Force Unleashed: Fun but flawed

Definitely a step in the correct direction for LucasArts, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed represents what is both right and wrong with gaming today. It features a relatively unique style of play, as well as a sort of new perspective on the creation of the rebellion in Star Wars.

It fits into a 3rd-person fighting game in the vein of God of War or Devil May Cry, as far as you play one strong, powerful individual against hordes of hapless foes. That, however, is where the comparison ends, because, as awesome as Kratos was, he couldn’t pluck TIE Fighters out of space and drop them on stormtroopers.
You play as Galen Marek, the secret apprentice to Darth Vader code-named ‘Starkiller.’ Vader discovers him, a force-gifted young child, after hunting and killing his Jedi father during a gameplay sequence where you actually play as the Dark Lord, running around Kashyyk and force choking Wookies. After which Starkiller is trained in the dark side of the Force to kill Jedi, and eventually, according to Vader, overthrow the Emporer with him. Naturally, there’s betrayal, brutality, and confusing emotion (much like most other Star Wars offerings) throughout the story.
The story takes getting used to, as odd as that sounds. Most folks come into the game expecting Starkiller to be this incredibly stoic, merciless tough guy like Kratos, but he appears to have motivation and drive beyond selfishness and bloody-minded brutality. This might alienate some folks expecting otherwise, but the character does fit decently after one gets used to it. Occasionally the dialogue gets awkward with the new Star Wars trademark of forced humor, but the instances are pretty rare.

The gameplay works very well and the mechanics are fluid and intuitive. The Force powers you acquire throughout are as entertaining as they are brutal, and there really just isn’t anything like tapping a button to lift a fellow then hurl him into the stratosphere. Of course, some aspects make it really suck. Such as when the character gets knocked over by an opponent. The other people you’re fighting surround you while you loll on the ground counting the stars around your head and pummel you into a gooey paste. This especially happens in boss fights, and you will simply lose before you realize you’ve been knocked over.

A few design choices are not always the greatest, either. It seemed difficult to contemplate a scenario where pulling a Star Destroyer out of atmosphere into a planet would be anything but awesome, but Force Unleashed found a way to muck it up. Instead of just a cutscene, you enter a sort of ‘boss battle.’ Swarms of TIEs come at you, which you have to painstakingly destroy. Then you must use the thumbsticks to properly align the nose of the warship before entering a pull-down sequence. Then it sends another flock of TIEs. While you fight them, its nose tilts to the side again, and you have to re-align it before pulling again. You have to do this around four or five times, and it gets really frustrating.

Overall, however, in spite of bad design choices and other frustrating issues, Force Unleashed fits a niche very similar to Assassin’s Creed: it’s got its flaws and frustrations, but the overall experience is still very fun with plenty of unique things to make it worth a playthrough or two.