Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Developer: LucasArts
Platform: Xbox 360

As some readers may know, I live in Philadelphia. During the summer, sometimes my friends and I like to go to Rittenhouse square, have a few drinks, talk and try and figure out what to do with the rest of our evening. Occasionally during these visits, a group of strange exhibitionist nerds decide that they are going to take over a section of the park and fight each other with plastic Lightsabers. I do admit that I get excited when I see them arrive, duffle bag of armaments in hand, ready to do battle for the enjoyment of the assorted hipsters, dog walkers, tourists and transient drunks milling about. I have been known to move to a better vantage point to see them rehearse. When they fight they are like rare birds in flight, a flurry of JNCO jeans and chain wallets, awkwardly thrashing at each other while I wait for the chubby one's heart to give out. I also have to admit that, while watching, me and my roommate think how awesome it would be to dress as Sith, find them, and, saying nothing, just attack. So, I understand who the Force Unleashed's audience is.

Unleashed follows Starkiller, Darth Vader's apprentice, between episodes III and IV of the Star Wars saga. Starkiller's charge, as Vader's hound, is to travel the galaxy attempting to murder any remaining Jedi. Accompanying him on this are his two sidekicks, an attractive, hotshot, imperial pilot and your goofy, patricidal, shape-shifting droid. The final goal of your murderous romps throughout the galaxy is to kill the Emperor, thus proving that you are the most badass mother-Sith the universe has ever seen. I can get behind that. A friend of mine has often criticized me saying, “You just like (insert badass thing here) because its badass.” What I think he means by this is that I shouldn't like it because it was designed to be “badass.” There is a part of me that agrees with him, but only when its not done well. Really this idea is the base of whether Unleashed works or not.

Let me begin by saying Unleashed, most of the time, is a lot of fun. I enjoy being an almost unstoppable vehicle of murderous rage. A great example appears in the third stage. I saw a Jawa, minding his own business fixing some giant engine thingy, and so, being the heartless bastard I am, I grabbed him with the awesome power of the dark side, threw my Lightsaber into him, electrocuted him, then threw him like some type of makeshift, electric Jawa-bomb into his brethren and the assorted explosive barrels strewn about every part of the game's environments. But, please dear reader, do not this that this title is not just moments like this. Unleashed is extremely front loaded. You start the game as Vader storming the home world of the Wookies. Whilst being Vader, you have a giant arsenal of force related weapons at your disposal, causing you to feel very empowered. After this tutorial stage however, things change quite a bit.

Unleashed is set in three acts. Without giving too many spoilers, at the beginning of the second act things start to take serious turn for the worse. During the first act Starkiller accumulates new force powers at the beginning of every stage, allowing you to feel like your working towards
being the unstoppable force of destruction that was Vader during the first stage. But, for some reason the people at LucasArts thought it was a good idea to start negating your
powers by making many of the enemies immune. Most of time they don't even give a good excuse as to why. Force shields...really? Force shields aside, Unleashed has a few technical
glitches that whisper of a hurried production. I glitched through a few walls spinning to oblivion, and at one point was stuck in the leg of a Rancor. Oh, and let's not forget, this game has quick time events. Now its true, I hate QTE's; they are never difficult and I have never thought that Simon constituted compelling gameplay. Even the boss fights - mostly other Jedi - were almost never fun or even that difficult. The tactic was almost always the same: smack 'em with my Nerf Lightsaber, lightening, then repeat. Oh, until you gotta finish 'em... with a quick time event.

What I kept hearing from people about The Force Unleashed before I played it was, “I heard the story was really good.” My answer to this is, “Yeah, not really.” Much like the gameplay, the story starts with a good base that erodes with time. As I said, Starkiller is a Sith. Not only is he a Sith but he was raised by Darth Vader to be a heartless Sith. So the 180 that the story forces down my throat comes off completely unbelieveable.

Starkiller slaughters any and everything that gets in his general vicinity. I find it hard to swallow when such a character starts showing so much emotion so quickly and with little reason. Speaking of hard to swallow, I'm sorry, but the force doesn't save you from the effects of open space. Nor do people tend to sympathize with or respect homicidal maniacs. While I digress, the story of Unleashed isn't exactly bad. What I think is, is that peoples expectations are just seriously damaged when considering Star Wars as of late. Unleashed is no Empire Strikes Back, but it is much better then The Phantom Menace or any of the new installments for that matter. I think my biggest problem with the story is the ending.

I went through the game feeling and acting like a Sith, gleefully dismembering my foes, without piety. When at the end I was given the choice to finish off Vader or try and kill the Emperor, I thought I was doing the Sith thing by trying to kill the Emperor thus establishing myself as the baddest mother fucker in the galaxy. I was apparently wrong. What this choice really meant is that I was some type of wussy rebel sympathizer trying to save people who probably thought I was a sick bastard. I was confused. Didn't they establish that my goal was to kill the Emperor at the beginning of this whole thing?

I know that there are a lot of negative statements in the previous paragraphs, but Unleashed is not a bad game. It's just not a very good one either. On the one hand, we got a startlingly pretty and fun game, that allows the player to play the role of a superhuman Sith badass. On on the other, you have a game that really just amounts to the result of an old-school beat-em-up and a tech demo having a baby. While Unleashed could have been a really good game, it just isn't. I just wish that this title could have had more time in the oven; I think we could have seen something really good.

But, seriously LucasArts, why couldn't there just have been just one damn Gungan I could have force choked. Though, there is a lot to be said about an electric Jawa bomb.

Final Score: C+

~Aaron R

This Review is dedicated to John M. without you this could not have been possible.