Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

"Falls short of hype and ultimately one of 2008’s most disappointing releases"

When the trailer for Lucas Art's latest Star Wars project was first ‘unleased' fans marvelled at the game's amazing physics engine and level of polish in it's visuals. Lucas Arts promised the game's new force powers would be ‘revolutionary' and story-wise would best fill in the gap between the prequel and original trilogies. Of course none of this means anything without proper execution. Did it live up to it's high expectations, or has Lucas Art's work gone to waste on a generic hack & slasher, read more and find out…

Story

While the game's story doesn't offer the cinematic experience you get from watching the movies, it still does a fairly good job at filling in the gap between the third and forth instalments. The Force Unleased follows Starkiller, a secret apprentice raised and brought up by Darth Vader to essentially work as his personal assassin/hitman tasked to eliminating the remaining Jedi Forces and end the war once and for all. While not all that original, the plot still gets credits for staying true to the source materiel with only a few questionably non-canon moments. Thankfully, god forbid, Jar Jar doesn't feature this time around.

Playing the game through the perspective of a Sith Lord is probably the most interesting aspect of the game's story and really helps delve further into the Star Wars universe filling in any plot holes left previously uncovered. Unfortunately though the plot suffers from a few flaws. Most of the new characters introduced in the game (including Starkiller) lack the personality and substance of characters from the movies, thus making them feel bland, unfitting and generally just really uninteresting. Good regardless.
7/10

Graphics/Visuals

The game's graphics were unfortunately, a bit of a mixed bag. During the opening level (the Wookie homeworld ‘Kashyyyk') the graphics were indeed very impressive. The environments were pretty and the effects were snazzy, in my eyes it truly was a perfect example of great movie-to-game conversion in terms of visuals. After the wow-factor started to ware off a few levels later, I started to realise that while definitely not lacking in the franchise's trademark art direction, the game did suffer from some environmental repetition. Some of the game's levels while different in design looked on many occasions, very simular and there weren't really any distinct features or set-pieces that made them look unique or stand out.

Despite this one rather major gripe, the game still manages to deliver stellar visual effects and a rather impressive physics engine, which is occasionally let down by any lack of realism, (eg: At times you can break down a large steel door using the force push action, but force-pushing a small twig-like tree will sometimes struggle to make it sway in the breeze).

While the game's cutscenes are very nicely done and show off the games character model's in great detail, the game's presentation leaves much to desire. Load times were awfully common, and in terms of the game's frame-rate, at times it would drop noticeably low when a lot of enemies were present on screen.
7/10

Sound/Audio

As with most other Lucas Arts title, audio is stellar. The game's cinematic musical scores are grand as always (much of John Williams original score is used) and the voice acting for the most part was good even despite the disappointing lack of the majority of original voices. The Sound Effects display the same level as quality as in the films, Lightsabers, Blaster Rifles and Tie Fighters all sounding akin to their movie counterparts. Overall, definitely the games highlight.

Sound: 8/10
Music: 8/10

Gameplay

It's actually very hard to judge the Force Unleased in terms of gameplay. I can definitely say that from a technical standpoint the game is indeed impressive. The physics are quite realistic, force push or pull your enemies and their body movements react appropriately and there's a distinct feeling of chaos as your overpowered Sith Lord turns his surroundings into essentially what I would call a ‘physics playground' using the environment as his weapon sending several turrets, temporally on standby, to do his bidding. It's certainly impressive to see Starkiller use the force shocking his prey with a fast jolt of electricity sending them flopping lifelessly to the ground, but is it fun. Hardly. Come to think of it the game's title really is quite deceiving, ‘Unleased' is a bit of an overstatement…

The game's level design while still painstakingly linear was okay in some instances (but awful for the most part), I found the combat too be bland and uninspired for my liking, which therefore kept me from enjoying the game. The lightsaber ‘hack & slash' combat is tedious and with only a few combos at your disposal it's guaranteed to grow old quick. Not to mention the repetition. The games platforming sections while they bring nothing new to the gaming front can be occasionally entertaining. The games famed force mechanics (while flashy) are ironically nothing special and are really just something of a rehash of that of the countless previous Star Wars games, plaguing the market for some time now. The overall game mechanics and design just felt really unpolished and rough around the edges.

Imagine little variation between enemies and couple that with poor AI and you've got a recipe for mediocrity (or more aptly titled Star Wars: The Force Unleased). The boss battles are also something of a disappointment too. They don't utilize the force powers (in fact most bosses particularly render them useless) and what it all comes down to mainly is following their predictable patterns, mashing X and before you know it you'll be following the on-screen prompts as you are greeted with a quick time event, which come the chance that you fail, you‘ll have to repeat the same repetitive process over again, opponent now almost fully healed. The camera is often awkward as you're constantly having to reposition it during both fights and platforming sections, especially during small and confined spaces. Puzzles are generic and unnecessary and usually involve using the force to either, break down a door or move an object obscuring your path or flick a switch.

All up the should take you about ten hours (at the most) in length to play through the game in it's entirety. There's no multiplayer and additional features are minute (ranging from concept art to customisable characters and additional lightsaber colours) and this really hurts the game overall package significantly, making it really hard to recommend to anyone but a diehard fan.
5/10

Controls

Unfortunately the controls are another one of the game's disappointing features. The platforming elements just felt really clunky and awkward as the camera (mentioned above) would constantly have to be repositioned for what seemed like every second jump. While I found most combat mechanics were implemented quite well control-wise, the lock-on system was more complicated than it needed to be as I found myself at times, struggling to switch between targets in the midst of battle. Despite these issues the control scheme still remains just passable.
6/10

Now for a quick revision…

Story: 7/10
Graphics/Visuals: 7/10
Sound: 8/10
Music: 8/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Controls: 6/10
Overall: 5/10

Pros

+ Sound design is stellar as always.
+ Story does a decent job at filling in the gap between the prequel/original trilogies.
+ Impressive visuals effects and physics engine.

Cons

- Tedious combat and overly repetitive structure make for bland gameplay.
- Generally poor level design.
- Short.
- Seriously lacking in replay value (no multiplayer).
- Little variation in environments.
- Awkward and clunky controls.

In Conclusion

While it may meet expectations in terms of story, sound and visuals the same unfortunately can't be said in terms of gameplay and design and thus I can only recommend it to true fans of the franchise, others looking for an enjoyable action romp, look elsewhere.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/09

Game Release: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (AU, 09/17/08)