The Geek-tastic Review Of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

 

Ok, so after a week of playing The Force Unleashed I'm finally ready to share with you my thoughts and opinions of the game.  Mind you, I've never officially reviewed a videogame before, so I'm going to be making up the format as I go.

 

Also, I will be discussing plot points and will be REVEALING SPOILERRS about what takes place in the game.  If you don't want to have anything ruined, don't read this. 

 

 
Ok, you've been warned.

 

 

The Story:

 



For those of you who don't know much about the game, let me briefly say that the game takes place between the prequel trilogy and the good star wars film.  You play Darth Vader's secret apprentice, his name is Starkiller.  Darth Vader found you as a young kid, raised you in secret and is planning to use you to help him defeat the Emperor so he can rule the galaxy.  The game centers on the final stages of your training where you hunt down and kill Jedi knights and become a bigger and stronger Sith master.

 

The story is by far the strong selling point of the game for me.  It's a really good story.  It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than any of the prequel movies were.  As I was watching the cutscenes I actually felt like I was watching a Star Wars movie.  The writers and game designers did a great job capturing the feel of the classic Star Wars films.

 

Some specific things in the plot bug me as a Star Wars purist though.  The game takes place roughly 16 or 17 years after Episode III, and it sees your character officially begin the rebel alliance.  Wait a minute...what?  It took that long after Ep III to form the rebel alliance?  What the hell were Bail Organa and Mon Mothma doing for all those years?  Wallowing in their own misery?  I understand the desire to give the game's main character an important role in the Star Wars universe, but having him be the founder of the rebellion makes no sense from a timeline perspective.  Also, it kills the awesomeness of that scene at the end of EP. III where we see Yoda, Obi-Wan and Bail discuss organizing a rebellion against the Empire.  So was that scene all just talk now?  Did they do nothing after that?

 

Another thing that made no sense was that near the end of the game, Bail Organa gets captured by the Empire and is taken to the Emperor on the still-under-construction first Death Star.  Again, I ask WTF?  Ok, so he gets away at the end, but he couldn't just go back to Alderaan at that point.  He's a wanted fugitive of the Empire now.  He's been openly caught in Rebellion.  If this story actually took place, by the beginning of Episode 4 Alderaan would have been a completely Imperial held world.  Why would the Emperor let a known rebel leader go back to his homeworld without some form of reprisal?  It makes no sense.

 

I may sound like I'm being really negative here, but those are the biggest two plot points that bugged me.  Other than that, the rest of the story is actually a lot of fun to watch.

 

And I have to add that I absolutely love Proxy, your faithful droid companion in the game, who just so happens to be programmed to kill you.  He's a great comic relief in the game and has quickly become my favority Star Wars droid ever. 

 

If you have no desire whatsoever to play this game, and just want to watch the cutscenes, you can find them on youtube. Click here to see Part 1.

 

 
The Gameplay:







 

The gameplay of The Force Unleashed is a fairly straightforward action/adventure brawling game.  It has some elements of platformer to it, and there are one or two puzzles you have to solve too.  What makes the game really fun though is the force powers.

 

You're a very powerful dark Jedi in the game, and as such you get all sorts of fun force powers to wreak havoc with.  You can use the force to pick up people and objects in the game and throw them around, you can use the force to create large concussive blasts that throw everything around you all over the place, you can shoot force lightning at people, you can throw your lightsaber into things, and you can use interesting combinations of powers to create devastating combo attacks against opponents. 

 

The sheer amount of destruction you can cause in the game is a helluva lot of fun.  As you go through levels you will be leaving trails of broken and battered corpses behind you as well as destroyed rooms and pathways.  Grabbing Stormtroopers and flinging them into things is seriously amusing. 

 

At the of fights with large creatures and at the end of boss fights, the game treats you to cinematic kill scenes, provided you can hit the right button at the right time.  These are very enjoyable too as you get to see some new uses of the force never before seen in a Star Wars film.  Also, throwing a lightsaber into the face of a Rancor is fucking awesome!!!

 

However, the game suffers from a truly crap-tastic targeting system.  It's not so bad as to make the game unplayable, but it certainly detracts from the otherwise very fun gameplay.  It's most noticable when in boss fights or when fighting large creatures.  Instead of targeting the biggest threat to you, when you activate the targeting, the game focuses on whatever happens to be in your line of sight at the time.  So while you've suddenly focused on some crate in the background that you can pick up with the force, the Jedi you are fighting is stabbing you in the back with their lightsaber.  It can get really annoying sometimes.

 

Also, there were a few moments in the game where the entire game froze and I had to reboot my xbox.  At first I thought it was just my xbox, but after finding out that it was happening to friends too, it appears that the game may have had some manufacturing problems.  The freezing only happened to me a few times, but I've heard of others who have had it worse than me.

 

The game takes about 8 to 10 hours or so to beat, which may sound short, but is rather typical for an action game of this type.

 

 

Final Thoughts:

 





Overall, I really liked this game a lot.  I does have a few problems, but it does deliver on what was promised.  It's a fun romp through the Star Wars universe where you get to break a lot of shit and beat up a lot of people with the force.

 

If you're a big Star Wars fan, then this game is a must have.  If you aren't the biggest Star Wars fan, but you like action/adventure games like God of War, then you'll probably like this game too.

 

The game offers some replayability too in that it has two separate endings, and there's a bunch of hidden and unlockable stuff to be found in the game too.