"It's got its faults, but Force Unleashed gives you a better sense of being Jedi than any game so far."

Jason's Score:

8.0

There was a time when LucasArts didn't just make good games; it seemed like every other one was an instant classic, particularly the Star Wars games. TIE Fighter. Dark Forces. It was a time when licensed games, at least the ones from LucasArts, were guaranteed to rock.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed gets us closer to those glory days than any game in a long time. It's flawed, and sometimes those flaws force you to remember that anger and aggression are paths to the Dark Side. Yet much like Star Wars, the good trumps the bad...eventually.

Gamers play a secret apprentice of Darth Vader (after playing briefly as Darth Vader himself, no less). Having been trained since childhood in the ways of the Dark Side, the Apprentice is sent to hunt down the remaining Jedi. Of course, Vader has bigger plans for the Apprentice...

You are armed with a lightsaber, but your real weapon is the Force. The Force allows you to pick up huge items and hurl them at a squad, grab enemies and toss them over a cliff or into each other, flash-fry them with Force lightning... even flash-fry them with Force lightning and then throw them into each other.

The game has been compared to Psi-Ops, and that's fair, although Force Unleashed works slightly differently. As I recall, Psi-Ops still required you to rely on your ordinary weapons a lot. In Force Unleashed, your saber is good for close-quarters defense, but you can do far more damage and dispatch enemies much more efficiently with the Force, so it will soon become your primary weapon. Some people have complained about this, but I won't be one of them. In fact, I think the developers got this concept far better than George Lucas himself did. After a time, a Jedi shouldn't need a lightsaber. That was a total geek argument I know, but I make no apologies.

Another difference between Psi-Ops and Force Unleashed is that SWFU works on a grander scale, allowing you to manipulate and throw huge objects, such as chunks of TIE Fighters. Psi-Ops is a game I liked, but your display of powers was far less spectacular. The game's environments are extremely well designed and they are full of destructible objects, which means that your powers soon have very amazing and lethal effects. Glass shatters, pipes get ripped off walls, metal doors get blown open, whole catwalks come crashing down when you go at it. It's quite satisfying.

Control of your powers works pretty well. You can run around and hack up foes with your lightsaber, and when you need to use the Force, your character is anchored so that the analogue sticks are freed up to allow you to do what you need to do (like pick up an explosive barrel, aim it and chuck it at an AT-ST). The game does suffer from a wild camera though, swinging a little too free and loose for my tastes.

Interacting with the environment has its ups and downs. Some of the level physics are a bit slippery, and I've been through jumping sequences where I've slid off Teflon-coated surfaces to my death. Along with the wonky camera, the auto-targeting can be equally wild, so you can often fling that barrel into a wall or at some minor foe when you were really aiming for that giant charging Rancor. However, watching the physics and the AI interact are often hilarious. Force-grabbed enemies try to cling to anything--including each other--to stay alive. One time I almost tossed two Storm Troopers to their doom, because one grabbed another before he went hurtling over a catwalk. Luckily for Number Two, he hit the catwalk and was given a two second reprieve. Then I grabbed him and tossed him over after his buddy.

The story is great, especially given the tight confines that had to work with. It doesn't contradict the original trilogy or the prequel trilogy in any meaningful way (at least, it not if you reach the "good" ending), plus it has a satisfying conclusion and a few cool twists along the way. The cutscenes and animation are also excellent. The game's graphics are strong in general, but they come at a price: there's another one of those damn PlayStation 3 installs (no, I will not let it go) and there's a load screen between gameplay and the menus.

Another frustration comes in seeming artificial limits to your powers. If the player can blast six guys down just by thinking about it, then you need something to challenge them. So often you are presented with special troops wearing magic armour that is resistant to your powers. Someday (perhaps in The Force Unleashed II?) I want to see them go all out and have a game where a Jedi and a Sith Lord fight it out by tossing aircraft carriers at each other. No boundaries.

Still, you often get to showcase your powers in SWFU, and when you do, look out. You can cause some truly awesome mayhem in this game, creating dynamic set-pieces that rival the movies. Like a fight with some Storm Troopers that ends when you smash one through the window of starship, causing his mates to get blown out into space before the emergency bulkhead seals the deck. Or gritty battles between some of the six movie's heaviest hitters (don't worry no spoilers, but there are some surprises). I think it's ultimately worth getting for moments like this. When the Force Unleashed is on, it is on.

Pros

Cons

Bottom Line

Jason's Score:

8.0