Ultimate Sith Edition: PC Version Reviews Thread (SPOILERS)
 

Okay, as you all know, the PC version of TFU "Ultimate Sith Edition" ("USE" for short) was Nov 3, and the Mac Version was released Nov 23.

Update: New Reviews, thanks to Metacritic:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat...atesithedition

The game has earned a "meta" critical score of 65 out of 100 "mixed or average reviews" from the ones quoted below (Based on 17 critic reviews). They gave it a 5.2 "user score" but it is only based on 52 votes (and doesn't count in the meta critic score). The page now has the text of the "user reviews" on the page.

(Note, I just quoted summaries, click the link above to find links to the full reviews)

Quote:

What The Critics Said All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. 78 GameStar More than a year after the console versions, the Ultimate Sith Edition arrives for PC. The game suffers from problems with controls and balance and because it’s a quite linear game. But it’s Star Wars, nicely presented, with great atmosphere and new missions. And that’s more important in this case. 77 PC Format Gives you all the power in the Star Wars universe, but it takes away your opposable thumbs in the process. [Jan 2010, p.85] 75 Game Over Online I’ve played worse Star Wars games, way worse, but I’ve also played better ones. This one falls solidly in the middle of the pack. 75 SpazioGames Star Wars: The Force Unleashed arrived with a one year delay on a PC, but nevertheless does not introduce any major news, except for an additional level and two unedited seen on consoles. The graphics are suffering from a bad optimization and feels the weight of years, although on balance is sufficient and is gifted of a great physics engine for the simulation of the Force. As for the gameplay, despite the repetitiveness is feels, the fun that can give handle a lightsaber and use the Force, balances the all. Moreover, thanks to a good storyline the atmosphere of Saga was returned faithfully. Also remain unchanged all the defects of the control system imprecise and at times frustrating already seen a year ago on the console. Ultimately, despite the myriad of action securities much more attractive and "new" published in recent months, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a good title. Recommended to fans of the saga. 75 IGN It doesn't fix or change anything in the original game - it just gives you a few more levels and some new skins. If you don't already have the game, give it a look. If you do, you might just want to go the DLC route. 72 GameZone Given the emphasis on storytelling and single-player action, The Force Unleashed is tragically flawed execution of a great concept. 71 Gamers.at The gameplay doesn't really satisfy me, but what's worse are the technical issues. Still, the game has its moments and can be great fun because of the story and the force powers. 62 Multiplayer.it The same game we played one year ago, with some bonus contents and a lack of polishing that makes this version the worst one. 62 PC Zone UK A series of spectacularly presented levels. [Feb 2010, p.68] 60 Total PC Gaming Only casual types will enjoy up to its conclusion. [Issue#28, p.54] 60 Absolute Games The Ultimate Sith Edition additions are nice, but nothing special. In fact, the same can be said about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as a whole. 60 PC Gamer Mediocre. [Jan 2010, p.80] 60 LEVEL (Czech Republic) Strict linearity kills all fun in this yet-another-untold-story from Star Wars universe. Nice physics features soon become boring and Kratos can sleep at his throne undisturbed. [Issue#186] 52 Digital Chumps The force was unleashed on this game alright, it just happened to be the dark side of the force. The controls seemed to have been programmed by Darth Vader himself. 50 Cheat Code Central A plentiful amount of technical bugs and lazy development for the platform make for a frustrating experience despite there being a fun game buried beneath. 50 GameSpot A slapdash porting job turns the Force into a farce in this Star Wars action game. 50 Cheat Code Central A plentiful amount of technical bugs and lazy development for the platform make for a frustrating experience despite there being a fun game buried beneath.

Please post your personal reviews and any reviews you find on the net, with comments if you like!

Remember this is for the PC VERSION OF THE GAME ONLY. We already have a sticky thread for the console versions. (If you want to post reviews of the CONSOLE versions, try this thread instead).

To start off, I read that IGN gave it a 7.5 out of 10.

Here is a review given by a youtube user by the name of Skyburnbright (using a review copy, from Oct 31st):

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdgErSDrII (with gameplay footage)


PS: As you can see, this person posted her/her PC specs. That will be helpful if you're doing your own review, as we can get an idea of the overall performance.

Here's the spoilerific IGN video companion to their review (contains info on the PC as well as other USE editions):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo6YtIrx8b4

The game has absolutely no multiplayer on PC.

Did they add modding/editing tools?

No they did not.

A new review from GamingHeaven (CONTAINS SPOILERS) http://www.gamingheaven.net/gamingre...p?reviewid=844

N4G gives it 80/100 (not much of a review, just a description really):

http://www.n4g.com/pc/News-423059.aspx

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No official modding tools, but this guy figured a way to hack your character model:

http://forums.lucasarts.com/thread.j...40841&tstart=0

Looks like you can change your blade color too, but that might already be in the game (Edit: it is, you just have to "unlock" crystals that let you change the color).

I was always expecting a half-a**ed console-to-PC port, seeing as it's coming from Aspyr, who always does a botched job with Mac ports, but I never knew that it would be this bad of a port. The lack of advanced graphical features is even more disheartening, seeing as TFU could inherently have a lot more performance potential over consoles when running on a PC.

To be honest, it's this sort of apathetic treatment of PC ports is what is hurting PC gaming.

That said, I'm not sure what is WORSE about this than the Xbox360 version.
I mean, no features are MISSING, right?

It's just that the PC is CAPABLE of much more, and they haven't given that to us.

Though I guess hacking the files is a plus (and low detail mode will help people like
me with ancient PCs), even if so far we can only change a few character
models/textures.

That's right Kurgan.

CNET gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars here.


Gamespot FINALLY posted their review (5.0, mediocre out of 10):

HERE.

Quotes:

Note that Gamespot usually recycles a lot of their review material, but take it for what it's worth.

Also, Metacritic is posting a list of reviews:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat...atesithedition

Reviews have started to appear on Amazon.com

Note that there is an official PATCH out now which may affect people's opinions (it's a big download at over 400 mb). (Thanks to Nestortight for bringing this to our attention!)

New reviews from metacritic...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat...atesithedition

I bought the German version about two weeks ago and I think it's overall a nice game. I don't even mind playing it with keyboard and mouse although a gamepad would make combos easier to pull off I guess. What I don't like are the requirements. I got Resident Evil 5 in August wich has kind of equal visual quality I'd say, and there isn't the slightest problem with it. TFU crashes about one time per hour and playing with characters like Vader or Fisto is slowing the game down (probably 'cause of the capes and robes). Oh I play it on a Core to Dual (2x 3.2 Ghz) with 2 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 8600 GT. My soundcard is onboard wich is a problem too (not only in this game). So I kind of have the minimum requirements and overall runs pretty good and even looks ok at 800x600 (RE 5 is playable for me at 1400x900 btw). So if I let the crashes and sound problems out of sight: It's a nice game but it could have used some more time to get rid of the problems.

Here are some of the "user reviews" people posted on Metacritic's page if people are interested:

Negative:
Positive:
You guys should submit yours!

Have you installed the patch for it? And if so, do you have the High Detail ticked? In your case I would try having it unticked to use Low Detail to see how it fares, unless you're doing that already. 2GB RAM with the 8600 GT should be fine, though I've always felt that 2GB for games like this (despite the GPU) is never enough...especially on Vista. They should quote 3GB RAM minimum.

Already have :thmbup1:

http://www.lucasforums.com/showpost....2&postcount=25

Another thing I'll add, Darth Maul's expressions are spot on in this, on the PS3 I couldn't really see any motion expression. Also, Anakin Skywalker looks EXACTLY like Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) from Episode III.

Updated again with a few more review snippets.

Note: I still don't have it (and won't for the foreseeable future). I thought about renting the PS2 version the other day, but it was a bit expensive for what I knew was an inferior version (not even "Ultimate Sith," at that!).

Posted more info from Metacritic. Here's some more of the "user reviews" they posted:

Of course, see the link in the opening post to get the "full reviews."

More user reviews:

Now for my personal reaction, since the journalistic reviews are all done with:

I'm glad they finally made a "Dark Jedi game" even if it's not a successor to the JK series. I'm also happy to play as Darth Vader in a single player game (I think for the first time), even if it feels like a bit of a tease only being one level (you can't even cheat to play as him in other places). The control over the force is the main draw for this title. The cutscenes are pretty cool, but the CGI character still look a little too creepy to be human, if that makes sense. Vader is particularly well done here, even though it's not James Earl Jones doing the voice. The main character reminds me a lot of Sam Worthington in the action roles he's played in the last half decade, though it's obviously not him, it's clearly inspired by his performances.

So, playing USE on the PC and I'm actually using a third party Xbox controller (but NOT an Xbox 360 usb controller), through an adapter. I'm using joy2key to map mouse/keyboard strokes to the buttons and sticks, so I had to learn it a different way (when it would say press "space bar" I had to know what button the controller that was mapped to and so forth).

Despite the patches, the game runs great but occasionally will crash for no apparent reason. Sometimes hall of mirror effects and invisible enemies (that don't have cloaking devices) will happen, and a reload will be required. The game plays much better with a gamepad let me tell you. I mapped everything to a button or joystick press and didn't need the mouse at all. It is annoying that you can't use the mouse to select menu items though, that seems like such a basic feature. You can easily alt tab out of the game to do stuff on your desktop. Played the game entirely on my new (2011) laptop with win7 64-bit. I actually played the "DLC" content first, and it was a pretty easy to get into, even though I didn't quite know what I was doing yet. Playing through the rest of the game I can see why they put in all the lightsaber crystals and costumes. Your force upgrades automatically though you get a few choices of things to implement into areas. I like the idea of killing enemies giving you health. You are a dark sider after all (the health back from kills functions much like the vampire sword in RUNE, but only gives you heath back after a confirmed kill, unless you use a special crystal where it can occur randomly from a clean hit). The game itself is fairly repetative, once you get past the great graphics. But the main fun to be had is playing around with the physics, finding creative ways to dispatch the hoards of enemies. The "boss fights" are typically heavy on quick time events (press the right button at the right time to win... and you get infinite chances to get it right, as it keeps replaying the cutscene like sequence until you hit all the right keys to "win"). The best battles are the saber vs. saber fights, and there are several of them. The graphics are pretty darned good. I haven't seen a Star Wars game yet that looks this good. The overall impression is reminiscent of the way Jedi Academy did it, a kind of "round tour" of Star Wars locations, mixing stuff from the movies (especially the prequels) with well known stuff from the EU. Going in I thought the over-the-top Jedi Powers and some of the Expanded stuff (like the new rancor variants) would annoy me, but they didn't. Unlike the JK series and many other games, you have only one attack that doesn't involve the force... your lightsaber that you hold backwards (no changing stances, but you can hold a block key). So no picking up guns or engaging in fisticuffs. I guess that keeps it simpler, but there were times I wished I could take command of the many abandoned EWEB cannons or do something besides hack at enemies with my batsaber (there's no dismemberment in this game, though I hear there is in the sequel). The saber combat is like a lot of third person console games, and it reminds me a lot of the "Spider-Man" games. You just tap the button which makes your character automatically do a combat that kills your opponent by the last hit.

So impression is: Not bad overall. I beat the rest of the game with ease (after the Star Destroyer), though I will say that the later fighting the dark lord was pretty tough on the highest difficulty so I downgraded it in order to beat him (maybe I'll try again at a higher difficulty some time). It's really a shame the saber combat wasn't deeper in this game, the QTE sequences were a bit overused (and I'm glad some of the big enemies can be defeated without them). Pity about lack of multiplayer, but I still have an inkling to try the sequel, even if people say it's not as good storywise... it's cheap, how can I pass it up? ;)

7/10

Good review. It's a shame that the game was not well optimized for the PC. Specially the menu's interactivity, controls, and graphic options. Fortunately some of them can be easily changed on a file (I don't know if the patch worked with you, but even after I had patched the game, I still had to activate cloth simulation by editing a file).

It's a good game though, with a solid story.

I haven't bought the sequel because it's not the best version, graphically. And yes, I'm talking about the PC version. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions have some more effects that are not present on the PC version (not to mention the lack of DLC), and as such, I won't give money for a bad port of a too short game. Maybe when I get a console I'll buy it.

Yeah it pretty much worked. I will say that the first thing I loaded up after installing the game and the patch was the Jedi Temple "DLC" level. The sky was hall of mirrors and it was kind of laggy. I emailed Aspyr about it, but eventually, after I restarted my computer, it worked. Still no idea what happened there.

I just installed TFU 2, and I must say, the graphics have really been tweaked! I had assumed all this time that it was basically the same as USE, but it looks like they've done a lot more work on it. Consequently the game runs a lot slower than before. But who knows, maybe a few magical reboots will fix things. I can only hope.

I did discover that I have to fire up the game (TFU 2) FIRST and THEN connect my USB controller (which emulates keyboard/mouse buttons). Otherwise it will try to use a true Xbox 360 controller (which I don't have) and make the game impossible to control outside the menus. I had no such problem with TFU:USE. I think this sequel needs at least another patch. It's been over a year since it came out though, so I doubt we'll see one, sadly.

The wikipedia page says there was DLC released for TFU2 on the Xbox360 and PS3. What was in it, and is it in the PC version?

The cloth simulation worked with the patch? You didn't need to tweak around with the files?

Unfortunately it's missing some effects present on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions like reflections, some cloth physics, and some weather effects (like the player getting wet while on the rain). Enough for me to not buying it.

A bunch of new costumes, and a whole (non-canon) new level on Endor. None of those came to PC, though.

The DLC on the PC version is the one that already comes hidden on the disc:

- Maulkiller costume
- Deak Starkiller costume
- All challenge maps
- Two lightsaber crystals

Also, if you use your save game from the first game (with all completed), it will unlock three costumes of that game (Training Gear, Ceremonial Jedi Robes, and Sith Stalker).