Game Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Hey, it's only been three weeks or so since my last post. One day I shall hold myself to a regular schedule of some sort, but that day is yet far off. So without further ado, I present to you my review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)

For the sake of my typing fingers and for a slightly shorter post, I will refer to this game using the abbreviation TFU for the rest of this review. Chances are if you enjoy Star Wars and gaming even a little, you've already heard about this game and if you had any intention of buying it and playing, have already done so. If not, the game takes place in the years between Episode 3 and Episode 4, when the Empire was consolidating its power and Darth Vader was jetting about the galaxy and murdering Jedi where he found them. It is on one such journey to Kashyyk (the Wookie homeworld) that he finds a young boy, the son of the Jedi he has just killed, who seems unusually gifted with the Force. Darth Vader takes the boy and begins training him as his Secret Apprentice. I capitalized "Secret Apprentice" because that's basically all you will know him by. At the very beginning of the game he is given the codename "Starkiller", but that only comes up once or twice at the very beginning and the main character is simply referred to by pronouns for the rest of the game.

Now TFU was released for every video gaming console under the sun, and from the water-cooler discussions I've had, there are actually substantial differences b/t the different versions, aside from the PS3 and the Xbox 360 which basically get the same game. Case in point, on the Wii, you can actually use Force Choke to kill your enemies. Not so on the 360. I know it sounds like a minor quibble, especially when you talk about the advanced particle and destruction effects and enemy AI that's only possible on the 360/PS3, but to me it still rings a little hollow since I can't Force Choke my enemies into oblivion. That said, the powers that are available are still oodles of fun. Force Lightning (especially once leveled up) is probably one of the most useful powers in the game as it does considerable damage, branches out to hit multiple enemies, and temporarily immobilizes most of them, but my personal favorite has to be just grabbing stormtroopers and then hurling them in random directions, or dropping them from great heights.

I enjoyed the gameplay overall and found combat to be rather intuitive. With a handful of exceptions, I found the game on the whole to be fairly easy (I was playing on normal difficulty) with one area at the start of the last level being a glaring exception: it is a room where enemies, both cannon fodder and challenging, just keep spawning in wave after wave. They do eventually run out, but I died more getting past that section of the level more than I had at any other point in the game, combined. It was just intensely aggravating. One more part that I had concerns about going in from the reviews I'd read was a sequence in the later part of the game where you pull a Star Destroyer down from orbit, as in the trailers. In theory, you're supposed to follow on-screen prompts indicating how to move position the spacecraft while fighting off waves off TIE fighters. The reviews all indicated that the prompts were often wrong and the act of juggling the manipulation with the TIE fighters was broken. I disagree, at least to the latter point. The prompts may have been misleading, but honestly I didn't really pay attention to them: once I figured out what the game seem to expect of me, I just did the positioning and tweaking by myself, only looking to the prompts to see when I had finished. And the TIEs are easily dispatched since they come in clear waves.

The story is fairly strong for what it is and is quite a bit more enjoyable than the plotlines from the three prequels. Continuity demands that certain events have to take place, but seeing how we get there and what the implications are was entertaining. I would have liked to see it fleshed out a little bit more, especially since the whole game clocks in at about 7 hours, but I don't have many complaints about it as is.