Posted by Setre on 10/09/2008 12:55pm

0 Bumps

There are two types of games in my eyes, good games (and of course bad games) and Star Wars games. The reason it’s like this is because I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, therefore I grade SW games differently. In most cases a SW game is usually just mediocre or bad in some cases but because I’m a fanboy I enjoy it for what it is. There have been a few cases where a SW game turned out to be a good game. Those few games are Republic Commando, Jedi Power Battles, and Jedi Outcast. Unfortunately The Force Unleashed is not a part of that category.

Unleashed was suppose to make you feel like a complete bad ass with the Force, which in some cases it does. However the later levels throw enemies at you that present more of a challenge and force you (no pun intended) to use your lightsaber instead of the Force. Now this would have been fine had the lightsaber physics been like in the movies, where limbs went flying, but alas it wasn’t. The only real time I felt like a true bad ass was when I completed the game and restarted with all my Force powers, in the TIE Fighter hangar I was a god but later on I was once again turned into a whipping boy. Also why THE HELL is the Star Destroyer level so fucking irritating? That should have been the level that made you go “Dude…I just totally pwned those guys” instead it makes you go “Thank god that’s over”.

Another issue I have with the game are the cut-scenes, why the hell was LucasArts so lazy here? How hard would it have been to show what my character is wearing and what color his lightsaber is? Why does it default to the “cannon” costume and lightsaber color? It’s bullshit. If I want my guy waving around a red lightsaber the entire game it should be shown in the damn cut-scene! MGS4 is also guilty of this but at least in TFU it didn’t revert my clothing and saber to what the cut-scene had on.

Now onto the story, it was kind of good, I guess. LucasArts launched TFU under the campaign of “a movie without a movie” like they did with Shadows of the Empire. In SotE they made the book first so of course the book was going to have more story, then they made the game, which in my opinion has the better story but whatever. In TFU’s case it was the opposite they made a game then made the book, so why the HELL does the game not have as much story as the book? Okay, I understand it’s a game and not a ton of story can be told but they could have done a hell of a better job then what they did. Why wasn’t the romance between Juno more flushed out like it was in the book? Why the fuck do we never learn Starkiller’s real name is Galen in the game? It’s just shit like this that pisses me off.

In Republic Commando I felt bad when I had to leave Sev on Kashyyyk (even if I could just turn around and see him in the gun turret but just go with me)because I felt like he was part of my squad. All of the Commandos were well flushed out and, at least for me, I cared about them. It pissed me off when they got shot and went down. As for Starkiller well I may have felt bad for him had we learned anything about him. Oh sure Darth Vader killed his dad that sort of made me care but where was the back story for how Starkiller got all those bruises? Did Vader beat him? What about when Vader betrays Starkiller where’s the emotion? It just seemed like Starkiller didn’t care. I mean when you think about he probably thought of Vader as his father so why wasn’t he more upset? I mean damn, come on guys!

Alright…I know a lot of this has nothing to really do with the gameplay and more of with the story so I’ll shut up about it and get on to what matters. The music is pretty good and same goes for the voice acting. The gameplay can get repetitive but over all you can entertain yourself enough with your Force Powers to keep things fresh. The boss fights well those aren’t all that great. Some are easy if you just spam certain moves and others are a complete bitch to figure out which moves to spam to defeat the boss. Over all on my Star Wars Game rating I’d give it a 4/5 which equals to a real game score as a 3/5. So if you’re a Star Wars fan I think you’ll enjoy the game, if not I’d say rent it. If you want the story read the book.

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