So I snagged the DLC for TFU for $10 USD, or 800 MSP, and JSYK, IMHO, it is alright. LOL, for good measure.
I think some great, conspiring power was at work here. The DLC was released as I’m in possession of the game from Gamefly. It’s like they knew. Like there was some great force controlling the way everything worked.
For reals, though, it is average. The level is short, and I kind of wonder how it took MTV’s Stephen Totilo a whole 70 minutes to play through it. It took me all of 30 minutes on the Sith Warrior difficulty. I’ll give Stephen the benefit of the doubt, and assume it is because he is rusty in his ways of the Force, while I just finished the game less than 48 hours ago.
I was a little upset that I had to start a new game to play it, because it is self-contained. Your Jedi Temple save is separate from your normal game save. It takes place outside the story, and you are given a Starkiller with your rankings near-fully specced out. It really adds nothing spectacular to the story, as you would expect from DLC. If anything, it’s on par with a deleted scene from a movie, and we know those are generally non-canon. [spoiler]Judging by the guidance of Kota, I assume this takes place roughly before Starkiller begins to put the wheels in motion for the Alliance.[/spoiler]
As gameplay goes, it gives you a bit of what the endgame of the story did not: A ton of stuff to throw around and break apart. At least 60% of the environment is destructible once you get inside the temple. To encourage this, the stormtroopers are of the advanced variation that can throw up Force-resistant shields, encouraging you to launch a globe or some rubble at them. What bothered me was the sheer number of enemies they crammed into this tiny little package. Immediately upon touching down at the temple, you’re swarmed by enemies, and the assault is relatively relentless as you move through the rooms. A large number of Evo Troopers (the kind with the sheilds), Jumptroopers, and Snipers await you as you move through the halls, and they can get irritating. That just makes it all the more gratifying to crush them.
There is also a training chamber with some near-infinitely spawning droids, which I assume would be great if you still need your achievements for using force powers X times, as well as a “Jedi Mind Trial” where you get to use your force grip to move a ball along a path. It’s the closest the game has come to puzzle solving, so we’ve got to take what we can get.
It seems to lock up sometimes while it saves checkpoints, and I had a frequently recurring glitch when entering the main chamber, it took a moment to load everything and I could see through the non-loaded floor to Coruscant below. Quite a view, actually. The audio always seemed to lag, especially with voiceover parts.
With the inclusion of a costume pack containing a handful of costumes that include a very awesome version of Starkiller, as well as Mace Windu, we’re given a little bang for our buck. However, the price point of $10 still doesn’t sit right. I’ve paid less for Rock Band track packs and spent far more time playing them. I managed to get all but one achievement in just over an hour and a half. Spend it if you’ve got the points laying around and are longing for some new TFU content, but if you’re not, I’m sure you can wait until the recession passes.
