Originally posted by Ace
Then for the sake of it, I decided to treat force speed like bullet time in Max Payne as an experiment. With the acrobatics and an Imperial Heavy Repeater the results were amazing, moreso then even a saber. Sure the saber owns on coolness factor, but force speed and firing concussion blasts on droids before they can shoot back and spraying a whole room of troopers with intreval concussion blasts is trippy and effective.
The flak cannon mixed with force speed is also very useful, properly bouncing shots off of walls makes it turn into a room full of shrapnel tearing through storm troopers, the secondary fire is also good at clearing out a room, fast.
The Rocket Launcher is also good for long range engagements on targets. (take for instance the Cairn reactor, lets you nail some distant targets)
I found the Heavy Repater only useful at close range. At long range it was worse than the standard E-11 stormtrooper siderarm. Up close, the saber is signifigantly more effective. The secondary attack, while useful when you have great height advantage, like on a balcony shooting down on enemy units, is very dangerous to you on level ground or on the low ground. Usually, the higher ground is not THAT much higher, so Force Pull is just as effective. The flak cannon is good when you know there's a group right around a corner, but that's where thermal detonators or the DEMP gun excel. Finally, for long distance damage, you're usually best off with the disruptor than any other weapon, except, perhaps, a missile, which is much slower. Trip mines require planning, which is not very helpful in singleplayer. In multiplayer, I can see these being lovely things indeed. The same goes for remote blast packs.
Forcepowers though are awesome, grip mixed with saber-throw, or using force jump and pull at the same time to throw people in the air weaponless.
I do agree though that the puzzles are annoying, however they are less so then the ones in the original Darkforces.
The only time the puzzles are really annoying is in cases where they make no sense at all. Doom Comm comes to mind, as does the first part of the Cairn Reactor level. Other times, the level design assumes a certain amount of psychic ability on the part of the players. Stopping the sterilizer unit on the Atrus Mines level comes to mind, as does the whole of Nar Shaada. Stuff like this makes a game feel more like Quake or Unreal than a Star Wars universe story.
All of that said, there's some incredible moments in this game when you know you're in a Star Wars story. The first time you encounter the assault droids, or when you first face off with an AT-ST with force powers and lightsaber, or when you face off with a pair of Reborn fighting as a team... Yeah, then you feel the magic. The game is about a fifty/fifty mix of Quake and StarWars moments.
Its a must buy, all the way around though, because its very satisfying. I'd put it after System Shock 2, Deus Ex and both Thief games if I had to rank it. It tops all other shooters beyond those four.
