Brutal Gamer

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360) Review

By Leigh - October 13, 2008 - 19:01 UTC

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is the latest game under the Star Wars franchise, the game is developed and published by LucasArts (I’m sure you’ve heard of them.) The game has been in development for around 4 years and was launched in September; to date the game has sold over 1.5 million copies, which proves that the Star Wars franchise is still going strong. The game also broke a record on the Xbox Live Marketplace for the most downloads of a demo in 8 days.

>Read on to find my full review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed…

>Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is set between Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith and Episode 4: A New Hope. During the game you follow (and play) a character called code named ‘Star Killer’ however after a bit of researched I discovered that his real name is Galen Marek. One thing that I did enjoy in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is that as Darth Vader’s secret apprentice you closely follow Vader through-out the game, and learn things such as how he gradually gained more power and some more back story to the movies.

The basic object in the story is you are set a specific objective for each level you play in, they all follow the same rule though; kill the Jedi master of that area. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong. Each level will last you around half an hour and during that time you are forced to fight huge numbers of enemies and work out annoying force puzzles.

Some areas of the games visualization were fantastic, however at the same time some of it was just down right terrible. I’ll start of with the good; I was amazed at the animation in this game, when characters were hit with the force push they would fly through the air just like they would in real life and try to grab a hold of the scenery to stop themselves from plummeting to there death. Another good area of the game is the lighting and shadows (as they both fit together surprisingly) while using the force lightning, everything will have this awesome blue glow to it, and obviously as the lightning is dynamic and keeps changing direction and momentum, the shadows are constantly changing which is fucking fantastic.

Enough praise, time to have a bit of a bitch fit at the game; one thing that I did notice a lot within this game is the textures on the ground, walls etc. The reason this annoyed me was because the detail was pretty much just painted on, and really plain which was a major let down considering how brilliant the rest of the graphics actually looked.

If I ever hear that a game has quick time events in it, it instantly becomes a game I must at least rent, and from what I saw of the game in trailers before hand it looked like it had a fair few of them, and thankfully it did have a few of them, but unfortunately they were shit. The ‘apparent’ quick time events were your usual ones where you had to hit 10-15 buttons in rapid succession, instead it’s you have a minute to hit one button and you have to do this 3 times.

Oh force powers, how I love you. It is amazing how much fun you can actually have with just constantly throwing enemies into each other and watching them grab a hold of each other trying to ground themselves. The force powers in the force unleashed are extremely well done, when you use the force push and tear a whole (semi) clean through the door in front of you, it looks really fluid.

The major problem I had with this game is that its so god damn buggy, such as if your running down a tight corridor which is lined with glass windows and use the force push every window around you shatters. Although it looks fantastic the frames per second are obliterated and the game comes to a complete slow down. Other problems I had with the game was the ‘drops to your death’ platforming bullshit, even if you take a step of the side of a ledge or pushed near the edge you will always fall off and slowly slide down the edge to your death. The worst part about it is you don’t bounce down the cliff side, there is no animation to it, and you simply stay up right and fall.

Thankfully this is one area of the game where I didn’t have to complain about it. There’s nothing more satisfying then hearing the sound of a hundred windows shattering and the glass flying towards your enemy and they try to run for there life while screaming (however, during this time the game has pretty much came to a halt because of bugs.) I will admit that the developers on this game did an amazing job at creating the sounds for the different force powers and how the different objects sounded when the force powers interfered, the best example of this is the one I explained above, when there is huge numbers of objects colliding together.

If you ever were to consider getting this game for whatever reason (mentally disabled?) Its worth nothing more than a rent as I found out first hand, the game has no real reason for you to replay it, the story isn’t anything worth coming back too as you can watch the movies instead which are a hell of a lot better then this. There is only 2 reason’s this game has scored any points in lasting appeal is because of the;

1- Force powers; although how much I have slammed this game in the review for it, there is no denying that the developers did a fantastic job with the force powers, as they are hilarious to use.

2- This reason is only because of achievements, as if you are sad enough to through it again for achievements, you could gain quite a few (although it really isn’t worth it.)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed had the potential to become a great game the force powers worked fantastically but it’s a shame the rest of the game didn’t. The 3 physics engines working simultaneously worked extremely well (occasionally) but the game was butchered by an insane amount of bugs which in places made the game unplayable and just ridiculously frustrating. I think it’s a bit clear that this game didn’t go through quality testing before it went to production, how can someone not notice these bugs? If LucasArt hurry up and get off there throne and patch this game it may of received a much better score, but unfortunately they haven’t bothered which have caused it to get such a bad score from around the internet.

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