Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
So it’s been a few days since the release of this new part of the Star Wars saga. Taking place between the third and fourth Star Wars movies, it chronicles the life of Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, and how his actions change the fate of the galaxy.
Now that we got that out of the way, we can get to the review. Note that there’s a huge difference between the PS3/360 and the Wii/PS2 versions of the game, and I’ll be focusing on the former.
Gameplay:
To quote Brian Clevinger from 8-bit Theater, it’s a hack and slash game that plays like a hack and slash game. Your force meter recovers on it’s own, while your health is recovered whenever you kill an enemy. Lightsaber combat is solid, and the havok and Euphoria engines make a simple force push look astonishing. You have a limited amount of said force powers, but there are a lot of ways said powers can be used, and they can be further upgraded to make them even more powerful, and have some extra uses. There are some issues with the Force grip system though, as you might find yourself grabbing a miscellaneous object on the floor rather than the enemy/object you really wanted to grab, as well as being able to accurately throw something at a group of enemies.
Difficulty:
If you feel like looking for a challenge, the game has you covered. From Apprentice to Sith Master difficulty, the game provides a good degree of difficulties, whether you want to breeze through the game with no problems, or if you want to test your limits by making any encounter a potentially lethal one. Each difficulty increases the amount of enemies you’ll face, as well as how much damage they deal and how much you take before you can kiss your Sith days goodbye.
Customization:
While Starkiller’s appearance can’t be changed, he grows stronger in the Force by gaining Force points for every enemy he defeats, as well as getting extra force points by finding hidden Jedi holocrons. This causes him to level up, giving you an extra force, talent and combo spheres. Force Spheres are used to upgrade your Force Powers, Talent Spheres are used to upgrade Starkiller’s abilities, such as being able to reduce the damage you take, or how much damage you deal with your lightsaber. Combo Spheres are used to grant Starkiller new attacks and abilities, such as flinging your lightsaber to your enemy while you hold him down with force grip.
Besides Starkiller himself, you can also alter his lightsaber to different colors, as well as change the power crystal, which gives it added abilities depending on the one equipped. He also has over 15 different unlockable outfits, all of which you can use in any stage of the game.
Plot:
Your typical Star Wars plot. The cutscenes themselves look and were made like they were taken right out of one of the movies, with all of the background music, scene transitions and the like we’ve seen. It fills in what happens between both movies, one of the endings being the canon ending, though both endings could have been a lot better. Without spoiling too much, I can say Starkiller is responsible for a LOT of the things in Movies 4-6. It has some epic moments, though some heavy spoiling of the game would ensue if I talked about them here.
Replayability:
The game itself is pretty short. The first chapter of the game can only be played once, and besides that, the game only has eight chapters, which can be beaten quickly if you choose the easier difficulties. However, each chapter has bonus objectives and hidden Jedi Holocrons, which unlock new costumes and Jedi crystals, as well as a training room that gives you several different challenges to test your limits, though that also changes depending on the difficulty chosen. Clearing the game unlocks Sith Master difficulty, so if you’re into masochism, you might want to give the game a second run in it’s hardest difficulty.
And that’s The Force Unleashed in a nutshell. If you’re a diehard Star Wars fan, you’ll like the game regardless of it’s flaws. If you’re just looking for a good hack and slash game, you might want to rent it first to check it out. It’s a good game, but if you aren’t a Star Wars fan, it might not be your type of game.
