Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PlayStation 3) Demo Impressions


Short and sweet kids: I was visiting the new uber Wal-Mart that opened up down the street today looking for new winter gloves (sold out) and furniture (I found my balcony set! And maybe a coffee table/end table set.), but the first thing, the very first thing I noticed is that they had a full fledged supermarket in there.

I don't mean one of those food marts they renovated and tagged onto every other existing Wal-Mart, I mean they built a fully fledged supermarket inside, and I just had to go do some grocery shopping! It was amazing! Low prices, ample selection on every item you could ask for, and the freezers even had motion sensors so that when no one was around, the lights would turn off. Genius!

Oh, and I checked out the electronics section and noticed the demo PlayStation 3 had the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, so I gave it a whirl just to compare since I recently replayed the Xbox 360 version.

People constantly go back and forth over these two consoles and which one is superior, so I was really curious to see how this cross-platform title handled because cross-platform games are the best method of seeing what the consoles can do since you're able to compare the exact same game. With the previous generation, as an example, it was glaringly obvious which version of a cross-platform title was the PlayStation 2 version and which was the Xbox version as the hardware gap between the consoles was rather large. This generation, however, this doesn't seem to be the case, and overall, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was pretty much the same to me.

Control wise, it was the same deal save that the Controller felt different of course, and I personally prefer the Left Stick's placement on the Xbox 360 Controller to the PlayStation 3's, but I had no difficulty pulling off my combos and leaving no witnesses behind.

Visually, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed looked identical save that I didn't notice any v-sync issues; there was no texture tearing at all, which is something I'm noticing more and more of on the Xbox 360 these days across multiple games. That is an overall visual improvement, but a minor one at that and nothing groundbreaking.

Audio wise, the sound was off so I couldn't tell you, but I'm assuming it was the same deal, as there's no reason I could think otherwise.

So just based off of this demo experience, honestly, I didn't notice anything special about the PlayStation 3 version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed that wasn't done on the Xbox 360, save for the lack of v-sync issues, which was again no big deal. It was still the same fun, B game quality experience, and I crushed Stormtroopers. With the Force.

So what does it all mean? If you like the Xbox 360, you'll have a good time with it. If you want a PlayStation 3, go get that instead. Really, don't listen to anyone else and choose which console you like best. They're both capable of some really amazing things, and both platforms are an excellent step in the right direction for gaming.

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