Game Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Developed by LucasArts, ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’ is the latest game based on the iconic Sci-Fi franchise. With four years of development and the superb premise of “kicking someone’s ass with the Force”, The Force Unleashed had incredible promise, and Star Wars fans worldwide were expecting a game that would finally do justice to the license.

In The Force Unleashed you’ll play as Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. As the apprentice, codenamed “Starkiller”, you’ll be sent across the galaxy hunting the various Jedi who survived the events of Episode III. The game also details the key events leading up to the Rebellion in Episode IV. It’s a compelling storyline complimented by a cast of great characters, and is sure to please fans of the trilogies and newcomers alike.

Killing Wookies as Vader? Who doesn’t love this?

There is a much greater emphasis on using the Force in the game than there has been in any previous Star Wars games. While at the beginning of the game you’ll only be able to use a couple of powers, as you advance you’ll be given greater control over the Force than any other game has given you before, and as a result gives you a great amount of freedom in how you use it in combat. The Force also integrates seamlessly with the lightsaber combat, allowing you to combine the two to devastating effect. With a wide variety of combinations and some incredibly powerful abilities at your disposal, The Force Unleashed offers a fun, smooth combat system.

However, the Force never truly feels “unleashed”. While throwing around Stormtroopers is effortless fun, as you progress through the storyline bigger enemies are introduced. Normally that’s fine, that’s how most fighting games work, but in The Force Unleashed the bigger enemies just restrict what was previously a varied combat experience. Later enemies boast a massive resistance or immunity to some Force powers, and occasionally you’ll find yourself restricted solely to lightsaber combat. These restrictions take away what made the combat fun, which is on of the biggest cock ups a game can make.

Another way The Force Unleashed restricts itself is through the games irritating amount of quick time events, where you’ll be given prompts to perform certain actions during a more cinematic sequence. It goes without saying that quick time events are incredibly dated, but when implemented into a game like The Force Unleashed, with it’s robust physics technology, it feels much older and more restrictive than usual. Admittedly, some of the cinematics in the quick time events look pretty damn cool, but a few pretty animations aren’t about to convince anyone that quick time events belong in any next generation games.

Thanks to quick time events, killing a Rancor is actually boring. Which idiot thought button matching sequences were a good idea in the first place?

While there is a half-decent amount of customisation in The Force Unleashed, the menu system is hardly intuitive. Hell, it’s not even remotely clever. With every customisable option separated by different sections and loading screens (yes, a menu with loading screens), customising the apprentice is often more of a chore than it’s worth.

Another flaw with The Force Unleashed is that the game is riddled with glitches. These aren’t usually minor glitches either, they’re the kind that kill you for no obvious reason. Occasionally you’ll find yourself randomly falling through an apparently solid surface, or sliding off the edge of a level because there’s a slope akin to a 3-foot kiddie slide and the Sith apprentice you’re controlling just can’t handle the gradient. There were even a couple of times where I managed to throw the final boss outside of the level, only for him to refuse to come back in. For the next ten minutes I watched his futile attempts to throw boxes through an invisible wall, hoping he’d somehow manage to glitch himself back in. He didn’t, and I had to start again. Bastard.

While the trailer for The Force Unleashed promised rich, colourful worlds for you to practice Stormtrooper juggling, in reality the game rarely shows off these environments. The levels are dark and unimaginative, which is going to disappoint anyone who remembers the beautiful environments the teasers promised. It doesn’t help that you’re going to be visiting each planet twice, either. What makes up for this is the superb facial animation, which is incredibly subtle and realistic, and easily some of the best I’ve seen in a game.

He doesn’t look like he enjoys coming back here again, either.

As a LucasArts game, The Force Unleashed has all the Star Wars licensing, and it’s taken full advantage. As well as the classic Star Wars musical score, The Force Unleashed is crammed full of film references and major movie characters. It’s a real nostalgia-fest, which fans of the franchise are going to love.

The Force Unleashed is a difficult game to summarise. It has some obvious flaws; the levels glitch, the quick time events are dated, and the AI is dumber than an inbred Gamorrean. But I’d still recommend at least trying it, because once you look past the flaws there’s a lot of fun to be had. The devastating power of the force, combined with decent lightsaber combat and a great Star Wars plot, make for a game experience that Star Wars fans shouldn’t miss out on. While it hasn’t lived up to the hype, The Force Unleashed is still, in my eyes, worthy of the Star Wars license. If only just.

7/10

It has taken every ounce of my self-restraint to refrain from using the parody title ‘The Farce Unleashed’, and as a result I’m very proud of myself.