Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Breaks Leash Laws, Gets Fined

When I first heard about this game, I was filled with excitement at the prospect of playing a powerful Sith apprentice. Then the Star Wars nerd in me got a good smack in the face from my common sense. See, my common sense remembers the long track record of terrible to mediocre Star Wars games that have come out in my lifetime, and as such, assumed that this game would be no better or different from the rest. I spent the past two days doing almost nothing other than playing Star Wars: TFU, and letting my common sense and my inner Star Wars nerd duke it out over what to think of the game. You’ll find the results below.

Inner Star Wars nerd: From the moment you press start, you feel like you’re playing a Star Wars movie. It starts with the traditional scrolling text, and it doesn’t stop there. The cinematic manner in which the story is told makes playing this game far more appealing than watching the craptacular new Clone Wars movie. The events in TFU take place between episodes three and four, and it covers the events leading up to the formation of the rebel alliance. It does a damn fine job of covering those events at that - I spent my entire time with the game wondering what happens next, and while I could have stood for a little more plot and character development, I was pleased with the overall package.

The force powers you have access to come straight from the movies. You can grab things with the force, use force push to send enemies and objects flying, shock your enemies with force lightening, and of course slice through hordes of storm troopers with your trusty light saber. These force powers are, for the most part, well executed, and combat works pretty smoothly.

Common Sense: While the above may be true, this game has some glaring flaws that just can’t be overlooked. For starters, the game freezes up A LOT. Whenever there’s a lot going on on screen, the action will occasionally pause while the game catches up with you. On two separate occasions, the game froze permanently, forcing me to restart my Xbox 360. The action, while fairly well executed, gets pretty stale pretty quick. It’s really only amusing the first couple of times you throw a tie fighter at an unsuspecting storm trooper. Then you realize it’s just as effective, and less cumbersome to deal with the storm trooper in a more light saber heavy way. The game forces you through a quick time event every time you fight a large enemy (rancor, AT AT, ect) or a boss. I don’t think it needs saying at this point, but I’ll say it anyway because, apparently, the good people at Lucas Arts aren’t familiar with this school of thought: quick time events suck. They get old real quick, especially when you have to repeat the same one multiple times in a game. Every rancor requires an almost identical sequence of button presses to kill. At this point, I’m fairly certain I could pull it off with my eyes closed. Oh, and by the way Lucas Arts, I’m fairly certain that someone who is supposed to be so strong with the force could manage not to fall off a bridge every time a storm trooper sneezes at him. If you play this game, you will most likely fall off of things more often than you feel you should, and it will most likely lead to swearing.

One other thing that deserves some serious attention is the way the difficulty ramps up. For about 90% of the game I played on normal difficulty, and had no problems keeping up. Some bosses took me two or three attempts, but it never felt like the game was drastically out classing me, or cheating me out of a victory…. that is until I got to one particular fight that was extremely tedious, and took between a half hour and forty five minutes to beat. I only had to retry it twice - when I say it took that long, I’m referring to the third attempt. After that, you get thrown into the first room of the last level. That room prompted me to do something I seldom do - I bumped the difficulty down. After dying in this room about seven times, my frustration got the better of me, and I actually bumped the difficulty down to the “Apprentice” level - partly because I was frustrated, and partly because I wanted to get through the last level to see the ending.

It might seem like I’m calling TFU out as a bad game. Well, I’m not. It’s not bad it’s just not that good either. It’s a mediocre action game at best, and there are just too many solid action games coming out in the next few months for me to suggest you spend your hard earned money on this one…… that is unless you’re a Star Wars fan. I, for one, love the Star Wars movies, and this game fits right in with them as far as the plot is concerned. The story, and the force powers you have access to make up for the glaring flaws present in the game…. but only if you like Star Wars. If you’re not a fan, avoid this game. Hold out for any of the other big titles coming out this holiday season. If you are a Star Wars fan, then what are you still reading this for? Go play it.

-Mike Kurz