It is a period of civil war. With the decline of new live action Star Wars movies, the vast majority of Star Wars geeks are migrating to become Matrix and Futurama nerds, leaving merchandise and DVD sales at an all time low. With boxes of Luke Skywalker with Kung-Fu Grip action figures lying in warehouses across the world, George Lucas plots how to once again rule the sci-fi galaxy with an iron fist. Working with media partners across the entertainment industry, Lucasfilm launches an all out offensive on the the hidden pockets of sci-fi geeks with their ultimate weapon: The Force Unleashed. While many have foolishly mistaken this for a moon somehow floating around in an asteroid field with no gravitational axis, it is in fact a fully armed and operational media onslaught, comprising of books, video games, comics, Lego, action figures, and even a table top role playing game. While the sheer force of all of this is enough to destroy a Mon Calamari Cruiser or your mum's SUV, it's true power comes from it's ultimate weapon, a teenager that channels the emo side of the force paired with a hot Imperial officer...
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
This summer, channel your rage through a damaged child.
By Matt Kelly
And now it's time for the more serious part of the review. If you were around during the 90s, The Force Unleashed project may have a slightly familiar tune to it for you. This is because in a lot of ways, you'll find it's quite similar to Shadows of the Empire (multimedia project, not the game), a cross media project designed in a lot of ways to reinvigorate interest in the Star Wars universe. Just like Shadows of the Empire (now we're talking the game), you'll find that this interactive component is a decent addition to any Star Wars fans game collection, but is only a scratch on the surface of where it could have gone.
Force Unleashed explores the almost sacred period between Episode III and IV of the Star Wars saga. Opening up in the back end of the Revenge of the Sith years, you'll find yourself as Darth Vadar, arriving on the Wookie home world of Kashyyyk, hunting down the last of the Jedi. After cutting his way through numerous amounts of Wookies, Vader battles it out with a Jedi, killing him, but sensing another nearby. Low and behold, a child springs forth, seeing his dead Jedi father. If Vader can choke an adult Imperial officer with The Force, no doubt he probably could have squished the child's brain out through his ears. However, Vader turns on the clone troopers with him, leaving no witnesses as he takes the boy away.
This pretty much sets the tone of The Force Unleashed, the folks we know as bad guys, doing bad things, but not being totally evil at heart. The story is, aside from being poorly told at some points, actually it's quite a mature, dark tale. While it doesn't hold itself against other Expanded Universe game plots such as the original Dark Forces, it still manages to tell a story about redemption which feels connected to Darth Vader's character themes in both Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi. The story of The Apprentice is motivating in itself, but also explores a lot of the human elements of Vader. The game itself feels very much part of the Star Wars universe, between lots of existing fiction references, and quite a lot of detail in making elements new to The Force Unleashed fit with the existing universe. If you were a fan of the fiction in Republic Commando, taking a look at Star Wars from the other side, then The Force Unleashed is probably already a buy for you.
However, once you get into the gameplay side of things, the enjoyment factor is going is going to be very different depending on how much of a fan you are. Straight up, Force Unleashed is a 'beat 'em up' style game, nothing more, nothing less. Sure it's got light sabers and hurling Storm Troopers into walls which is great fun, but the game is completely linear with little call for anything else aside from killing. If you loved games like No More Heroes and are a Star Wars fan, this isn't going to cause a problem for you, but if you want even a tiny bit more variation in what you're doing, start looking elsewhere.
Despite repetitive gameplay, Force Unleashed does what it does well, with pretty decent controls to boot. All your basic light saber moves are controlled with the Wii Remote, and it's actually pretty fluid without giving into no-skill-arm-waving. Directional slashes are recognized, and once you master the timing, you'll be able to unleash all sorts of combos. Use of The Force mainly sits in your right hand with the nunchuck, and comes from a combination of gestures and button pushing. The most basic is the much hyped 'smash everything into everything else' force push, which is done with a simple thrust forward to send everything flying. The equally hyped 'send lightning spikes into everything' move is a simple press of the C button. As you go on you'll unlock more powers involving somewhat more complex button and motion chaining, such as the power which is basically a 360 degree clear out of everything around you, involving both Z and B being held while thrusting downwards. While there are a bunch of different powers in there, you're more likely to settle on a few favourites and go from there.
Force Unleashed does have a massive issue with difficulty though and this is caused by a couple of different things. First on the list is the AI, which is none too bright, and typically operates on the thinking of 'kill kill kill' or 'I have no idea what I'm doing, this is a nice wall, I might lean against it for a bit.' With the dynamic world of Force Unleashed combined with the array of weaponry, there were a lot of opportunities to have the AI doing something much more clever than inspiring enemies to run at you full pelt while having boxes hurled at their skulls. From time to time you will be caught in a surrounded situation which can be a little tricky getting out of, but only a little. The flip side of this is the odds will be stacked insanely against you, and mainly due to enemy numbers and level design. The big open areas of the game, such as one of the big halls of the Jedi Temple, are pretty poorly paced and will just have everything come at you all at once. Boss Battles as well can be a tedious process of doing damage, dying, respawning, and doing more damage.
Second on the list of difficulty issues is all those awesome force powers. It's really easy to just take a few and mow enemies down. The rate you gain your powers has been paced and you also have a energy meter which at least gives a chance for enemies to get in there during a charge up, but at the end of the day it's simply a matter that the game is pretty unbalanced. Again, keep in mind this is a beat 'em up so it's somewhat forgivable, but it's very rare you find yourself going 'Oh hell, it's all over for me now', especially with the very forgiving rules of death. When you cark it, you'll simply respawn with the minor penalties of XP loss and a bit of health regained by your enemies. Death in The Force Unleashed is definitely not a motivation for survival.
Boss battles take a bit more of a cinematic approach, from time to time descending into quick action moments. These movements can involve things such as twisting the nunchuck or the Wii Remote around to a certain position, pushing forwards, and just waggling on cue. The twist-to-match approach works most of the time but we probably would have been happy with button combo combined with basic gestures, ala Resident Evil 4. The presentation during the quick action moments is decent but with a massive need for variety. If you're stuck with a boss (or multiple bosses of the same kind) that you're struggling with, you'll see the same cinematic many times.
Level design is the final culprit in the 'could have been better' case of '08. The look of the levels, regardless of graphical quality, is very much in the tone of the universe, especially ship and building interiors. Outdoors suffers a bit from conveniently-placed-unscalable-cliff-face syndrome, but at the end of the day you know you're looking at Star Wars. And providing that's all you want, you'll love it. If you took away all the Star Wars themes though, you would be left with little more than box rooms, long corridors, and the occasional flight of stairs or elevator. It's pretty rare that what you're running through is anymore than a container full of enemies and objects to hurl.
Presentation is just about the definition of mix bag. There are some really great visual effects used such as depth of field focus and motion blur, but there's also a ton of low quality textures, very low poly count environments and enemies, and very little range in each level's theme. That being said, Force Unleashed is quite an effects heavy game. No, it doesn't make up for it pretty much using PS2 graphic assets, but it's certainly not something you'll be focusing on grinding your teeth. Cut scenes are also a mixed bag, jumping between some pretty impressive and some absolutely shocking choreography, and leaning more to the latter. Characters are typically very stiff and jump between animations in a very unnatural way. But then there's stuff like space ships, which can be incredibly clunky in their maneuvering. Given they're completely solid objects with no moving parts, the lack of smooth animation isn't really forgivable.
For the most part the sound is pretty good, but this is mainly due to the vast majority of sound assets being pulled from the Star Wars archive. So yes, the game does sound like Star Wars. Pretty much everything that has been produced just for the game though is not so good. The voice acting is a mix between some really good performances and some of the most unmotivated acting you'll ever hear (jumping between the two in a single scene), and a lot of the cut scene sound effects don't quite match the scale of what's going on. While you can't really fault the music, it is all just existing music cues from the films. Given the latest Clone Wars film actually has a composer that isn't John Williams, and that he's using a whole range of instruments not seen in Star Wars before such as guitars and synths, it would have been nice to see a bit of that creep into the Force Unleashed. If you want some original Star Wars game tunes, I recommend Tie Fighter from 1994, especially To City.
Summary:
Force Unleashed is a solid enough beat 'em up for anyone into the genre, but only Star Wars fans are going to walk away with that fuzzy feeling. Yeah, it's full of little glitches and repetitive gameplay, but not enough to kill the experience completely. If you just want to hurt lots of things with very little care for the Star Wars theme, give it a rent, or wait for a price drop; but if you love the saga, the plot is mature and an interesting take on the universe.
Gameplay - 7.8
In amongst repetitive gameplay are some really solid controls and fun force powers to keep the uninspired level design entertaining.
Graphics - 6.2
The general graphical quality is tolerable but the absolutely stiff choreography during a lot of the cinematics brings it right down.
Sound - 7.5
Voice acting is a roller coaster of quality, but everything else is dead on Star Wars.
Replay - 6.8
Unless you're a Star Wars fan or really love beat 'em ups and some minor unlockables, there isn't a huge amount of replay here.
Overall - 7.5
The Force Unleashed is a mixed bag of good controls, great Star Wars universe fiction, and a ton of issues. Rent first unless you're a die hard fan.