GameSpy Review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

A wise puppet once said, "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack." Next to the whole "no dating" rule, that had to be the worst part about being a Jedi. While you're sitting around meditating and levitating rocks at the Jedi Temple, the bad kids at the Sith School across town are tossing dudes off ledges, choking punks from the other side of the room, and shooting lighting from their fingernails. Maybe it's not so hard to see why Anakin made the switch to the dark side.







Seeing as how the vast majority of "Star Wars" games have us playing as some goody-goody hero character, it's not too often that we get to bust some heads with the cool Force powers. That's a problem that The Force Unleashed sets out to fix. In a similar setup to the Nintendo 64 game Shadows of the Empire, TFU is a new multimedia "Star Wars" event that features a host of new products (like toys, comics, books, etc.) centered around a new videogame chapter in George Lucas' beloved universe.












This time around, the story takes place in the timeframe between Episodes III and IV (i.e. the new movies and the old ones). The main character is Galen Marek, a young man who goes by the name Starkiller. The son of two Jedi, Starkiller was kidnapped/adopted by Darth Vader after the dark lord cut down the boy's father during the Jedi purge. Vader intends to train his secret apprentice in the ways of the Sith in the hopes of destroying Emperor Palpatine and taking over control of the galaxy. This setup allows Starkiller to treat both the "good guys" and the "bad guys" as enemies, allowing you to dish out unfiltered destruction.







And dish you will. In addition to the standard-issue lightsaber, Starkiller has a host of upgradable Force powers at his disposal. These powers are, of course, the game's main selling point. TFU wastes no time in getting you used to being a badass dealer of Sith-style justice. The intro level allows you to control Darth Vader himself as he storms the Wookiee homework of Kashyyyk to hunt down Starkiller's father. The mighty Wookiees become little more than overgrown Ewoks as you use the Force to effortlessly lift them off the ground and chuck them over the side of their treetop city.







For My Ally is the Force







The Force powers remain fun to play with throughout the game. Tearing apart walls and throwing them around corners to take out awaiting enemies is always a blast. It would have been very easy to screw up the Force controls with the Wii Remote's motion-sensing abilities, but they work surprisingly well. The series of button presses and gestures may seem overwhelming at first, but they quickly become second nature.







Also easy to use is your lightsaber. Although this isn't the 1:1 saber sim that everyone dreamed of when the Wii Remote was unveiled, all of your attacks are performed through different Remote movements. Unlike many Wii game that use the "waggle = hitting the attack button" control scheme, there aren't a lot of missed swings here. In fact, quick, short waves seem to get the best results. Of course, if you rely on your lightsaber a lot, you can expect your arm to become fairly sore by the end of the game.







That is Why You Fail







Despite the solid controls, there's one annoying feature to the combat system. There's no denying that TFU feels inspired by Sony's God of War series. That's all fine and good, but it unfortunately picked up one of GoW's more annoying aspects: quick timer events. You know, those obnoxious "interactive cinemas" where the game developers came up with a very cool sequence but couldn't figure how to implement it into the gameplay proper. Their clever solution is to simply play the canned sequence while forcing you to press random buttons on the controller (or perform specific waggles here). This sort of thing was just super in Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, but it isn't 1984 anymore.












Even more annoying is the camera, which can be extremely difficult to work with. This goes double during boss fights, when the camera seems to occasionally get bored with watching the battle and decides to wander elsewhere. This also isn't the Wii's best-looking game. Especially affected by the sometimes downright ugly graphics are the cinema sequences. The game has a pretty interesting story that fits in extremely well with the "Star Wars" universe, but it's hard to get too involved with it when it's being acted out by a bunch of creepy, blank-faced mannequins.







Coming in at about six hours or so, the main adventure is a tad short. To help extend the experience, there is a multiplayer Duel Mode that allows you and a friend to choose from a variety of Star Warriors and duke it out with both lightsabers and the Force. Although it's hardly a full-on fighting game, it is a neat diversion that features a robust cast that spans the entire saga. It's just too bad that a single player can't fight against the computer.





Force Unleashed may not be the mind-blowingly awesome "Star Wars" game that it was hyped to be, but thanks to some cool play mechanics and good use of the Wii Remote it's still a fun (if flawed) ride. With a bit of tweaking it could be great, so hopefully a sequel will pop up sometime down the road.



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