So apparently there are a lot of games coming out next year…

Including, but not limited to:

• Halo: Reach
• Starcraft II
• Bioshock 2
• Crackdown 2
• The Force Unleashed II

Fortunately, I am only going to have a full-time job next year, so finding time to play video games doesn’t really concern me that much.  I’ll find a way.

What concerns me more is that last game on the list.  Please note that if you haven’t played The Force Unleashed before, and you don’t want to find out how it ends, then stop reading right now and go find something better to do on the Internet.  Surely your Facebook news feed has something new on it by now.

I was initially very pumped about the prospect of The Force Unleashed; the game looked like something original and a welcome departure from the previous Dark Forces/Jedi Knight line of FPS games and the sorry attempt to put Jedi combat back in for Battlefront II.  There’s nothing I like more than cutting my way through hordes of helpless enemies, but unfortunately The Force Unleashed is little more than a button masher; I’ve played through it twice now, beginning to end, and I still couldn’t tell you which combination of buttons to push to get the really cool lightsaber moves.  My advice: mash any combination of buttons you feel appropriate until it does what you want, but bear in mind that you’ll probably wind up linking so many different attacks you’ll never remember which set of buttons got you that one, really cool move.

The levels were alright if not difficult to navigate, and there were genuinely fun parts to it, but what really hacked me off about the first game was that God-forsaken Star Destroyer stunt that took forever.  I’d much rather have watched that in the form of a cutscene than earn it.

All that aside, I’d be ready and willing in a heartbeat to give The Force Unleashed II a try, but I’m having difficulty getting past the fact that at the end of the first one, the hero dies.  As in dead and no longer living.  Not simply mortally wounded or stranded on some fragment of a spaceship billions of lightyears away, but dead, regardless of which final battle you chose.  While I’m curious to know which magical twist LucasArts has dreamed up to revive said hero, at the end of the day, it’s going to be hard selling the resurrection of a guy who died on the Death Star in front of the Emperor, period, and bringing characters back so you can cash in on another game just reeks of laziness.  Bungie managed to release a brand new, full-priced add-on to Halo 3 that didn’t require the resurrection of anybody, and they did it in one year.  LucasArts will have had 3.  Come on guys, get it together.