May the Force Weekend

As I mentioned in my previous post I actually had nothing scheduled during the Bank Holiday Weekend. what made this one particularly good was that it also coincided with the made up holiday of May 4th, aka May the Fourth Be With You. In other words, an excuse to immerse oneself in Star Wars content over 4 days.

Not only did the excellent Maul - Shadow Lord series conclude its first season but also as usual there was a range of discounts for the various Star Wars games out there. I took this opportunity to pick up a couple of classics I didn't have as well as start playing some others that I had previously acquired.

I finally got The Force Unleashed for the Switch, which is a remaster of the Wii version. TFU had multiple versions, but the main two being the HD versions for Xbox 360 and PS3 and then the Wii version which had the obvious motion controls (which made perfect sense) as well as being put together by Krome Studios instead. This means that this version has quite a different look because the assets are literally created by a different team. However, they worked closely with the core team at LucasArts so aside from some changes here and there the overarching game is essentially the same.

Aspyr - who worked on this Switch remaster - have got a lot of flack of late. Mostly for whatever went down with the Knights of the Old Republic remake and also for the buggy Battlefront Legacy Collection remaster. However, the remaster for TFU does what it needs to do. It runs well and looks good when displayed on a 4K TV (just to be clear, it's not running at 4K or upscaled to 4K). Sure, the lightsaber control is a bit waggley, and the quick time events don't do the best job of using the motion controls, but I'm enjoying it especially considering I somehow never got round to playing a version of it all those years ago.

The other game I picked up was Battlefront Classic, the original from 2004. This is also the GOG version which has been updated slightly so that this PC version actually works properly with a controller. Unlike the Steam version which has not received this update. I'm actually playing this on a Steam Deck via Heroic Launcher and it works perfectly. So, if GOG have their own version, I would recommend getting that version.

Talking of GOG, I also a little while ago added Bounty Hunter remaster to my library for free (I think via Prime Gaming). This is another Aspyr remaster that was criticised, but I can't see why? This is a remaster, there is only so much you can change without going into remake territory. Plus, the new control scheme is much better than the original. I'm no longer finding I am fighting them. Although I am still fighting with the level design. This is something designed to give an almost faux open level design, when really it's just masking exploring the same area. Aside from this, the visuals are updated enough and it runs flawlessly on the Steam Deck. Getting 60FPS with very low TDP (energy usage essentially). The only thing I wish they could have somehow added was a save system to go along with the checkpoints. If you die, you go back to the checkpoint, which is good. But, you only have 5 lives, which is bad. What is worse is that if you decide to quit, then you have to start from the start of the level again.

The other thing I discovered was how poor the current Steam and GOG versions of Battlefront 2 deals with gamepad controllers. In short, they don't. Steam does try and help and the templates available making it playable, but it's far from ideal. I did have a copy I purchased years ago on my GOG account that initially I couldn't get working on the Steam Deck, so for £2 I thought it was worth a shot. In the end it just wasn't enjoyable without keyboard and mouse so I refunded it after spending an hour trying to get it to feel right.

Later I did get the GOG version to work on Steam Deck, had to first open it via Heroic in desktop mode before then opening it in "Big Picture Mode". However, for now, unless it's updated, will have to use keyboard and mouse.

It was a fun weekend of just trying out different things on my Switch and mostly on my Steam Deck. Plus playing these older games helps me to see where there have been improvements in things like level design but also where there are some things from the past we could revisit or learn from.