Game Review: Star Wars – Force Unleashed

Posted by Vaughan on Sep 28, 2008 in Games, Review | 0 comments

It’s rare that a big label game comes along, and I play it until the end. Since Halo3 there have been very few games I’ve been bothered to complete, and most of them XBox Live Arcade games (that reminds me, I need to review Castle Crashers and BC: Rearmed). GTA IV did take a fair amount of my time, but the mechanics of the game were too unforgiving. Anyway onto the review…

Star Wars – Force Unleashed: Kid, flash forward, adult, bad, slash slash, bad, push push, bad, zap zap, confused, zap zap, good, slash zap pew push slash, boom, vader, confused, emperor, bang bang, the end.

This game was a real treat. Bad camera, quite buggy, emphasis on the controller-in-tv infusing camera, but a real treat.  The game mechanics at a high level are quite awesome.  Your character levels up slowly, unlocking abilities as you go, which is nothing new.  What makes the difficulty slider on the game.. slide… is that every time you die, you don’t lose experience Jedi uber power points. Hence the game gets easier and easier as you bash your head against the wall. This works well for impossibly large groups of gun toting angry wookies, just after you opted for the focus fire and are in dire need of AOE. Boss fights start off impossible at times, and then you figure out the strategy, and away you go. The Darth fight was really well done, and the emperor fight, well, who cares!  I just pulled a Star Destroyer out of the sky!

The downside, aside from the plot, which in essence is needed for the game, SWFU is short. Whilst dodging the store salesperson who was determined to sell me the Wii version with the WiiSaber, I picked up the game amazed they had a ‘pre-owned’ version so close to launch.  “That makes no sense!”… but after playing the game, it made perfect sense. Finished in an AFL Grand Final weekend whilst doing everything else I needed to get done. Other downsides, no multiplayer that I can find, and faux replayability.

Buy it if you are a die hard fan, but otherwise, rent it.