PixelVixen707

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Spore were no mere “blockbusters.” The most hyped game of the year and the decade, respectively, they strolled in on a red carpet rolled out by the fanboy press, the E3 gawkers, even A-list magazines like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. We were promised nothing less than Wii-like proof of the reach, the maturity and the awesomeness of our medium.

And then they shipped. And they were perfectly, awesomely average.

Spore promised a true successor to The Sims, a validation of user-generated content, a rigorous simulation, and an endlessly wacky cryptozoo-sim with fungal cars and cock-snout beasts. Spore delivered it all - packaged in a choppy, unsatisfying experience.

The game is fundamentally at war with itself. As explained by lead designer Alex Hutchinson, the game was supposed to divide into three equal parts: create, share, and play – and by play, they mean survive. If this is truly a storytelling toy, it should offer a safe environment in which to create; instead, every time the terraforming muse hits, you have to keep pausing to stop pirates and pay bribes to bigger, angrier empires. And there are dozens of lesser disconnects. The science sort of works - natural selection is crucial, at least in the single-cell stage – but wherever it doesn’t fit the game design, it’s dropped. And the difficulty ratchets up unexpectedly and irrationally from stage to stage until you’re left master of your corner of the galaxy, with nothing to do but pursue a ridiculous endgame just to see the ending.

And why is the ending so silly? We know designer Will Wright errs cute – his cameo in The Simpsons Game was chuckle-worthy – but the big secret at the center of the galaxy is a mis-giggle. You can only see it by wasting hours struggling through a 3-D maze while an indefatigable enemy swarms you like wasps that were stung by hornets, and when you get to the end … well, if you want a spoiler, watch it yourself. There are traces of Douglas Adams here, with his knack for reducing the majesty of the universe to a gimmick or a cabaret show. But Adams was mocking the humans who missed life’s miracles; the miracles themselves, he had the sense to leave alone.

I could spend pages on the many little things that bugged me about Spore, but let’s change gears to a simpler game: The Force Unleashed. LucasArts broke out all their PR Mind Tricks for this one. From the Digital Molecular Matter to the sophisticated AI behind every flailing, tortured stormtrooper, the tech behind this game was said to be unparalleled. Project Lead Haden Blackman promised we would “kick ass” with the Force. Let the testosterone fly!

Turns out, the game’s biggest moments fall flat. Shooting lightning from my fingertips and flinging crates at droids are distracting, but for the most part, you’ve seen it all before – especially the bugs. I was surprised, however, to uncover something they never advertised: a story that gripped me, and a hero I cared about.

On paper, the hero of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed would be the same brooding dude you’ve steered through hundreds of snoozer shooters from the Halos on down. These are men who work alone. They have rough pasts, brusque manners, and no need for company, aside from the soothing lady whispering primary objectives past their earlobes. But watching this character struggle under the corrupt “fatherhood” of Darth Vader made me truly pity him: he was horribly alone, and struggled on anyway. I was rooting for him all the way to the end, and near the end, I suspected I was watching a tragedy – but I still hoped for a happy ending.

I’ve said before I’m no fan of Star Wars. But Lucas choked out one well-written, grown-up film, The Empire Strikes Back. It’s the darkest story: Luke makes bad choices for noble reasons. He sees the power of the Force and comes close to abusing it. In the Secret Apprentice’s journey, The Force Unleashed borrows a lot from The Empire Strikes Back. The big moments are too big. But the dark moments are sadder. If only they could’ve hyped that on the box.

One last thing about hype. In some of my writings, I’ve criticized the whole practice of talking up a game before anyone’s actually gotten their paws on it. Yet we always fall for hype, and for a good reason: we’re looking for a sure bet in the erratic output of pop culture. We can forgive swings in quality: even great artists drop duds or take wrong turns. But the one thing we think we can count on is vision.

You can argue forever whether game designers are artists. But the best of them are visionaries. Their vision guides dozens of teammates and millions of dollars. A product with all the possibilities of a piece of software rarely has a thesis, but its vision informs everything from the combat to the cutscenes to the collectibles. You should see their fingerprints on assets that they never even saw for themselves.

Neither Spore nor The Force Unleashed have a vision. The Force Unleashed gulps testosterone shots and pastes hair to its chest, then quietly tugs your heartstrings. Spore is three concepts and five games hacked together with no point at the end of the tunnel: you can imagine gigantic fights across the development team, when all along we thought Will Wright – the second-greatest living game designer - would first of all have a vision, and second, bring it to bear. We waited all this time for a Will Wright game: I don’t even know what we got instead.

So, as a wise man once said: don’t believe the hype.

Unless you’re talking about Valve.