I didn't even want a day off!

Well, nothing at all achieved today. All Xbox Live services have been off-line all day, as has the XNA website, so no new code today, but lots of new ideas - or rather more detail to existing ideas. I'll actually blog about them tomorrow, because I'm tuckered out and want to get some sleep. Spent most of the day playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and I have to say it's a great game graphically, but the replay value is miniscule. The game is fun enough I guess, but it's so linear in gameplay that I had little or no empathy or sympathy for the characters. The HUD system isn't great either - in a game which, in parts, relies heavily on moving between platforms at different heights you would think it reasonable to have some indication of if you should be heading up or down. Sadly not, although I think I would have finished the game in about 2 hours if that were the case. Bummer.

What I do like about the game is the control model and the way that player moves are always well choreographed in both main action animation and in transition between moves. Really very smooth. Also, the shaders and the texturing are great. And the character kinematics are great. Terrain collisions are a bit frustrating, especially coupled with the flat sector map on the HUD. But my biggest frustration is that for all the obviously excellent code and art, this game is cripplingly limited by the linear storyline, short levels and inability to wander around, maybe coming a en ememy from behind or avoiding them all together. And for all it's intrusion, the story is predictable, underdeveloped, and I could see no reason for most of it aside from providing a segway to the next level. The characters behave unrealistically, their deeper motivations hardly touched on (despite a promising start) and the perrenial Star Wars choppy dialog is everywhere.

I'm hoping that there's more freedom and variation in the online play, which I'll have a look at tomorrow when I take a break from coding. I'll also be migrating my old blog posts from www.mstargames.co.uk to here for the sake of completeness.

I bid you good day sir!