The Force Unleashed

[saintjon]

So I picked up the new Star Wars title for my Wii and it's sort of a mixed bag. For it to have as many glaring shortcomings as it does that could have been averted with more development time and still be as fun as it is makes me think that they're definitely on the right track. It's a shame they didn't just take their time and get it right on this go round, but if Lucasarts just heads a little bit farther down this path they're going to have a really amazing Star Wars game on their hands.

The sound is fully as wonderful as you'd expect, the graphics are mediocre and insulting (I know the Wii doesn't have the graphics power of the 360 or PS3, I don't mind that one bit, but that is no excuse for having bottom-end PS2 graphics present in a game you're going to put this much of a marketing push behind), the controls are fair to middlin' with some real flashes of genius. For the most part the wiimote controls your lightsaber in wand-like fashion, the nunchuk controls most of your force powers. the camera does whatever it feels like, which can be aggravating. The force powers handle much more intuitively than the lightsaber attacks do. I don't know why, when people make these sword combat type interfaces on the Wii, they always aim for minimal gestures. As a star wars fan since childhood I WANT to wave my arm around, I don't CARE if I get tired, I'm would much rather the ingame character mirror what I do than have him prompted into his own moves based on which direction I wave the wiimote in. I've played the game enough, I've seen the guy fight, and frankly I got better moves than he does. I would own him if I were a Jedi, but that's beside the point.

Whatever. Like I said the game is still absurdly fun. Do any of you guys have the versions for other systems? have you tried it at all and what did you think?

[kater]

I've been hedging my bets on this. To begin with it looked fantastic, then the poor reviews starting coming in and I don't have the desire to play games the way I used to so I'm kinda hoping it will drop in price. Would you recommend it?

[Wulfa_Jones]

This was my first next gen game, I got a PS3 when I did, just to play it.

It started off great.

However, after a while it begins to get a bit boring. It really is just a hack and slash game. Sometime I really wanted to pick up a blaster or use a mounted gun, but that option isn't open to you. The use of force powers is great fun; throwing storm troopers about, blasting open doors, shattering star destroyer windows so everyone gets sucked out into space, using force lightening in some seriously cool ways and some devastating lightsaber attacks did offer a great deal of enjoyment, but only in the short term.

Some annoying little glitches keep popping up – for example sometimes it is quite hard to target your force powers if there are multiple objects or if the object you need/want to manipulate is set above ground level. The levels, whilst initially good, start to become repetitive – re-visiting early levels for later missions is something that always gives me the feeling of lazy level design. There are no real great out doors – most of the game takes place in the steel grey corridors of space stations or star ships. The visits to over planets are underwhelming. Kashyyyk, looks great in cut sequences and isn’t too bad in the Vader opening mission, is pretty disappointing during the main mission. Having visited the planet in other Star Wars games, I looked forward to fights high-up in Wookie tree villages with the threat (and opportunity of sending enemies) of plummeting down to the forest floor.

Lightsaber fights look quite good, but there is very little interaction from that of the player. Button bashing will often produce some wonderful results, but very little finesse is required. There are nice little flourishes during such battles – when combatants spin away from each other.

This could have been an amazing game and there aren’t really many flaws, but just the repetition of levels and gameplay, the lack of ranged weapons and the annoyance of not being able to cycle through possible force targets lets it down.

I’ve yet to finish the game, preferring to spend the little gaming time I get during the week on the far superior Assassins Creed.

[saintjon]

I would recommend it for at least a rental. It's not all it could have been but I do find it a lot of fun.

One thing I found interesting was that people on Gamefaqs were complaining about the lack of challenge. If the idea is to play as a Sith who just CUTS LOOSE then IMO you should be able to decimate storm troopers with the greatest of ease.

I'm leery of some of the choices they made with the story but so far they're doing a decent job of it.