Customer Reviews

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

5 star:		(86)
4 star:		(87)
3 star:		(55)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

First of all, you should know that this game is kind of short. I received it yesterday and it took roughly 10 hours on standard difficulty to complete.

Yet the fact that I didn't move the entire 10 hours is testament to this game's ability to be loads of fun to play, regardless of game-length.

THE GOOD:
The opening level places you in command of Darth Vader, giving you a preview of the absolute power of the force... that you realize you can't match at first with the apprentice. As the developers have stated, this is to give you a chance to realize what you can become.

The absolute awesomeness of this level really sets the tone for the game. Marching down and eliminating Wookies while ATAT's walk down below from the cliff and Star Destroyers, troop transports, and TIE Fighters fly all around left me feeling like this was really Star Wars.

The leveling in the game gives you a chance for character customization once you take control of the apprentice. Want your force-grip to be able to grab two enemies instead of one? Spend your force points in upgrading force-grip. Also - you can wear various costumes, make your lightsaber one of nearly 20 colors with various special effects, and really make your character your own.

The gameplay is solid, with a few questionable level designs toward the end of the game.

THE BAD:
The story is 'good' but as I gave the writer of the novel a hard time for not delving deep enough - I have to say that the cutscenes were chopped down to the point where you really can't grasp the full impact of the story which was more clear in the novel.

The Romance:
The love dialog/romance is worse than George Lucas if that gives you any indication. These characters develop feelings for one another despite Juno Eclipse being little more than a 'professional imperial' who forgot to button the top 5 buttons on her uniform and having no dialog really outside of a few sentences in the cut scenes.

Then again - if I saw a woman dressing like that I suppose it wouldn't take much romance for me to develop feelings for her either.

Multiple Endings? There is a dark side ending and a light side ending, but this isn't Knights of the Old Republic. 99% of the game is the same regardless of what you choose to be/wear/do. The final 'choice' is made 30 seconds before the final boss fight. Regardless of how you play the game - it comes down to what you do 30 seconds before you fight the final boss. I was hoping for a variety of missions or at least a change in objectives.

Frustrating objectives:
Sometimes your objective is very vague. I spent more than one level wandering in circles and jumping off cliffs trying to figure out what to do because the mission objective was something like "Pick out the hydrospanner from the flexoregulator" which is probably something you would know if you were an uber-geek who knew what either was. Guesswork and trial and error. Also - in the second Raxis Prime level the force controls at the end LIE to make you die quicker.

Bugs:
Few and far between, but I had some ATST decide to despawn (which was good for me) and a few hiccups. For the most part the game was solid.

OVERALL:
Despite the flaws, I sat through the entire 10 hours and couldn't stop because it was extremely addictive. The game is simple - but it works and is fun. You can tell a lot of love went into this, but you can also tell that the cutscenes feel disconnected from the rest of the story in terms of dialog because of spotty editing which leaves you wanting more.

This is better than anything else LucasArts has had in a while, and you really feel like this is Star Wars.

Bottom line: A step in the right direction. A+ Gameplay, C- Story.

Game was way over hyped but isn't every semi-major title these days? I had a lot of fun with the game but once I finished the SHORT story mode I was left with a feeling that I should have waited to rent the game from Hollywood Video. Granted there are things to find, achievments to get all that good stuff on mutiple play throughs, but I could not bring myself to play through more than once. I will be selling the game once I find the time. PLEASE RENT, you won't be dissapointed. It's a fun game but with no multiplayer there is little left after you complete the game.

It took me no time at all to become a fan of The Force Unleashed. The game starts you as Darth Vader himself, fighting your way through the Wookie planet to eliminate a rogue Jedi in hiding that the empire has discovered. Vader lets you experience what some of your force abilities will be throughout the game as you later play his apprentice. And while is was very entertaining, I found something a little disturbing about killing dozens of wookies. They howl at you as they die and everything...

Soon you are playing Vader's apprentice, trained by Vader himself in the Sith arts. Your abilities are much more limited from what Vader himself had; I'm guessing to leave Vader as a benchmark to what you can aspire to become. Still, TFU doesn't waste any time and throws you right into the action. The force abilities you are given are incredibly fun to use against your enemies: foring pushing them into walls, picking them up and chukcing them like dolls, picking them up and chucking them like dolls into TIE Fighters, lightning, force repulse and the good old fashioned hack and slash with your lgihtsaber. You think that killing dozens of rebel and storm troopers alike might get old, but it really doesn't. The more of them you kill, the more force points and combo points you build up and you get all new ways to eliminate them. And even though you seem to be an unsoppable killing machine, the game is still challenging in spots, and I'm only playing it on the medium difficulty. Battling other force users is one point where the game can get challenging and also more fun. Matching wits and strengths jedi to jedi is a very fun gaming experience. Upgrades also add a nice element to the game, collecting points for new force combos, upgrading your abilities and upgrading your character's stats. This adds an extra addictive element to the game in a mild RPG fashion.

And then there's are the visuals. They are amazing. The character designs, the lighting, the action; they are all flawless. The backround settings and environments are also gorgeious and have an almost painted look, like a mural. This might sound out of place but it actually looks really amazing. You might see what I mean when you first arrive on the junk planet. My only complaint here is that some of the close up textures look a little bland, mostly on the fungal world that I've noticed.

Audio is great too. Much of the score is old John William's classic, so there's no complaint there. A lot of the affects seem to be taken right from the movies, which is also fine. Sound affects for explosions and force sounds seem about as good as I could expect. And I especially like how the troopers plead for their lives as you pick them up with the force and wave them around.

The story itself is also very well done. It bridges some of the gap between episodes 3 and 4 and actually explains some of the continuity. It also manages to do this without recycling old Star Wars stories and themes which is nice.

So I enjoy this game a lot. One complaint I've read in reviews that I only partially agree with is slightly clumsy controls. There is some room for improvement there (when using force grip, throwing an object and getting it where you want it to go can be difficult.) But every game for me has something about the controls or gameplay that I don't like, and I usually look past it. Another complaint of mine is lack of multiplayer. This could be an awesome game multiplayer.

To reiterate:

Pros: Mostly great graphics, fun and addictive gameplay, awesome force abilities, good story

Cons: Some clumsy controls, graphics could use work in some areas, no multiplayer

The Force Unleashed is a great game for the Star Wars fan or otherwise and I recommend it.

I'm really sorry I decided to purchase this one. Right now, I'm not even sure if I'd recommend renting it. It's one of the worst Star Wars games ever. The Force Unleashed is defiantly not the game I thought it would be after playing through the demo.

The least LucasArts could have done was to play the game themselves before shipping it to the public. It should have been better tested and debugged. There are too many glitches to distract from the game. I've been stuck and forced to restart the game numerous times so far. And when I say stuck, I mean really stuck. Like I couldn't make my character walk or move at all. Or Kazdan would just sit there and not attack while I could not damage him, despite my hitting him. Or the inconsistent HP system, where damage is assigned in a very unusual way. Sometimes a fierce light saber combo would do almost 0 damage to a boss, other times a single swash of the saber would do significant damage to the same boss in very similar circumstances. And I'm not talking about him blocking my attack.

The levels are too easy to walk through, with unexciting and fairly boring boss battles. I did not find much cohesion to the game at all. It just felt like a bunch of Star Wars references thrown into a game with bits of a decent storyline to glue the whole thing together.

The game save system is not too good either. You are limited to check points instead of having the ability to strategically save anytime. There were some points in the game where my progress was saved right before a cut-scene that could not be skipped. Yup, I had to watch this scene every time I died on this difficult part of the last level.

I am very disappointed with the sad Star Wars games we have been given these last few years. After playing good games like KOTOR, Jedi Knight 2 or even Republic Commando, The Force Unleashed was a BIG disappointment. I know I'm just dreaming now, but a full rebuild of the original X-Wing would be sweet and probably fun too.

To sum it all up, this game could have used an additional 3 to 6 months of development time before they shipped it out to the public. It could have been a great Christmas release instead of this terrible end of summer dud. Seems like Lucas Arts is suffering from the same sort of issues as EA. Previously, a great game company that doesn't seem to care much about the quality or fun factor of the games they release.

Besides the few glitches this game is solid, solid waste of money! While the gameplay is easy enough and the graphics were above average, what kills Star Wars: Unleashed is value for your dollar! Seriously, what you are paying for is the graphics and the easier playing action system, if you were paying for the playing value it would be less then a $20.00 game. The story was good, but short and the re-play ability is less then most. I have played KOTOR, KOTOR II and other Lucas Arts games over and over, this really does not have that re-play value, maybe you might play it again in a year. Their is not really too many choices for gamers, making this more of a button smash action game and a short one at that.

I saw someone beat the game in 10 hours, I beat it on difficult in less then eight and I am truly dissapointed. This is a renter game, not worth the $60.00 price tag...I would rather re-play KOTOR or KOTOR II!

This game was a great Star Wars experience with too many moments of excruciating game play frustration. If it wasn't for the story cliff hangers to keep me going, I would have walked away from this game several times. Too many times I wanted to throw my controller. I would only recommend this game to a Star Wars fan. Assassins Creed had the sword fighting mechanic down perfect for me.

The good: The art direction was great. The levels were dramatic and captured the Stars Wars atmosphere beautifully. The story was good and I enjoyed all the cut scenes. The QuickTime events were over-the-top once I could stop staring what button to press and actually watch it. Some the battles you get into are extremely fun when you can pull off some combos and use the light saber. The mini-boss fights were some of the favorite battles for me.

The bad: The game play was enjoyable only about 60% of the time. It seemed to me that the actual game play was an add-on to the story/movie portions. The 40% part was frequently a tedious exercise in frustration. Why?

1. Targeting, especially in a short range fight. It always picks some piece of junk instead of the enemy that your fighting or one that is about to attack you.
2. Most of the levels, while beautiful, are just boxes. When they have an unfair amount of enemies/snipers so you end up using "glitch" behavior to get through them. There is no strategy only your ability to quickly kill them off to build your health faster than they can wear it down. Too much luck involved for survival.
3. Once you get knocked down every enemy hits you just as you about to stand and you are soon dead. The sequence timing is terrible.
4. Many times you re-spawn in front of enemies without your light saber ready. They get a couple shots in at you before you can defend yourself.
5. The end-boss Jedi fights are in an exercise in tedium and frustration. I cruise along having a good time and then the end boss battle shows up and ruins everything. These should be the best and they are NOT. The fixed camera approach is terrible. The QuickTime events are the only good thing.
6. Too many combos to remember and there is a long learning curve for the appropriate situation for many of them because you just use the ones that work for you. Rinse repeat.
7. Looking for holicrons etc around the level is lame.
8. Not enough save points.

In summary this game is similar to Bioshock for me. Good story, beautiful design, and a variety of tools to fight with. It has many unique and enjoyable small events, but Jedi fails in the big picture - game play. I can't believe all these frustrations got by their game testers or they ignored them.

I did finish it and I am working on the second try at the highest difficulty to see how more effective I can be with my fighting style and to pick up things I missed first time through. The only reason I continue to play is that there are not any other game out that interest me.

I really can't believe some of the high marks some people have given this game. It glitches out so many times; at least two or three times I had to manually turn off my x-box and restart because of a glitch. Many other times I got stuck on some invisible wall. The AI is horrible and does not live up to the hype.

It's not all bad - it's always fun to kill storm troopers with a lightsaber. The cutscenes look pretty, and the voice acting and music are good.

This game tries to follow the God of War formula and apply it to Star Wars: slash and hack and level up with new combos. It's not a bad idea, but it's so poorly executed, you'll wish you were playing the old wire-frame x-wing game.

If you've ever played the Star Wars Revenge of The Sith game, you've pretty much played Force Unleased, just another button mashing action game. Its not really bad, but it isn't anything special.

Pro's
Fun for about 2hours, a pretty solid story, AMAZING Graphics and Sounds, lots of good cameo's with great voice acting, force powers are actually pretty cool. Leveling is kind of cool, but would have like to have seen a more dynamic system. Clothing and saber options that rival Jedi Knight Academy.

Con's
Fun for about 2hours, Story felt dumbed down and shorted, it feels like an insult, like we don't care about a good solid story we just wanna kill stormtroopers in a thousand different ways. Saber fighting is combo based (yuck, I was hoping for more of a Oblivion or Jedi Knight Academy style) No Multiplayer.

Overall I'd say that it is about a 7/10, but it feels like a lot less cause the expectations were soooo high.

This is the game that has been promised to those who have spent hours each day dreaming about how awesome it would be to be a truly powerful Jedi. It was supposed to allow you to experience the role of an utterly powerful Jedi/Sith like no other game. And it does, sort of. Overall the game does a pretty good job of maintaining the illusion of being a super powered bad dude. But its the minor imperfections, and there are a lot, that drag it back down towards mediocrity.

As an adventuring game with a large amount of platforming the camera gives me a large amount of trouble. There are situations where it will fix in place and make maneuvering very difficult. It will also occasionally cause you to miss landings and fall to your death. There are also a large amount of spaces that you would think you are able to maneuver your character to, only to learn they aren't part of the stage as you fall to your death. Without good camera control you aren't able to ever get a good look at these areas before you commit.

The combat can be fun, but suffers from very poor targeting. There are so many times you try to scoop up an enemy only to have your target change. So you lift a rock as a droid pummels you. And for being a guy with a light saber there are a huge amount of enemies equipped to fight against you. You would think that after watching the movies you should be able to cut a bloody swath through most of your enemies. But not so. It turns out a large amount of things you face in combat just happen to be lightsaber resistant. Which manages to kill the fantasy a bit. There is nothing like being unable to get past the guard of a bug creature because he claw can't be cut. You would think everyone in the Empire fights lightsaber wielding Jedi everyday. For finishing the tougher enemies there is also a button sequence you will have to go through. I often find myself hoses as I go from madly attacking directly into the sequence with no warning. Which causes my poor guy a world of pain until I get on the right page. It also distracts from the action on screen. The boss fight sequences are some of the best of the whole game and its easy to be caught up watching the action and miss hitting the right button.

I experienced a number of glitches during my playthroughs as well. I managed to get stuck in walls several times. And there were a few stages I wasn't able to force manipulate items needed to complete the stage. For the latter issues I was forced to quit my game and load it again to sort out the issue. Not too bad but with the poor save system it could mean playing through the entire stage again.

Overall I did enjoy my time with Force Unleashed and will probably take a couple more play troughs. But being this game is already short I would recommend it as a rental most people. On the plus side once you do max out your character you can play through on easy and truly feel like all powerful force user you are supposed to be.

Ok, first of all, awesome graphics, awesome force powers, plot is ok (good for Star Wars), loads of fun stuff, very few bugs and lots of stuff you'll recognize from the movies. The game story is like the filler between Episode III and Episode IV and it's good. It gets 3's from me because somewhere in all that goodness, someone decided to mess around with the game play.

Be prepared for frustration later in the game:
First: Cinematic Camera... GRR! I hate the thing. At least let me switch to first person or make the thing sensitive enough to look QUICKLY!!! I have the thing on the most sensitive and looking around takes ages. Not fun when you're being attacked from all angles. Also, some kind of indication from where you're taking damage would be good; Starkiller is this all-powerful force being after all.

Second: Targeting, in a word, retarded. It targets where you're facing not where you're looking. What's up with that? Now when an enemy is attacking from the side, I first have to find him with the camera from above which takes ages, then I have to face the guy to do anything about it, takes double the time to respond.

Third: Combos. Someone shoot the guy who implemented that. It's a cool idea, a bit like Mortal Kombat, BUT, badly implemented. Say I hit X (the attack button) 3 times, Starkiller does an awesome combo moving forwards in the direction he's facing, say there's a nice ledge in his path, Starkiller goes over. Hello!!!!! All-powerful force being, mistiming his moves and going off an edge? I should be able to walk off edges, jump off edges, and dash off edges, but a combo plummeting me to certain death? That sucks. AND what's up with making a combo n times the attack button, that's retarded! You always land up doing combos.

Fourth: Recovery Time / Action Delay. Say you get zapped, it takes you a little while to recover, no worries. Why stand up with your guard down just so you get zapped again and repeat the process? You have to furiously hit jump to get unpinned. Also, when you do get up, Starkiller takes his time prepping to do anything like attack or use force powers. This doesn't seem to get better with upgrades either.

Fifth: It's a great game. Yes, that's right it's a great game and that's what makes it so frustrating. If the game sucked, I could just toss it out for its bad game play, but it's a great game so you want to play it and can't help getting really irate with the bad game play.

I wish they would release a patch to add additional options like: "Target where Starkiller looks", "First person mode" and ensure that each combo uses more than just one button to activate and that Starkiller doesn't drop his guard when attacked.

I regret buying it because I have to play it which causes frustration.