Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

"The Force is.... well, kinda with you."

"The Force is.... well, kinda with you."

Quite a few months back, a friend had linked me up to a trailer for a new star wars game. I, as I'm sure many of you also, were amazed at the trailer and how the game play looked. The storm trooper getting pummeled all over the screen by the force, I was really looking forward to this game. But for me, there's always been something about the games that are focused on being a Jedi. This is in part because there always ends up being only one or two tactics that run the game. But to be fair, this is the case with many hack and slash games.

Graphics: 5

The Wii is low-tech in the graphics department (I've heard 1.5 times more powerful than an XBox). There's a trend in Wii games in that they either look spectacular, or they look horrible for even a last gen console (Metroid Prime 3 in comparison to Cruis'n). Good Graphics do not always translate into good games, Cruis'n is one of my favorite titles for the Wii. However in the case of The Force Unleashed, it just doesn't look impressive. Metroid Prime came out almost 6 years ago and looks better than this game. The Wii can't keep up with a 360 or a PS3's graphics for this same game, but it should not be dragged down to sub-par PS2 graphics.

Sound: 8

Wether you've played a Star Wars game or just watched the movies a few times, you'll recognize some tracks in this game. They're frequently recycled into every Star Wars game ever put out, but who's saying that's a bad thing. The tracks in the Star Wars franchise is rememberable and it's not hard to see how much work is put into the music as a whole. The sound effects are recognizable just as the music tracks are, they've very true to the movies. The force lightning sounds very authentic, as do the lightsaber swings. Even when two sabers collide, it's like you're hearing it right from the movie. My favorite little detail is that whenever your lightsaber is drawn, your Wiimote will make a low pitched sound as if it were the lightsaber. While this is nothing new with Wii games in general, it is still nice seeing the little attention to detail.

Story: 8

The purpose of the story in this game is to fill the bridge of what happened between the events of Episode 3 and Episode 4. It does a very good job of doing this. However, I can't help but feel that if Starkiller (your character's name) was this important to the Star Wars story, that he would have been mentioned at some point in the movies. It's a common plot hole created when making a prequel, but it is still a concern. The voice acting is decent, it's not down with Sonic Adventure, but it's not up there with Mass Effect either. The lack of character development is in part because of there being hardly any emotion given by the voice actors in any given cutscene, minus a few.

Gameplay: 6

In my introductory paragraph, I said that a game like this is broken down into one or two viable tactics. The rest are just not as good and are swept under the rug. In The Force Unleashed, you have your Health Meter and your Force Meter. You're able to collect power-ups respective to each meter that will increase your maximum limit. You earn moves as you progress through the game and are able to upgrade these moves by using Force Points. You collect force points by killing enemies. The Harder the enemy, the more force points. If you can kill multiple enemies (the multiplier stops past 5), you'll also get more Force Points per enemy. You're also able to collect Holocrons that let you view artwork of the game as well as give you 1,000 Force Points. There are also cosmetic upgrades for your lightsaber that allow you to customize your hilt and color. As the levels go on, you also get crystal upgrades for your lightsaber that allow you to do more damage.

Sounds like a deep game. However, only the scavenger hunt is, and that won't last past a week or two. As far as the combat is concerned, the most effective tactics are Force Lightning, Sith Seeker, and Sith Shocker (What a shocker, all lightning moves). You don't need to worry about upgrading your lightsaber outside of matching your outfit (not that you really can, all you're able to purchase are combo upgrades), because you won't need it. It can't do as much damage in comparison to those three tactics. These three will basically wreak anything you come across until the last stage. Screw getting anything else, you just max these ASAP. You can only upgrade something to level 2 at the beginning of the game, but save your money for when that limit is removed. There will be few times when you'll have to rely on something else to get you through a mess, but then you can just rely on force push. It's much quicker to run back behind the corner from which you just came, let your force recharge and shock some more. Only a few exceptions, which are a few boss fights, require you to do more than these three. But these get over simplified with "Det packs". You force push these blinking packs into a boss and it does quite a good deal of damage. Once these are gone, go back to your original three Force tactics. Once you finally get a boss' health down to a set amount, you can trigger an interactive cutscene (similar to RE4's scene with krauser). You have to get every action correct in order to finally defeat a boss (But this only requires shaking the nunchuck or wiimote). These scenes look very nice, it makes me wonder why the lightsaber isn't that kick ass normally.

Overall: 6 (Not an average)

It's a very good game, but very flawed at the same time. It feels a little dated, like I'm picking up a game that would have been put out ten years ago. There are not very many loading times in the actual gameplay, but when there's multiple cutscenes in a row then the game takes a dive. Multiplayer quickly devolves into who can get sith chaser off first, an "unleashed" quickly amounts into at least a one point advantage if the opponent was at full health, or two if they were at anything below full as Unleashed allows infinite sith chasers. Even with blocking is ineffective against an Unleashed (which happens pretty frequently), sith chaser breaks any competitiveness between friends in the multiplayer part of Wii's Unleashed. The Story is done well in it's presentation, if you like it or not is up to you. Customizing lightsabers is cool, but nothing new. The game play is easy with these three tactics and will get stale quickly. A game shouldn't require not using (banning) them to be fun, this isn't a fighting game.

Buy or Rent?

Definitely a Rental first.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/08

Game Release: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (US, 09/16/08)