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.

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Playstation 3

1. Prince of Persia

2. Call of Duty: World at War

3. Resistance 2

4. Fallout 3

5. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

6. Far Cry 2

7. Need for Speed: Undercover

8. James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace

9. Mirror’s Edge

10. Little Big Planet

Playstation 2

1. Call of Duty: World at War – Final Fronts

2. Need for Speed: Undercover

3. NHL 09

4. Guitar Hero: World Tour

5. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

6. LEGO Batman

7. WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009

8. Shaun White Snowboard

9. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

10. Sonic Unleashed

Xbox 360

1. Gears of War 2

2. Prince of Persia

3. Fallout 3

4. Call of Duty: World at War

5. Left 4 Dead

6. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

7. Far Cry 2

8. Fable II

9. Need for Speed: Undercover

10. Saints Row 2

Wii

1. Wii Music

2. Animal Crossing: City Folk

3. Shaun White Snowboard

4. NHL 2K9

5. Clone Wars: The Animated Series

6. Mario Party 8

7. Need for Speed: Undercover

8. Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party

9. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

10. Call of Duty: World at War

Source: Blockbuster

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It was, as “The Force Unleashed” project lead, Haden Blackman, said in October, highly destructive. It distinguishes itself from the original levels of “Force Unleashed” by the amount of breakable, toss-able, and combustible stuff which your Jedi-on-steroids can crunch, crash and crush.

The new DLC level is set in the Jedi Temple on the plant of Coruscant during a moment wedged between levels of the original “Force Unleashed” game. The playable protagonist, the Dark Apprentice, has come to the Jedi Temple to learn his past. Mostly, though, he spends his time violently deactivating droids and killing stormtroopers with hurricane intensity.

Blackman had stated that it wasn’t old content kept from the paying consumers of the disc-based game. The new level was created after the completion of that disc-based game, so he assured that it would benefit from his development team’s experience on the core project.

A key learning was that the original game was balanced in a way that unintentionally encouraged players to neglect using all of their Force powers except lightning and primarily fight with a lightsaber combos. This new Jedi Temple returns the Force powers — primarily the ability to lift object and hurl them — to the lead weapon in the player’s arsenal. There are not many rooms in the Jedi Temple, but those that the player enters are full of large statues, explosive vases and massive models of planetary systems begging to be turned into bowling boulders. There is lots of stuff to check.

So you enter the Temple. You fight a lot. You tear up the scenery a lot. There are a few puzzles, more than were in the entire original game. It’s good fun. But reminders of unfixed “Force Unleashed” flaws do surface.

The camera can still frustrate. And the use of the Force to do seemingly simple things — like lifting a heavy door from a doorway so you can get through it without being shot to death — don’t always work without some extra fiddling of the controller.

The level takes a full hour to play the first time (on the second difficulty level, at least) because it can get hard. There are a lot of enemies to fight and at least one tough restart checkpoint. Unfortunately, this bonus adventure ends abruptly, clipping its own little story. It’s strange, because the original game so superbly and completely delivered its own tale.

Your hero is slightly different in the DLC. Players get a new outfit for the Dark Apprentice in this level. Despite Blackman telling me that the developers would force players to re-spec their character from scratch, you do seem to be playing with the character whose powers you upgraded in the core game. You’re given added Force points to spend on upgrades you may not have bought yet, but there are no new powers.

For their $10 players will also receive some extra skins for their character, allowing cosmetic switches to several characters, including Samuel Jackson Jedi Mace Windu.

Is the “Jedi Temple” worth the money? The value of downloadable content is hard to judge. Do you calculate based on the time it takes to play it? By the graphics? By the worth of experiencing a development team’s first learnings from making the game they had just completed? By the pleasure of there being something new to play of a game you beat two months ago?

DLC Screenshot (1)

Credit: Stephen Totilo

DLC Screenshot (2)

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