First off, I would like to say that I've never been a fan of the Star Wars series. I am a self proclaimed nerd/geek; I enjoy reading up on technology and I've built my own desktop. I've read the first four books in the Dune series and I'm captivated by the idea of the Force and lightsabers in Star Wars, but the franchise as a whole isn't really my cup of tea. This game, though, is more to my liking. I'm not a big fan of hack 'n slash games because most of them have really, really, really bad storylines, but this game has good points from both aspects.
First off, the story. I don't know every detail of the Star Wars franchise, but the story for the game fits well into the six movies in my opinion. I won't ruin much for you, but you start off playing as Darth Vader for the first pseudo-level which fits pretty well into the character development. When Darth Vader finds the main protagonist on Kashyyk, he makes the child his apprentice and trains him on the dark side of the force. Personally, I would give the storline a 3.5 or 4 stars because... well, it fills in a "plothole" that doesn't really exist in the movies. The story itself though, works and fits with the overall storyline so it's not detrimental to the franchise in any sense, it augments the already beloved franchise. My only real complaint is the lack of any of the characters in the Force Unleashed in episode 4, 5, and 6 despite them being so... "important". I didn't play the Force Unleashed 2, so maybe they all get killed off or something, but that's just me. The overall story for this game though isn't very... "deep". I didn't buy this game several times for the story and I don't really recall any part of the story as "particularly captivating", but that makes it sound bad. Just take this away from this whole paragraph: The story is decent and it explains certain things about the original storyline. Overall it provides incentives for the missions that you do and reasoning for the decisions of certain characters in the main storyline.
Now, for gameplay. You're a "dark jedi" technically: a sith. So you don't have any of those "good side tendencies"; You have force lightning, a ruthless demeanor, and the habit of killing everything. I hate it when you play other Star Wars games and you can't get any of the "really cool" abilities because they're all "dark side" oriented; why MUST lightsaber throw be a dark-jedi ability in Knights of the Old Republc? More importantly, why is it so worthless in that game? More to the point, one thing that has always kind of disappointed me about Star Wars games is that enemies somehow survive several lightsaber slashes to their torso, which isn't exactly in tune with the idea of jedi battles to begin with (hot plasma and all). In this game, most enemies die with one or two hits, which I like. Instead of trying to kill you with several strong guys that somehow survive several lightsaber thrusts to the face, you're forced to fight a myriad of stormtroopers and various battlefield soldiers to make your way to the final boss (think Dynasty Warrior). Some enemies are more resilient to your attacks though, which just makes sense; it'll be weird if a rancor died from one lightsaber throw. Likewise, boss battles are quite epic and all of them end with a button pressing sequence. I don't really know what it's called, but basically when the boss has low hp, there's an onscreen queue for you to follow a sequence of "Press X, Press Y, Press B, Do this movement" (think killing Medusa/Ares in God of War). Despite sounding a bit "off", I like it; It gives boss fights an epic ending that isn't exactly in tune with the movies. In the movies, usually someone's arm gets slashed off or they gets electrocuted; in The Force Unleashed, the protagonist slams the boss around and hurls giant rocks into the victim's face, he even grinds one guy's face into a burning laser barrier at one point - freakin' ruthless.
My absolute FAVORITE thing about this game is the use of the force. First off, Darth Vader recognizes the protagonist's Force Attunement even when he was just a child. Heck, as a child, the protagonist literally sneaks up to Darth Vader and force pulls his lightsaber out of his hand. OUT OF HIS HAND! DARTH VADER'S HAND! Think of how strong he can be! And I felt like the developers really exploited this idea. As you're walking down a mostly empty corridor, a bunch of stormtroopers will appear and shoot you. What do you do? Run up to them and lightsaber 'em you say? No no no! It's MUCH more fun to force grip one and slam him into a wall! The mechanic is smoothly done, PLUS it's funny as crap! You truly get a sense that the protagonist is oddly attuned to the force AND it makes sense!
Another aspect that I liked about this game is that you, as a sith warrior/jedi/whateveritis in training, are not invincible. Stormtroopers aren't just magically inadequate with a gun; they actually hit you and you can die that way quite easily. I would say if you stand in one place, roughly half of the blaster shots aimed at you will hit. To mitigate the annoyance of dying ungloriously from stormtroopers, each time you kill an enemy, you regain some HP via green floating health orbs that automatically flies to you. What this creates is a chaotic battlezone environment where you're constantly damaged by various explosions and etc, but you don't die in a stupid matter unless you're just bad at being a badass. Also, there's blocking and on the harder difficulties, it's rather imperative that you actually block. Is there 10 machine gunners shooting you repeatedly? Just block and your character will automatically rebound a certain percentage of the rounds back at the shooter. If you don't, during certain missions where the game just happens to have a buttload of machine gunners everywhere, your high and mighty jedi/sith/whateverheis will die rather quickly.
There are stuff that annoyed me, though. For one, the load screens are actually quite tedious. I mean to go from game -> character upgrades menu -> force power upgrades menu is two different load screens and there are load screens to go in reverse too. I know there's the whole "kids these days are so impatient" thing people keep on saying, but it's just something that was a bit tedious, not a deal breaker. Also, certain enemies have attack patterns that are actually pretty... "cheap". One example is the robot things in the second mission; they use these spears and their attacks are timed perfectly so that when you get hit, you get knocked down, and by the time you get back up, they hit you again with another attack and knock you down again (effectively stun locking you). Also, the camera is pretty atrocious in some fights. The hardest boss fight in the whole game in my opinion was the second boss fight because the camera would follow the main character around while the boss was shooting giant, exploding debris at you. What I mean is that you couldn't SEE where the debris were coming from because the camera was following your character around as you were dodging the stuff (which means the camera was moving around a lot for that fight and it was hard to see the boss). What I ended up doing for that was just double jumping and then dashing in the air several times and hoping for the best.
Lastly, the game has a lot of replay value in my personal oppinion. I bought the game when it originally came out (for PS2 I believe), again when it came out for xbox, and again when it came out for xbox 360 platinum edition because the force grip is so freakin' KEWL! Seriously, imagine yourself walk down the hallway and some enemies appear. With a flick of your wrist, those enemies are now smashed through the window. Plus there are several secret items and mission objectives for every level in the game so you have several incentives to re-do missions. I just got my friend to play it on my xbox 360 and he likes it; it's challenging enough to prevent button mashing and the gameplay is fair enough that a certain amount of skill is all you require (meaning you don't have to look up how to beat certain bosses online because the fight is so confusing). I would highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys a fairly fun hack 'n slash game that doesn't have an atrocious storyline (God of War 3, I'm looking at you!), unique abilities, a decent replayability, and lets you play as an authentic jedi/sith/whateverheis warrior. One thing that might be a bit of a bother for some people is that there are no "classes" in this game, no jedi consulars or sentinels; just the sith/jedi warrior. Personally, this game is like a better version of God of War one and if that's what you want, but with a slice of the Jedi pie mixed in, then this game is perfect.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2021
The item may arrived fast. And luckily with a case. When I put the disc in the xbox It would get as far as the menu screen before going to unreadable disc screen. I'm not a fan of being sold a product that doesn't work, and came broken.
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2021
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piewaket
Good game, Good game
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Gran juego
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Works as expected. No issues.
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