September 16th came and finally the months of waiting were over. Star Wars The Force Unleashed (henceforth referred to as The Force Unleashed) was released. Of course, I picked it up asap for my Wii. I couldn’t wait to get home and start swinging my Wii Remote around like a lightsaber. I have many memories of swinging sticks, broom handles, and fake swords as a kid pretending it was a lightsaber and finally I could act it out in a video game. Sure I’ve played the Jedi Knight series for the PC and thoroughly enjoyed them, but nothing beats the feeling of swinging the Wii Remote and hearing the familiar swoosh of a lightsaber. Okay, enough about the Wii Remote, let’s move on.
Let’s start with the story. One thing that I did not know until the other day is that this story is considered canon in the Star Wars galaxy. You can consider this as an accurate part of the history between the third and fourth movies. Now I won’t give any details away in case you haven’t heard it and want to experience it for yourself. What I will say is the story is engaging and moves you through the game well. Someone mentioned to me that there is a novelization of this story and I can see me picking up the book even though I know how the basics go. And of course, the game starts with the familiar opening to every Star Wars movie, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
The graphics, physics, and all the things that make the game shiny are great. Playing on the Wii with a component cable on my 27″ LCD looked great and the movement of the characters seemed lifelike. Now I’m sure that the engines in the 360 and the PS3 are much better, but I wasn’t disappointed at all with this game. Also, there was no slow down at all. Even when I was doing some impressive force moves in a detailed area. I did notice some glitches here and there though. The first day I played with Yar, he threw a boss out the window and ended the fight prematurely. This resulted in an invisible enemy in the cut scene afterward, but no other affect was noticed. Also, some of the jet pack using enemies would go through floors to get to me or other such glitches like that. Annoying at the least.
The sounds are classic Star Wars and the music is really good. You’ll even hear some of John Williams’ music from time to time. The voice acting is pretty good, I’ve heard both worse and better. I will say that your character is voiced pretty well and of course, Vader gets his points across well too. The female pilot in the game could use some work though.
The controls are 95% perfect. There’s no greater feeling than swinging your lightsaber around or thrusting you nunchuck to push that annoying storm trooper off the edge of a platform. I found myself really getting into the controls and rarely ever having to fight them. I even made the nunchuck fly out of my hands a couple of times when I was getting a little
into it. There are a couple of places that needed some polish though. One was the Force Choke ability. I was never once able to pull this off. Supposedly you turn the nunchuck upside down while holding Z to do this, but I usually just wound up slamming the guy into the ground. Fun and satisfying, but not what I was trying to do. The other part is the force/lightsaber clashes. If you and your opponent hit either a force power at the same time or clash with lightsabers, a duel happens. You either have to move the nunchuck or Wii remote into the right position and thrust it forward within a certain amount of time. This is really annoying at times when you try for a slight adjustment and it registers as a 90 degree movement. I finally got the hang of it flawlessly by the final fight, but it was still frustrating at times.
There are two other major complaints I have about this game. The first is that it’s extremely easy. There was little challenge for me and I never died more than once on any level except the last one where health was sparse. There’s very little penalty for dying except for you lose some force points to upgrade your abilities, but they are easily made up again. The second is some of the boss and mini boss battles. I’m talking mainly about the AT-ST and Rancor battles. You fight about four Rancors (not all at once of course), one Bull Rancor (bigger and faster), and at least three AT-STs although I know that isn’t an accurate count. I’ve forgotten already how many exactly. Thee Rancor battles are as follows. Run away, throw something at it, run away, zap it with lightning, run away, repeat. The AT-STs battles go something like get behind it, swing your lightsaber like crazy, and stay behind it. That’s it. Now don’t get me wrong, I was excited for the first or second of these battles. But by the end I was just fighting without thinking and wanted it to just end already. There, I feel better now so let’s move onto the Duel feature.
You start with three people to pick from. The apprentice, Darth Vader, and General Kota. You have to play through the single player mode to unlock the rest. The game starts unlocking characters pretty quickly, so you don’t have to play through too much before you have more characters to pick from. There are nine levels to pick from, including three of which that easily allow you to throw or push your character to an easy death. You can chose how many kills to win and your time limit as well. All in all, pretty basic stuff. I’ve seen more options in Street Fighter 2 for my SNES, but there’s not a whole lot more that’s necessary. The duels themselves are extremely fun. All the force powers that you eventually get in the single player are available to you and make for some interesting battles. Depending on who you pick also determines how good you are at certain powers, so it’s possible to overpower your opponent with a certain strategy as well. The power ups and a nice little touch and it’s only possible to use one at a time, which is nice because it keeps the duel a little more even that way. Really the duels are simple in concept but can lead to some awesome saber battles. My one problem with it is the “unleashed” feature. When your character takes enough damage or uses enough force power, they become unleashed and have unlimited force power and are a little stronger as well. The feature itself isn’t the problem as it doesn’t make the character really all that much more powerful as long as you can defend and counter properly. My main problem is the game stops the duel, does a little animation, and then resumes the duel. This is extremely annoying when you’re in the middle of a saber or force battle and someone becomes unleashed. It destroys the flow and allows the unleashed character to automatically hit the other with a lightning attack, or leaves them vulnerable for a moment if they don’t use the lightning right away. It’s something that can ruin the experience for someone and there should be an option to turn it off.
Overall, as a SW fan and SW gamer, I must say that The Force Unleased easily beats most of the other SW games where you play as a Jedi (this excludes Tie Fighter, X-wing, and X-wing Academy). Jedi Academy is the only one that I’ve played that could match this one. Both have their pluses and minuses. This game was well worth the money for me, even though I wish it could have been longer. But that’s probably my fan boy side always wanting more. For those of you that aren’t fans, wait a bit for a sale. For those of you that just want it for the duels mainly, I suggest waiting for a big price drop or looking into the Nintendo exclusive of The Clone Wars. I don’t know much about it, but it’s supposed to have a good multiplayer experience.
. I tried to post a quick video yesterday about it, but the upload failed so it’ll be up a day late here. Stay tuned for more!