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IGN Review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is one of those games we've been following since the very beginning of its development. While the original 360/PS3 game has been in talks for over two years, it wasn't until the middle of last year that we found out the game was coming to Wii, and that it would be handled by developer Krome Studios. We've gone hands-on with it numerous times, and after taking the young apprentice from start to finish through what was an entertaining, true-to-source Star Wars experience, we feel pretty much on par with how we did when first going hands-on with the game. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed calls out to our inner fanboy, it satisfies in ways that the new trilogy couldn't, and it makes great use of the Wii hardware. The only thing holding it back is a lack of both polish, and from what we can tell, development time.
Since Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is most-known for the PS3/360 balls-out tech-fest that it is (gameplay is a whole other story), Force Unleashed was a product that was refreshing to see excel over what we expected it to be. Krome could have easily phoned this one in, sloppily adding some waggle here, a quick IR aspect there, and calling it a day, but when ripping through the game's six hour single player campaign it was obvious that the team wanted this to be a truly entertaining Star Wars game, and if it wasn't for a few random bugs and flaws within the execution, we would have rated it even higher, as Force Unleashed delivers a level of satisfaction that we don't find often on Wii. Sure there are great games, but pure action titles are almost nowhere to be seen, so when a team can rock Wii control the way it's meant to be done, and wrap it all up in a reliable, responsive experience, that goes a long way.
In fact, even areas we expected would be problematic ended up working very well in the end. Gesture-based attacking is nearly flawless, though you'll need to time your swipes perfectly to string together combos that, in other Force Unleashed games, can be done by mashing the attack button over and over again (in this reviewer's opinion, the Wii version is superior on that front). The nunchuk controls, used mainly for "force clashes" and interactive kill sequences works to a much higher degree than we expected, even getting the rotation and push system found during Jedi duels and the game's multiplayer vs. mode working flawlessly. It's obvious that with more time, and more attention to just a Wii version of the game, Krome Studios could have knocked this one out of the park.
Where Force Unleashed for Wii really drops the ball though, is in the overall lack of polish found throughout the game. The camera is extremely touchy, the lock-on mode often creates more problems than it's worth, the AI can be extremely buggy, running in place or getting hung up on collision, and some of the boss battles are downright broken, being so unbalanced that you're dying and respawning over and over to complete them, rather than finding a weakness and exploiting it in typical boss fashion. Most of the Jedi battles end up being the highest points of the game, as they can be extremely cinematic and immersive. At the same time, you'll often be battling camera problems and the seldom lock-on issue as you try to use parts of the world to your advantage, or dodge and block incoming force attacks from your enemies.
In one extremely frustrating instance, a boss battle in Felucia ends with a bout against a gigantic Bull Rancor. Due to camera issues though, you'll only end up seeing the bottom half of the monster, will constantly be battling the camera, dealing with unblockable attacks from the gigantic boss creature, and simultaneously trying to lock on to environment objects to try and attack the thing with any type of offense. In one portion of the fight, the Rancor gets stuck on a small boulder, and the model itself pops up into the air. It was a complete disaster of a sequence.
And as much as we hate to come down on Wii games for graphical issues (especially when the obvious response would be "This is Wii, not 360"), Force Unleashed simply needs to be called out where issues arise, and visuals are one of them. Yes the game is going to look worse than the HD counterparts, but even more frustrating is that it doesn't end up holding its own against other recent Wii titles, or that it's still rivaled in certain areas (space battles, primarily) by Factor 5's Star Wars efforts on GameCube now seven years ago. The game uses some nice motion blur, depth of field blur, and some impressive lighting effects, but it also suffers from a generally low poly feel, and that's due in a big way to the fact that the game also released on PSP and PS2. In-game cinemas show off some pretty sketchy models at times, with cloaks and costumes often clipping and glitching out with other characters, and the more controlled environments (such as the space scenes) plagued with basic, plainly textured models. There's a huge amount of aliasing, space sequences seem devoid of style or substance, and ships and terrain are often made up of flat colors or extremely simple texture maps. In the opening level of the game, Darth Vader's personal shuttle lands on Kashyyyk, seemingly landing over a single color lake inhabited by gray AT-AT walkers with no texture maps to be seen, with the battle raging below with terribly simple explosion animations and laser blasts. It isn't pretty.
©2008-09-15, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Since Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is most-known for the PS3/360 balls-out tech-fest that it is (gameplay is a whole other story), Force Unleashed was a product that was refreshing to see excel over what we expected it to be. Krome could have easily phoned this one in, sloppily adding some waggle here, a quick IR aspect there, and calling it a day, but when ripping through the game's six hour single player campaign it was obvious that the team wanted this to be a truly entertaining Star Wars game, and if it wasn't for a few random bugs and flaws within the execution, we would have rated it even higher, as Force Unleashed delivers a level of satisfaction that we don't find often on Wii. Sure there are great games, but pure action titles are almost nowhere to be seen, so when a team can rock Wii control the way it's meant to be done, and wrap it all up in a reliable, responsive experience, that goes a long way.
In fact, even areas we expected would be problematic ended up working very well in the end. Gesture-based attacking is nearly flawless, though you'll need to time your swipes perfectly to string together combos that, in other Force Unleashed games, can be done by mashing the attack button over and over again (in this reviewer's opinion, the Wii version is superior on that front). The nunchuk controls, used mainly for "force clashes" and interactive kill sequences works to a much higher degree than we expected, even getting the rotation and push system found during Jedi duels and the game's multiplayer vs. mode working flawlessly. It's obvious that with more time, and more attention to just a Wii version of the game, Krome Studios could have knocked this one out of the park.
Where Force Unleashed for Wii really drops the ball though, is in the overall lack of polish found throughout the game. The camera is extremely touchy, the lock-on mode often creates more problems than it's worth, the AI can be extremely buggy, running in place or getting hung up on collision, and some of the boss battles are downright broken, being so unbalanced that you're dying and respawning over and over to complete them, rather than finding a weakness and exploiting it in typical boss fashion. Most of the Jedi battles end up being the highest points of the game, as they can be extremely cinematic and immersive. At the same time, you'll often be battling camera problems and the seldom lock-on issue as you try to use parts of the world to your advantage, or dodge and block incoming force attacks from your enemies.
In one extremely frustrating instance, a boss battle in Felucia ends with a bout against a gigantic Bull Rancor. Due to camera issues though, you'll only end up seeing the bottom half of the monster, will constantly be battling the camera, dealing with unblockable attacks from the gigantic boss creature, and simultaneously trying to lock on to environment objects to try and attack the thing with any type of offense. In one portion of the fight, the Rancor gets stuck on a small boulder, and the model itself pops up into the air. It was a complete disaster of a sequence.
And as much as we hate to come down on Wii games for graphical issues (especially when the obvious response would be "This is Wii, not 360"), Force Unleashed simply needs to be called out where issues arise, and visuals are one of them. Yes the game is going to look worse than the HD counterparts, but even more frustrating is that it doesn't end up holding its own against other recent Wii titles, or that it's still rivaled in certain areas (space battles, primarily) by Factor 5's Star Wars efforts on GameCube now seven years ago. The game uses some nice motion blur, depth of field blur, and some impressive lighting effects, but it also suffers from a generally low poly feel, and that's due in a big way to the fact that the game also released on PSP and PS2. In-game cinemas show off some pretty sketchy models at times, with cloaks and costumes often clipping and glitching out with other characters, and the more controlled environments (such as the space scenes) plagued with basic, plainly textured models. There's a huge amount of aliasing, space sequences seem devoid of style or substance, and ships and terrain are often made up of flat colors or extremely simple texture maps. In the opening level of the game, Darth Vader's personal shuttle lands on Kashyyyk, seemingly landing over a single color lake inhabited by gray AT-AT walkers with no texture maps to be seen, with the battle raging below with terribly simple explosion animations and laser blasts. It isn't pretty.
©2008-09-15, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved