slaving collecting Mechs. Why are they collecting slaves? We don't know. He encounters a young girl named Trip, who's good with technology (hey, it's the "Bulma" character from Dragon Ball) and they narrowly survive escaping the ship slaver ship before it crashes (thanks to some sabotage by Trip). Trip creates a headband that she uses to enslave Monkey, it's tied by her biometric system so if she dies, he dies. She can also kill him if he travels too far away from her.

Thus begins the duos journey through a destroyed New York City, to Trip's village, and into the wasteland beyond to discover exactly what "Pyramid" is.

The game reminded me much of Uncharted with it's beautiful visuals and easy to learn game controls. Having played Ninja Theory's previous PS3 outing "Heavenly Sword" I knew they were no slouches in these departments. The story was interesting, and it kept me wanting to keep playing all day. The only time I grew frustrated was when the level of difficulty seemed to suddenly ramp up from Chapter 5 to Chapter 6.

The voice acting was good, and with Andy Serkis (the actor behind Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies) doing Monkeys mo-cap animation, you can't complain. I also wonder exactly how much time was spent making Trip's butt so perfect (sorry, perv alert).

My biggest complaint was I went through the story in under 10 hours. Pretty much one sitting. I say pretty much, because I played Chapter 1 last weekend to get a feel for the game. I feel a bit cheated that $60 only equated to 10 hours of game play. Sure, there's going back through on Hard and trying to achieve some more trophies, but I'm on a schedule here.

If you're interested in Enslaved, I recommend it for the great game play and gorgeous graphics but suggest waiting until it's dropped to around $30 because of the amount of time it takes to finish.

At least it was 1o hours well spent. Unlike Game 2, or, how I spent Sunday.

Game Title: Star Wars, The Force Unleashed II

Developed By: LucasArts

Here we have a follow up to Star Wars, The Force Unleashed, an enjoyable if albeit buggy outing in the Star Wars Extended Universe. The first game ended with the death of the main character, Starkiller. Yet, here's a sequel, with Starkiller back. How did he survive.

Clones.

Remember a time when there were only three Star Wars movies and the only thing we really knew about clones was that Luke's father and Obi-Wan had fought during the Clone Wars? Now there has been a movie released about it and various spin-offs. The whole clone thing has lost it's mystique in the SW universe, at least for me.

So, here we are, Force Unleashed 2, Vader is on Kamino, at the cloning facility, and here's Starkiller, still alive. Or is he a clone? Or, was the character from the first game the clone. Is Vader pulling the ultimate Jedi Mind Trick on Starkiller? Let's find out.

The game has some improvements over the very buggy first game. I never fell to my death, the jump mechanic had been greatly improved, and I didn't encounter any broken maps or have to restart the game because of bug made a end boss fall out of the screen.

While the game improved on mechanics, it's about half the length of the first game. Four levels is all we gets (Kamino, a Cloud City type place that leads to an arena, Dagobah, a star cruiser, and back to Kamino for the finale). Who cares about the so-so graphics, the okay story, and the improved game play when you can finish the game in under six hours. I've read some reports of 4 hours but I was trying to get some of the trophies for killing Stormtroopers in various fun ways with Jedi Powers so it took me 6. For a blockbuster release like the Force Unleashed 2, that's simply inexcusable for a $60 price tag. This should have been FU 1.5 or some more DLC for $20, not a $60 game. For shame, LucasArts.

The game winds up open-ended to boot and I don't know if I'll be back for a Force Unleashed 3, if and when it is released.

Definitely hold off on this game until it's in the $20 range. It's not worth full price at all.

All-in-all, a productive weekend video game wise but a disappointing weekend due to the length of both games. I feel like for 60 bones each, I should get a little more bang for my buck. However, this time, all I got was a whole lot of sizzle with Force Unleashed 2 and a quick appetizer with Enslaved.

Next Level: Vanquish

Want to know more? http://enslaved.namco.com/ www.lucasarts.com/games/theforceunleashed2/