Finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and… huh
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor started out very fun, but then went into full slog for me. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days since completing it, and have some thoughts.
TL;DR – not an attack on the game, I had some issues with the gameplay, and it didn’t appeal to me as much as the first installment of the series did.
How it feels: Main character: How do you get to the bathroom? Random NPC: Oh you’re going to want to jump up to that platform, then blind jump out across an abyss, force grab a nearly invisible rope, swing on that to the end… you’re going to see a floating wall… just jump over to that, run along it for a spell, there’ll be another wall, jump to that and run on it until it runs out, right there before the infinite drop you’re going to spot a floating buoy you’re gonna need to grapple to that then jump to the next one finally landing on a platform. There’s going to be a floating Pterodactyl looking thingie there and you’re just going to jump up and grab his feet. He’ll glide you to the next platform where you’re going to need to knock down a rock tower that’s stood for hundreds of thousands of years to free a steam vent, grab that second bird looking thing, fly down using the steam as an updraft, land on a platform and slice your way through some tubing, drop down in and you’re there. It’s on the other side of this door that’s locked that your light saber can’t do anything to. Once you’re in there just push the handle and the door will be unlocked forever.
Yes the game is platform puzzles and levelling up to complete them in different ways, but the fact that I can almost dead-run through a level I’ve never seen without stopping to think “how are we going to solve this?” sort of lends me to believe that either I’m a gaming god, or the game was pretty easy. The only challenges on levels tended to be me not being able to see a rope hanging above the abyss, and some jump timing issues.
Throughout the game there is occasionally combat, and it starts out fun learning the timing and watching how Cal dances with the saber. Then you’re introduced to some different saber stances, which have different attack and blocks, and you start to wonder things like “why in this stance using the same lightsaber does it feel like Cal is now fighting with a 6 foot long steel bumper,” “why does he have to hit someone with a sword in order to shoot them in a minute,” “why can these troopers block every double bladed attack but you can stab them straight on?” and more.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the new swordplay, but treating a cross guard stance like he’s swinging a frozen fat python felt wrong for an energy weapon.
Switching scenes and seeing the Mantis dropping into a hanger deck, the realizing the textures haven’t loaded, the story is going and you’re watching as sections of the environment are loading from disk. Multiple times this happened and I wonder how hard is it to maybe just load lower resolution items or perhaps delay the scene switching by half a second or so to make something smooth as opposed to a very jarring transition?
The story? Wasn’t for me. From the first time I saw unnamed character number one I knew what was going to happen. It was telegraphed. The shock was instead met with “saw that coming from first appearance.” Throwing in Vader, that whole scene and fight felt like an attempt to circle right back into the movies rather than branch and build. We got Vader in the first installment, didn’t need him again. He’s not scary, you’re not going to beat him because he’s got plot armor that he’s alive in the future… any fights you know the stakes are… zero.
It was a fun easy enjoyable game that turned slowly into a predictable series of doing the same thing in different rooms and near the end I just was playing to finish it, and that’s sad because there’s a whole rail-driven world here to explore with all the side drama and farming quests and I have little desire to do much more than go in and beat the Rancor.
It’s fun, but buy it used and on physical media so you can get some of your money back if you reach the end and like me felt more relief that it was over than thinking about replaying it.
