American Arcadia | Star Wars: Resistance, Season 2, Episodes 15-19 (series finale)
- DB
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Almost everything has flaws - some things have more than others.
Here's what I've been watching and playing over the last seven days...
MOVIES
I don't know what compelled me to put this on, but it's still as enjoyable as always and a good send-off to the original team - the ending says Star-Lord will return, and I've heard that might be in just over a year's time...
On the other hand, I do know why I watched this again - because I really, really wanted to after having the 4K version delivered!
It's one of my favourite horror films of all time and it'll take a pretty special effort to overtake it.
GAMES
American Arcadia
Game summary: Experience the extraordinary story of Trevor, an average man escaping from the world's most popular reality tv show. (Steam)
I originally watched a playthrough of American Arcadia when it first came out in 2023 and, being a highly linear game, never really felt the urge to play it myself.
That is, until it showed up as part of a bundle with other games that I wanted and decided to see how it played for myself.
I already knew about the fantastic visual and audio design, but was then immediately reminded of the excellent voice acting from Yuri Lowenthal as Trevor and Krizia Bajos as Angela, the two protagonists.
One thing I will praise highly is how smoothly the gameplay transitions between Trevor's side-scrolling escape and Angela's first-person attempts to help Trevor, with the story switching between the two characters regularly enough to keep you on your toes without feeling like you never get to spend enough time with either of them.
Part of that is the expertly-told story, which is entirely in flashback, but uses even more flashbacks, along with clips from fake TV shows, interviews and behind the scenes material.
Giving you the backstory and fleshing out the worldbuilding this way more telling, rather than showing, but considering these moments are mimicking TV, it makes sense that they're non-interactive.
The biggest problem I had with American Arcadia is the die-and-repeat formula I disliked so much in Limbo, which continues to be frustrating here.
The checkpointing is excellent most of the time so you never have to re-do too much if you fail a section, but it was aggravating on multiple occasions as I had to re-do certain parts over and over and over again until I figured out what the game wanted me to do.
It doesn't happen too often, but almost all of Trevor's sequences are chases and you're given little to no time to experiment and figure out brand new gameplay mechanics when they're introduced, which can be irritating.
There also feels like some forced difficulty later in the game when the platforming element really kicks in and there's a handful of jumps that feel like you have to be much more precise than anywhere else in the game and for no real reason either.
I want to be clear that the issues I have with American Arcadia never come close to ruining the experience, but they were very immersion-breaking and, more than once, it took a while to get back into the groove of the game again, which was a bit of a problem considering its length (it took me 6.5 hours to beat).
All in all, I'm glad to have actually played the game now, and would genuinely recommend that you give it a go yourself if you want a Truman Show-like video game experience done really well.
American Arcadia is ultimately an enjoyable experience thanks to excellent audio and visual style and a fun story which doesn't outstay its welcome covering for its biggest flaws. [7/10]
TV
Star Wars: Resistance, Season 2, Episodes 15-19
Episode 15, “The New World”
A good episode with a conflict well resolved through diplomacy while finding a new home and new allies for the heroes.
And following on from seeing off the pirates in the previous episode, it does feel like the branches are starting to be trimmed as the series finale approaches. [7/10]
Episode 16, "No Place Safe”
Well, forget what I said about the last episode, with this episode rendering it utterly irrelevant – seriously, what the team behind this show thinking? [4/10]
Episode 17, “Rebuilding the Resistance”
A decent episode for dog-fighting sequences, but not really what you’d be hoping for ahead of the two-part series finale. [6/10]
Episode 18, "The Escape, Part 1”
A really dark opening with an act of genocide from the First Order, prompting Tam to rejoin the heroes, although it never feels like part of a series finale. [6/10]
Episode 19, “The Escape, Part 2”
While an enjoyable episode, it didn’t really feel like the end of a story at all, just the elimination of one set of antagonists – great action again though. [7/10]
Star Wars: Resistance's second season had its moments, but was just too far inconsistent with its story quality, and an almost complete lack of tie-in to the rest of the franchise really hurt. [6/10]
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