Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

As a foreword to the readers, I really tried to like this game I was super excited that Lucas Arts came out with a game of their own and I really wanted to like this game. I came into the game thinking it was going to be a force-gasm; as you’ll read it ended up not.


Story:

You play as a young apprentice to Darth Vader, who kills your father and swoops you up so he can get his jollies on you, or train you, we still don’t know what happens there. You are then trained as Darth’s right hand to do all the dirty work, like finding Jedi and killing them.

The story of TFU is a great addition to the Star Wars lineage, and with amazing cut-scenes it does a great job of telling it. Also the Voice acting is amazing with perfectly synced actions and the characters really emote well. If Lucas arts is good at doing one thing, it’s making full digital movies that can/could be passed as real.


Game play:

Having the power of the force is one of many dreams of man, with TFU you get to experience all of it. When you first start the game you get to play as Darth Vader and yes he is as badass as you think he is. Darth Vader doesn’t run he walks with a shitload of hate in every step; you can tell that he’s rearing to tear someone in half. Playing as Vader gives you a glimpse of just how destructive and hateful you can make your game play; with strangling your enemies or crushing them into a suitcase size flesh packs. The hilarity that ensues during this initial mayhem is awesome and will make you laugh, but the evil twisted laugh, not that pussy giggle laugh. (thanks to IGN for the picture)

As the game progresses so do your skills and so does the amount shit stomping you do. I was initially playing as a Sith Warrior, which I recommend you not do until your second play through. The game will get really gay really quick if you decided you are already a badass, and at the beginning it might seem that way but shit hits the fan very quick. So just play as the apprentice which is what you are, and you’ll have more fun playing.

The game controls are pretty solid and really lend themselves well to wielding the force. Combos are not really all that exotic with 75% of them have the same beginning with a couple different ending schemes ( X, X, X, X, Y or B or what have you). I have heard some people gripe about how the targeting system is kinda garbage and sometimes you don’t pick up what you want. That’s true, to and extend; targets are selected with the direction of the character, not the camera, so it’s easy to select something you don’t want. There have also been some criticisms on throwing things at people, I so far have not had any trouble crushing imperials with boxes, rock, heaters, barrels, chairs, R2 units, Tie fighters, Tie Bombers, etc etc.

One important thing to learn, which will make your day much easier, is the quick recover. A simple tap of A will make you jump up and recover so you don’t get the HAVOCK engine’s typical, “I just jumped out of my car at 100 mph see how long I can flail” syndrome. No where in the tutorials does it give you this information, which is a damn shame because it is such a critical move to the game not sucking. Staying on moves, the force combo list is pretty decent except that there should be more awesome attacks. Because you only have one character and you have about ~25 combos where as a dedicated fighter games have A LOT of combos and a lot more characters, so I just think it’s a shame many more moves were not added.

Although a lot of this might sound like praise there were numerous things that I thought detracted from the game. Firstly the environments, however pretty, were notoriously glitchy. By that I mean there are a lot of clipping issues where you will get stuck on level planes and many items will fall through the level for no reason. The environments were way too slippery; you will slide off low inclined tank treads or easily fall off platforms. Speaking of platforms, some areas of the game that would seem like they would make perfect sense to jump on to acquire an item are too slippery to stand on let alone use for plat forming. It just really annoyed me that everything seems not well tested, I’ll get to this point later.

It is important to mention the new technologies of DMM and Euphoria that Lucas Arts has integrated into the game. DMM is Lucas Arts way of making materials behave with real world characteristics. Instead of the normal breaking of wood or stone at the same pre-defined areas the material will splinter or shatter in accordance with the stresses applied on it. This for me was the games best aspect because I totally geeked out on it. Euphoria is another tech infusion that allows your enemies to emote in accordance with how bad their shit is getting stomped. Euphoria basically makes the baddies react by trying to grab onto things when they are force gripped or shake like Michael J Fox when they are shocked. Really interesting to see these come together.

To wrap up the game-play section the AI in the game was kind of lacking in some situation the enemies would stand around and not do anything. Also some of the larger bosses, like rancors, would just stand in a dumbfounded state and not attack even when they had close to 1.1 gigawatts to razz them up.


Graphics:

As I have said before graphics are now a very important thing to gamers, if it looks like shit, it’s not fun to play. This is one area where Lucas Arts defiantly is a power house, being next door to Industrial Light and Magic TFU shines and glows in all the right places. Cut scenes are perfectly choreographed and are real a treat to watch.

Real geeks of Star Wars will defiantly geek out on a lot of the geometry used in the game. For me the Junkyard level was awesome, I saw the Millennium Falcon, escape pods, and just things that I “knew” what they were and I am sure that was exactly Lucas Arts intent.

Now Daniel thinks its cool when you get graphics slow down, because he is thinking. “Man I am a badass if I am doing this”. Which he can get pretty crazy at times but I am no where near that and I was able to slow the game down hard. Some areas of intense explosions and action really make the 360 come to a crawl and seem like you are watching a slide show. But the times where this happened was very few maybe three times. Thankfully the game show little to no graphical texture pop-in, something that seemed to plague Mass Effect.


Sound:

ILM has done a magnificent job giving TFU the Star Wars sound. Every sound has been recycled from past Star Wars games/movies/episodes so that when you play it you know it is a Star Wars game. They didn’t really introduce too many new items for the game but everything sounded great one thing ILM and Lucas Arts has always excelled at.


Verdict:

This game was supposed to be a truly epic game, and it is a great game. But unfortunately the game does lack a lot in my opinion. For being a multi-platform release I do not think that they play tested the shit out of the game like some other titles. Many little things plagued the game and made me curse and spit and throw controllers.

Having beaten the game through three times now it’s much more enjoyable; although some of the gripes about game play still stay the same. Until you are leveled enough you don’t get the full satisfaction of totally raping your enemies with the force. Thus the game doesn’t feel too fun on the first play through.

80/100