The first thing to remember about this game is that it was very clearly designed to be as stylish as possible, and frequently sacrifices faithfulness to the universe for spectacle. If you are the sort of person who will rage about "canon" and what have you, this game is not for you. You can stop reading now. If, on the other hand, you enjoy spectacle, style, and moments of over-the-top insane coolness, read on.
In Force Unleashed, the player steps into the role of "Starkiller", a phenomenally powerful force user who was taken as Darth Vader's apprentice in his childhood and has remained in the Dark Lord's service ever since, enduring ever-increasingly difficult training scenarios every last one of which was set to "kill". The game picks up at the end of his training, when Vader sends him out to hunt and kill his first Jedi.
The first thing I noticed about Force Unleashed was that the Force has been given a major jolt of extra power. No "subtle" jumping about, acrobatic stunts and mind tricks for this game, oh no. Instead, Starkiller sends storms of force lightning to flicker about the landscape incinerating whatever gets in the way, double-jumps his way across hangar bays, flings men and crates around with gleeful abandon and, in the first level, crushes an AT-ST variant like a drinks can. In a notable scene later in the game, he pulls a Star Destroyer out of the air while obliterating squadrons of TIE fighters with the force. No, that's not a spoiler, it's on the back of the box.
This then, is a game with the dial marked "subtle" turned down to 0, and everything else screwed right up to the breaking point.
There are problems, of course. While solid, the combat system is rather hampered by a temperamental lock-on system and a sluggish third-person camera. Many of the enemies are bizarrely resistant to lightsaber swings, and further confound you by having little difficulty in clubbing you with their rifle butts or smacking you with a stun stick. More often than not, if you lose a fight in this game, it's because you were stun-locked by one of the many enemies capable of making Starkiller stand still for a few seconds, or were picked out of the air by seeking missiles. Stun-lock and knockdown are the twin banes of your life in SWtFU, with knockdown being made all the more annoying by the fact that you have no grace period of invulnerability while you sluggishly pick yourself up.
These features make the first couple of levels feel more like a chore than a game, which after the fun you had controlling Vader in the prologue feels like a let-down. After that point however, things start looking up, as you're given access to two of the most important abilities in the game - force lightning, and force repulse. The former needs no introduction, the latter is an omnidirectional pulse of telekinetic force capable of splattering lesser foes and knocking all bar the mini-bosses off their feet. By the time you're about half-way through the plot you've gained access to a menagerie of abilities that allow you to rampage through the forces arrayed against you. Luckily, it's sufficiently well-balanced that no one ability gets over-used - they all have their place, and you will wind up using all of them at some point or another.
Nevertheless, this is, on average, a hard game. I say "on average" because the difficulty curve is very lumpy indeed. On the "Medium" setting, I had a hard time clearing the third level the first time I played it, but cruised through levels four and five without much effort at all. On average, however, it's a challenge, and especially in the later levels you'll find yourself facing hordes of enemies, many of whom are one of the aforementioned annoying ones with stun guns, shock prods, sniper rifles and homing rockets, supported by an AT-ST or two. The variety of troops you face combine enemies that are all but Force-proof and therefore best tackled with your lightsaber, with ones that are better dealt with using the Force. The trick is to mix it up, which the game actively rewards you for doing. Still, you WILL die a lot, and can expect to advance through the plot mostly by remembering what got you last time, and planning your new attack accordingly. Fortunately, the checkpoints seem to be well paced, meaning that your inevitable repeated deaths will never set you back too far.
The inclusion of quick-time events for the purpose of finishing off the more powerful bad guys and the bosses really shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering that this game fits very neatly into the same niche occupied by "God of War". The good news is that they're very common, so you expect them. They're also very clear which button you should press, generous with the time allowance, and don't punish you very harshly for failure. They're good quick-time events, in other words - an example of the mechanic done well.
The plot itself is suitably epic, and contains a couple of minor twists that you'll probably see coming, but which are delivered stylishly nonetheless. None of the characters are in any way deep, but that isn't really surprising - this is Star Wars after all. They're still deeper than the ones written by George Lucas. The voice acting is average-to-good, the set pieces are impressive, and there's just enough subtle humour under all the GrimDark to keep it interesting. The only real gripe here is that many of the cutscenes are unskippable, which can get wearisome one the occasions where your last checkpoint was just before the cutscene leading in to a big fight.
The graphics are superb, and the physics engine lends an extra sense of realism to it all. With all those telekinetic effects whamming all over the place, you'd expect metal to bend, glass to shatter and men, crates and droids to go tumbling everywhere, which is exactly what happens, but there are little details there as well, such as the way Starkiller becomes increasingly muddy and blood-spattered as his missions wear on, or the little pock-mark skin blemishes visible on his face. Enemy corpses and physics gibs do tend to vanish surprisingly quickly, but that is presumably a way of saving system resources. I played on the Xbox 360, and the framerate was smooth throughout the whole game, even in the most intense battles, with effects flying everywhere.
All in all, this is a good game. It may not be terribly innovative, and the combat may alternate between controller-hurling frustration and wild "OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT!?" moments, but Star Wars fans who get a kick out of "Devil May Cry"-esque spectacle will definitely want to play this game, and it would make a decent addition to the library of any gamer who enjoys a hard game with lots of rewarding explosions.
If, on the other hand, you wanted depth, subtlety and strong characters - in other words, KoToR - then I suggest that next time you should pay closer attention, because it never promised those things in the first place. What it did promise was a hell of a show, and that's exactly what it delivers.
In Force Unleashed, the player steps into the role of "Starkiller", a phenomenally powerful force user who was taken as Darth Vader's apprentice in his childhood and has remained in the Dark Lord's service ever since, enduring ever-increasingly difficult training scenarios every last one of which was set to "kill". The game picks up at the end of his training, when Vader sends him out to hunt and kill his first Jedi.
The first thing I noticed about Force Unleashed was that the Force has been given a major jolt of extra power. No "subtle" jumping about, acrobatic stunts and mind tricks for this game, oh no. Instead, Starkiller sends storms of force lightning to flicker about the landscape incinerating whatever gets in the way, double-jumps his way across hangar bays, flings men and crates around with gleeful abandon and, in the first level, crushes an AT-ST variant like a drinks can. In a notable scene later in the game, he pulls a Star Destroyer out of the air while obliterating squadrons of TIE fighters with the force. No, that's not a spoiler, it's on the back of the box.
This then, is a game with the dial marked "subtle" turned down to 0, and everything else screwed right up to the breaking point.
There are problems, of course. While solid, the combat system is rather hampered by a temperamental lock-on system and a sluggish third-person camera. Many of the enemies are bizarrely resistant to lightsaber swings, and further confound you by having little difficulty in clubbing you with their rifle butts or smacking you with a stun stick. More often than not, if you lose a fight in this game, it's because you were stun-locked by one of the many enemies capable of making Starkiller stand still for a few seconds, or were picked out of the air by seeking missiles. Stun-lock and knockdown are the twin banes of your life in SWtFU, with knockdown being made all the more annoying by the fact that you have no grace period of invulnerability while you sluggishly pick yourself up.
These features make the first couple of levels feel more like a chore than a game, which after the fun you had controlling Vader in the prologue feels like a let-down. After that point however, things start looking up, as you're given access to two of the most important abilities in the game - force lightning, and force repulse. The former needs no introduction, the latter is an omnidirectional pulse of telekinetic force capable of splattering lesser foes and knocking all bar the mini-bosses off their feet. By the time you're about half-way through the plot you've gained access to a menagerie of abilities that allow you to rampage through the forces arrayed against you. Luckily, it's sufficiently well-balanced that no one ability gets over-used - they all have their place, and you will wind up using all of them at some point or another.
Nevertheless, this is, on average, a hard game. I say "on average" because the difficulty curve is very lumpy indeed. On the "Medium" setting, I had a hard time clearing the third level the first time I played it, but cruised through levels four and five without much effort at all. On average, however, it's a challenge, and especially in the later levels you'll find yourself facing hordes of enemies, many of whom are one of the aforementioned annoying ones with stun guns, shock prods, sniper rifles and homing rockets, supported by an AT-ST or two. The variety of troops you face combine enemies that are all but Force-proof and therefore best tackled with your lightsaber, with ones that are better dealt with using the Force. The trick is to mix it up, which the game actively rewards you for doing. Still, you WILL die a lot, and can expect to advance through the plot mostly by remembering what got you last time, and planning your new attack accordingly. Fortunately, the checkpoints seem to be well paced, meaning that your inevitable repeated deaths will never set you back too far.
The inclusion of quick-time events for the purpose of finishing off the more powerful bad guys and the bosses really shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering that this game fits very neatly into the same niche occupied by "God of War". The good news is that they're very common, so you expect them. They're also very clear which button you should press, generous with the time allowance, and don't punish you very harshly for failure. They're good quick-time events, in other words - an example of the mechanic done well.
The plot itself is suitably epic, and contains a couple of minor twists that you'll probably see coming, but which are delivered stylishly nonetheless. None of the characters are in any way deep, but that isn't really surprising - this is Star Wars after all. They're still deeper than the ones written by George Lucas. The voice acting is average-to-good, the set pieces are impressive, and there's just enough subtle humour under all the GrimDark to keep it interesting. The only real gripe here is that many of the cutscenes are unskippable, which can get wearisome one the occasions where your last checkpoint was just before the cutscene leading in to a big fight.
The graphics are superb, and the physics engine lends an extra sense of realism to it all. With all those telekinetic effects whamming all over the place, you'd expect metal to bend, glass to shatter and men, crates and droids to go tumbling everywhere, which is exactly what happens, but there are little details there as well, such as the way Starkiller becomes increasingly muddy and blood-spattered as his missions wear on, or the little pock-mark skin blemishes visible on his face. Enemy corpses and physics gibs do tend to vanish surprisingly quickly, but that is presumably a way of saving system resources. I played on the Xbox 360, and the framerate was smooth throughout the whole game, even in the most intense battles, with effects flying everywhere.
All in all, this is a good game. It may not be terribly innovative, and the combat may alternate between controller-hurling frustration and wild "OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT!?" moments, but Star Wars fans who get a kick out of "Devil May Cry"-esque spectacle will definitely want to play this game, and it would make a decent addition to the library of any gamer who enjoys a hard game with lots of rewarding explosions.
If, on the other hand, you wanted depth, subtlety and strong characters - in other words, KoToR - then I suggest that next time you should pay closer attention, because it never promised those things in the first place. What it did promise was a hell of a show, and that's exactly what it delivers.
