By Todd Russell
A week ago I declared: After 40+ years, am no longer a console gamer, this was after playing the PS5 for the first time in like six months and being largely disappointed by the amount of “buy, buy, buy” (and upgrade my subscription) in the menu, and promise this isn’t a rehash because you can just follow the link, read that, and come back.
Toward the end of the article, I talked about any one game could pull me back in. I’m never far away from getting into any type of game system: console, PC, arcade, pinball, you name it. Yesterday, on the (NO) Blue Monday show I played 5+ hours of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0006-PPSA02198).
Great game so far. It’s not the type of game I normally stream or play and those that know me through the stream didn’t think I’d last playing it 3 hours. We did a channel point prediction during the stream and literally nobody thought I’d play 5+ hours of this game.
This turned out wrong, because I spent the entire stream playing this game. This game is good fun, looks great, and has a lot to enjoy playing it.
If you don’t own a PS5, you can play this game on PC/Steam and it’s available for $5.99, 80% off the regular price right now (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172380/STAR_WARS_Jedi_Fallen_Order/) and as shown above, well over 136,000 very positive reviews. Well deserved.
One of the game design choices that drew me further into this game is how you are constantly learning something. You don’t just start out with every ability, like the wall run. You have to learn it and do, fairly early on, so that you can then incorporate that into your navigation around the map.
There are some innovative puzzles to solve, like this room with a bunch of wind that is activated and a giant ball. No spoilers, but you have to figure out what to do with that to progress. In another area, you have to climb on a swinging object but use wind to make the object swivel far enough to reach the other side. And then there is using your light saber as a flashligh/torch? Yeah, that’s cool.
There is battle, but it isn’t just mindless hack and slash, you learn to richochet shots from Stormtroopers with your light saber so it kills them from afar. Then there is the whole use of the Force to slow fast moving objects so you can navigate past them. Put all of this together and it’s a fun action-puzzle game with RPG elements.
And here I’ve owned this game for a fairly long time. Convinced I would enjoy playing it someday, and glad Star Wars May 2025 is here to be played. How many games do you own in your collection like this that you’ve been meaning to play and haven’t gotten around to yet? This continues to be a goal of mine in 2025 and the (NO) Blue Monday Show is my chance each week to, hopefully, play these games.