Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

by Aspyr

Product Features

• Use the Force like never before with devastating attacks and combos on enemies
• Discover the untold story of Darth Vader's secret apprentice and the major events in the Star Wars universe after the rise of the Empire.
• Digital Molecular Matter technology lets you feel the true power of the Force. Objects in the environment break, bend, shatter, splinter and shift as they would in real life.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002MO1L6Y
• Product Dimensions: 0.6 x 5.4 x 7.5 inches ; 5.6 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: May 8, 2011
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,693 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #61 in Video Games > Mac Games

Product Description

Platform: Mac | Edition: Ultimate Sith Edition

Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition combines the original Star Wars The Force Unleashed videogame with three entirely new single-player levels and a host of new costumes and character models. The three new levels introduce an exciting new “what if” scenario into the Star Wars universe and send players on dangerous missions to iconic locales such as the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Jabba's palace on Tatooine and into the thick of battle on the ice world of Hoth. New character models allow gamers to play as a legendary Star Wars character such as Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan kenobi.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent game, fun, but is a resource demon!, November 15, 2010

By 

Book Panda - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition (DVD-ROM)

Ok. I bought this for $39.95 at the Apple Store because I wanted to play the Hoth, Tatooine and Jedi Temple levels. I played the game originally on the Playstation 3, and liked it very much, but I did not buy the Sith edition which had the other levels (did not know this otherwise I would have both the Sith edition for PS3). Everywhere I look the PS3 Sith version is being scalped by crooks on eBay for $100+. So I decided to get it for my Mac and try to play the extra levels and get the story that way for only $39.95 +tx. I also have an Xbox 360, but the Xbox360 version is not much cheaper than the PS3 crooked version.

Ok. Performance. The graphics on the Mac (or computer version), is noticeably sharper and cleaner than the console version (PS3). It's pretty clear that the console version graphics are probably less detailed and "beautiful" so that it will work at a decent frame rate. But I did like the PS3 version and I thought the graphics were also good there. The Macintosh I have is a 2010 21.5" iMac. It has a 512MB Radeon 5670 graphics (decent but not great), 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz (more than enough), and a 3.6 GHz Core i5 processor (fastest dual core out there) with a 1 TB hard drive, running MacOS 10.6.4. I play the game at 1920x1080 resolution which is the native resolution of the iMac screen (21.5"). If I play at lower resolutions it just crops in on the left and right or top and bottom. I have checked the High Detail box in the start up window of the game, which I guess means max settings--adjusting the game settings is really poor since you don't really get to change anything other than resolution, unlike StarCraft II which allows you to change almost every aspect of graphics and game performance settings. The initial level in snow outside the cave before fighting the snow beasts slows down a bit but does not get jumpy. It looks very slightly like a gentle slow motion kinda thing. Once inside the cave the slow motion is gone and it's very smooth and responsive. If I try to run the game at 11280x1024 that same snow part is faster and has no "slow motion" affect. I ran it full screen and in window mode and the result was the same. There was a 25GB or so game install from the 2 disks inside which seems on the VERY large side considering StarCraft II is only about 9-10GB.

I ran Activity Monitor with the game in windowed mode and as my iMac has both hyper threading and turbo boost, I could see VERY clearly that the CPU was not working very hard. It was probably pushing 20-30% maybe 40% of the bars and never went beyond that. So where is the slow down? Real simple. The graphics card. While the Radeon 5670 with 512MB is a decent card, it is really not meant as a gamer card--for that matter neither is this iMac, but it's decent as a midrange system. There are/were better ATI systems than that. I suspect the 2010 iMac 27" with the 5750 1GB card would have done a much better job, but I could not afford a 27" iMac and I got this iMac from a friend for a used 3 moth price of $1500, who upgraded to a MacPro. But still I think it's a pretty good iMac over all, and even though it plays StarCraft II really well in mostly HIGH settings, SWFU bogs down a bit. Clearly a quad core iMac might be a better option than my dual core, but I suspect the real issue is the video card, which in my iMac is good but not great.

My only conclusion is that the game is probably not coded as well as it could be and not optimized perfectly for the Mac, MacOS X and a Radeon 5670 or only 512MB of dedicated video memory. But it still plays fine...enough...and I get the extra levels I wanted to play for only $40 instead of 2X-3X that.

I would have preferred the Playstation 3 Sith edition. If I can find a PS3 version of the Sith edition for cheap I will get it and sell/donate/toss the Mac version.

It's not a bad game, sure not perfect, but it's fun, sounds great, has super graphics and once you learn the game controls it's very manageable. Interestingly, the console version is easier to control than the computer version. There is a 360 controller option but I have not figured out how the set that up. Sure there are better games out there but for $40 on a midrange iMac 2010, it's a good game.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Playability really lacking ..., February 27, 2010

By 

R. Kastl (Lone Tree, CO, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition (DVD-ROM)

I picked up this game expecting a good LucasArts game. I was very disappointed.

While the game can be fun at times, the playability is really not up to what I'd expect and most of the challenges are just flat out annoying. The character has to have a lot of things like overly dramatic light sabre slashes that (if you happen to be facing the wrong direction) will make your character fall off into an abyss, long after you've killed your opponent. And when your character gets hit by an enemy, there is so much cinematic physical action, that it can literally take forever for your character to get back on his feet--meanwhile, your enemies are re-loading and hitting you again. This kind of play which puts all the eggs into the basket of neat-o cinematic action sequences really leaves the gaming experience a marathon of frustration and jerky gameplay.

And let's not forget to mention that you'll need the latest and greatest (specialized) hardware to play this game. I ran this game on my brand new MacBook Pro 17" and had to run it at 800x600 resolution, just to get decent playability. I'd have loved to play at native 1920x1200 resolution, but that nearly killed my system and the game was entirely unplayable.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I should have heeded other reviews, March 1, 2010

By 

Seattleite (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition (DVD-ROM)

I have a brand new iMac 21.5", and the game runs VERY SLOWLY on any but the 800x600 resolution. If you go to [...], they specifically state that their ported version does not support the nVidia GeForce 8400m that is standard with the iMac. The graphics are great at the higher resolutions, but you play at a snail's pace (a friend has the XBOX version, and it is 10x faster than the fastest on this version).

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