Having recently seen Steam advertising the whole pack for a cheap price, I decided to download the trial and give it a go....
Despite being addictive and atmospheric, the age of the game shows. The animations and combat feels really clunky, but worst of all is the instant respawn of npc. You kill a npc, then as you loot it respawns ontop of you.
Another problem is poor collision detection with some npc walking 5m in the air.
On the positive side, you see tie-fighters flying above, star destroyers floating in Tatooine atmosphere and characters from the movies pop in occasionally during your travels.
The interface is also dated, but like Eve Online it is fit for purpose.
The amount of choices in SWG is bewildering and in many ways, very freeform as you can write your own adventures in the Star Wars universe.
As the game is 7 years old, you can forgive some of the dated graphics and the stuttering combat, but World of Warcraft is the same age and has matured gracefully with each patch/expansion. As this is my first try with SWG, I never experienced any problems when the game was first released, but 7 years on, I would have hoped that the whole feel of the game could be more fluid with some of the mechanisms brought up to date. Sony still support the game with frequent patches (based on the logs) and the servers did have quite a few people running around Mos Eisley.
Would I pay for the game after the trial expires? Unfortunately no. Not even as a stop-gap filler until Old Republic is released (spring 2011?). If the game changes to the same free-to-play system as LOTRO then I probably would continue and maybe the server populations may increase.
Overall? Brilliant atmoshpere but shame about the animations/combat.
Despite being addictive and atmospheric, the age of the game shows. The animations and combat feels really clunky, but worst of all is the instant respawn of npc. You kill a npc, then as you loot it respawns ontop of you.
Another problem is poor collision detection with some npc walking 5m in the air.
On the positive side, you see tie-fighters flying above, star destroyers floating in Tatooine atmosphere and characters from the movies pop in occasionally during your travels.
The interface is also dated, but like Eve Online it is fit for purpose.
The amount of choices in SWG is bewildering and in many ways, very freeform as you can write your own adventures in the Star Wars universe.
As the game is 7 years old, you can forgive some of the dated graphics and the stuttering combat, but World of Warcraft is the same age and has matured gracefully with each patch/expansion. As this is my first try with SWG, I never experienced any problems when the game was first released, but 7 years on, I would have hoped that the whole feel of the game could be more fluid with some of the mechanisms brought up to date. Sony still support the game with frequent patches (based on the logs) and the servers did have quite a few people running around Mos Eisley.
Would I pay for the game after the trial expires? Unfortunately no. Not even as a stop-gap filler until Old Republic is released (spring 2011?). If the game changes to the same free-to-play system as LOTRO then I probably would continue and maybe the server populations may increase.
Overall? Brilliant atmoshpere but shame about the animations/combat.
