Surprising my kids with new DS games, I read the reviews and picked up Star Wars Battlefront – Elite Squadron. I’ve bought games that have been C games on metacritic but that I have immensely enjoyed, finding more to them than reviewers gave credit for. I’ve now played Elite Squadron for a couple hours, and overall, this isn’t a bad game, but it’s not very challenging, which results in repetition.

When you run into a room, you have to typically clear out the droids. With the auto-aim, you have to do little more than press B because the target automatically switches to another droid as soon as you kill the current target. So far, I’ve no need to use cover or to use the exploding tanks. Part of the problem is that hits do little damage. I’ve dropped grenades on myself and continued to fight, even while getting shot. So, I’ve been able to run into the middle of a bunch of droids and kill them while suffering little damage. But if you want to play it safe, you can slowly enter a room and as soon as you see a droid, start shooting. (Yep, you can shoot off-screen droids.)

And the game has no challenges for key objectives. For example, to open a game, press X at the very obvious terminal. Or press X to set the ship to self-destruct. I’ll take Jedi Alliance‘s puzzles or even Republic Heroes unlocking sequences over this “roll over and surrender” approach. (The problem with Jedi Alliance was that some puzzles had very unclear instructions but were easy after you knew what to do.) I realize Battlefront is an action series, but this isn’t the typical Battlefront game.

The racing sequences are also far too easy. For example, after setting a ship to self-destruct, you have to race back to your ship before the timer ends. I ran, expecting more droids or obstacles. Nothing that interesting. You just run. It’s ridiculously easy. Even with obstacles and droid attacks, the bike racing section was pretty easy as well. Again, Jedi Alliance had more challenging race levels.

As a result, the game has little to slow you down or make you think. And it’s a shame because this could have been better fairly easily–take more damage from hits, don’t give unlimited ammo for most weapons (like, give us a reason to use grenades), add some puzzles. Or design better levels that aren’t the usual room that you clear and move on to clear another room. Hidden areas? Give us reason to use cover or to cycle through all our weapons.

I played the multiplayer only slightly, to get a taste. But I played with bots as I have no friends. But the difference was night and day. 3-5 hits, and my character died, unlike the campaign. I had to use cover and grenades, again, unlike the campaign. Even with the bots, this felt like a different game, closer to Battlefront (though still not there yet). I know multiplayer can be more difficult because you respawn. But there’s no reason that the campaign couldn’t have at least some levels like this–levels where you have to fight through multiple, powerful enemies. Event he boss levels that I have played so far in the campaign weren’t as difficult as the multiplayer.

I’ll continue to play the game, in part to see where the story goes but also to see if it improves. (I actually find the space fights the most entertaining type of level so far, partly because I’ve also been terrible at flight games so there’s a little challenge in that respect.)

Now, my son enjoys the game, but he’s a Star Wars junkie.

Deadly Creatures has intrigued me for a number of months, mainly for the basic concept as playing as a spider and a scorpion. After seeing a developer’s diary and a couple of trailers, my son was hooked, and even though it’s not a multiplayer game, we decided to take advantage of the two playable ‘characters.’ He would play the scoprion and I’d play the tarantula. 

After a couple of levels, I’m pretty impressed by the game. The story, the music, the human story, the models and graphics, combat are all very solid, at least, and excellent in some places. But there’s something that reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy. At first I thought it was the visceral reaction the games evoked. Then I thought, oh, Deadly Creatures allows you to climb walls and ceilings, just as some Galaxy levels do. But I realized that it’s more than that–it’s that both games have well designed, fascinating levels. 

While both are somewhat linear, there is an exploratory element nonetheless. You can play each straight through and not see a bit of the game. But the environments are so well designed that I found myself wanting to explore, not just to find grubs or other goodies but even to see what I could see, what interesting spaces the level had, which is a reward in itself. 

In contrast, Force Unleashed had some uninspired levels–run down a ship corridor, run through an outdoor corridor, run through a wooki village corridor. It was a game where I badly wanted to explore the area, not to find all the collectibles but for the hope that a game world had areas just for the fan to enjoy. Alas, that was not the case.

In Deadly Creatures, I feel that it’s the opposite. Yes, it has some underground tunnels/corridors, but even there I’m finding spaces to explore. As the spider, I climb on the walls, viewing the room from a different perspective and sometimes accessing a space I couldn’t see from the floor. Outdoor areas have paths and flows, but again, I have areas to explore. 

The other point about the level goes to the focus of the game on small ceatures because I often had a sense of both a small, often unnoticed world of bugs but also the large, even gargantuan world. Often, when we play shooters and action games, we notice how well designed maps have excellent architecture. Deadly Creatures does, too, but a natural architecture of rocks, cacti, logs. There are a variety of wall types, even in the little that I have played.

• A curve that appears to stop my progress, although if I follow it, it leads to another space, giving me satisfaction at not falling for a ‘trick.’
• The variety of walls also suggest movement and time–progress slowly here, move quickly here. At certain points, I’m clearly invited to pause and look around, like when I reach a vertically rising wall.
• I’m aware that the level is making me feel relaxed at some spots and tense at others. For example, right before I leave the tunnel and have the first snake-boss fight, I feel tense, even though I’m going out into the open, thanks largely to the squat design of the opening and the way the floor rises up to the opening and then slopes downward.