Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

In this third-person action game (think something like Kingdom Hearts for gameplay, or even Mario 64) You play as the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, set between episodes 3 and 4, a force-slinging badass whose job it is, at least initially, to track down and kill the survivors of the empire's massacre of the Jedi which took place in episode 3. As is only natural for a video game, your character is actually fairly likable, and the character himself develops over time to be more of a hero, though you do have an eventual choice at the very end of the game to be good or evil. (Sort of. It's moderately complicated.) The "good" ending is actually Star Wars canon, apparently, and it's a fairly interesting tale in general.

(As a note, my review of this game comes only from the Wii version. I've never played the other versions, so anything I say here may not apply in the other versions of the game.)

The story is all well and good, and paced fairly well. The characters, as well, are fairly interesting - and of course, it helps that you already know the personalities of The Emperor and Darth Vader. It's not exactly the pinnacle of originality - especially for a Star Wars story - but it certainly gets the job done, and is certainly entertaining. Apparently, some rather important details were left out of the Wii version of this game (the rebel alliance symbol is the main characters family crest? news to me), but it still works. That said, I have no idea why this would be the case - I highly doubt it was a disk space issue, though I suppose that's not impossible. Either way, such important details shouldn't simply be cut.

But why I really love this game isn't for the story, it's for the gameplay. And let me tell you, the gameplay is fantastic. Your various force powers are, by and large, easy enough to use, as well as fairly intuitive - for example, to use "Force Push," you push the nunchuck forward. You also use the main part of the remote as a lightsaber - swinging it back and forth actually makes the main character swing his saber back and forth, in a very similar way to the way you swung the wiimote. It's really cool.

The sheer power of the main character, and the many ways you have to devastate the enemy forces, are what makes the game great. You've got your saber, you've got a few varieties of force lightning, you've got a few varieties of force push, you can throw your lightsaber (among other lightsaber-themed force powers), and you've got telekinesis, to name a few. All of them rapidly dispatch the enemy mooks, and boy is it grand. Wave after wave of enemies are sent against you, and you can dispatch them without too much difficulty in any number of entertaining ways. It's really hard to describe just how the game goes and adequetly convey the sense of fun that playing the game gives. The sheer power of the main character, the way he devastates all in his path - it's just really, really fun.

And yet, you aren't invulnerable - while you do have an innate capacity to reflect blaster shots, plenty will get through if you're not careful, and the bosses can be a pain. The balance of the main character's phenomenal cosmic powers and the game's difficulty manages to work, which is just fantastic. Enough minions (especially spread-out ones) can still do you in, and the bosses can be a pain. Which brings me to my first qualm with this game - the bosses. They all feel (at least, the humanoid ones) fairly identical, and your tactics don't really need to vary from one to another. Swing your saber, shoot some lightning, maybe try some telekinesis, and they'll eventually go down. Maybe you'll need to block from time to time, and maybe you'll have to kill some minions here or there, but the humanoid bosses (which is the majority, by the way - non-humanoid bosses are typically actually minibosses, and fairly easy in their own right) all feel basically the same.

There is also no "hard mode" in this game. Given that if you decide to start the game using your old file's data, you'll probably start with one or two maxed-out force powers, it makes the game incredibly easy until late. Additionally, there's no level select mode, which is particularly annoying given what I just said about difficulty, as well as the fact that there are many collectibles to grab throughout the levels. Trying to get all of the collectibles is quite an annoying task without any sort of level select feature. The camera could use some work as well, but it's not as bad as some I've seen.

I haven't played the multiplayer mode for this game, but I hear it's alright - though there is no online, nor are there bots you can play against. Frustrating.

The penalty for death in this game is minimal - you just lose a small amount of force points (experience used to power up your force powers), and if you're facing a boss, the boss regains a bit of health. You respawn at basically the exact same point you died at. Frankly, I think this isn't severe enough - you should get kicked back to the last checkpoint, pure and simple, and you should have a limited amount of lives before you have to restart the level. Of course, there's something to be said for being able to truck through levels, but I think with checkpoints and a fairly decent amount of lives per level, it would be a better game, since there would actually be some sense that the main character was in serious danger. Like I said earlier, the balance is good - staying alive is fairly challenging, but if you actually die, it's not that bad at all. So I suppose game balance "feels" good, but in reality, with the lack of penalty for death, it makes it a really easy game. Whenever I died in this game, I honestly felt a bit of disappointment - my thoughts were basically "Huh. Well, uh, I guess I'll go kill the dudes that killed me and move on now. And now I've got full health." Not exactly the sentiments I feel should accompany death, in pretty much any game. At the very least, the game should keep track of how many times you died, in order to make you feel bad if you die too much, and give you a "0 death run" goal to shoot for.

But all in all, this is a really great game. The gameplay is some of the funnest I've ever played, and the story is pretty good as well. I wish it was longer (it was quite easy to rent it once and beat it), but with this sort of action game, a long game isn't the standard.

Things to be learned:

Giving the main character a really high level power and tossing wave after wave of mooks at him is really, really fun if done right. Indeed, making the main character have a TON of power in general, and yet still making the game balanced, can be great fun. It's always fun to have power, and it's even better if you have incredible power and the game is still balanced. I've never encountered a game that does it as well as this one. (PS: Dear Psi-Ops, please take a look at this game. It proves that you don't have to make everything immune to your psychic powers late game in order to still have a challenge. Please take this to heart if you ever get a sequel. Love, Adam.)

Differentiate bosses. Fighting one shouldn't be the exact same thing as fight every other one.

Difficulty levels - have them. I believe this is on my "list of things games should always have." Blasting through a game with no challenge is much less fun than blasting through a game while you are being challenged.

Level select - have it. For a game like this - a game that consists of very little but one level following another following another, it's a really good feature to have.

If you can, make your multiplayer have online and computer bot capabilities. It may be some extra work, but it makes multiplayer a heck of a lot more fun.

Death should have some sort of penalty, I think. Obviously, given current games like Bioshock (or so I hear) and Destroy All Humans! that don't have a severe penalty for death, some good game designers disagree with me, and I certainly can see the reasons they choose to have a minimal penalty for death. But my (current, anyway) opinion is that there should be a decent, though certainly not unreasonable, penalty for death. I feel that this game falls into the "too small penalty for death" category.