Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars The Force Unleashed is an action game where you play as Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice. The Games story takes place between Episode 3 and 4, and is considered Cannon by Lucas himself. So what you are playing ties very heavily into the Star Wars mythos.

The game opens with you actually playing the Dark Lord of the Sith himself. And this is pretty fun, you are as bad ass as you think you should be. Tearing through enemies is satisfying, and awesome. After that and until the end of the game, you are playing as the Apprentice.

In early stages, you seem pretty tough. Rebel troops are no match for your force powers. And you may take some damage, but you regain health with every kill you make. However as the game progresses a lot of this ceases to happen.

Enemies have shields that are immune to certain attacks, some have long range attacks that take huge amounts of health from you. Huge laser weapons hit you as you try to get close enough to attack them. And too many times I would be knocked off my feet, and pelted with laser blast as I tried to get back to my feet. Only to get knocked back down again as I got up.

The Action is fun, and using force powers feels good, however force grip is one of the most popular, and it is sometimes slow, or worse, hard to target what you are trying to. Some of my favorite attacks like Light Saber throw don't appear until much later in the game.

Your character levels up, giving you points to allocate to different types of skills. However sometimes you have to save up for many levels to upgrade anything. You can also revert every skill back to level 1, but this causes you to loose points.

Boss battles are kind of fun. But very predictable. Sometimes you can learn one attack that is their Achilles Heel, and just keep nailing them until the QTE that signals their demise begins. Sometimes the camera in boss battles rotates or pulls to far back to get a good view of what is going on. And near the end of the game, the bosses seem cheap. Still beatable, but just frustrating because it seems the damage is very random.

Graphics are good, but there is a lot of screen tearing. And there are some levels that I just thought seemed bland. In fact the 2 worse levels in the game you return to. I groaned both times this happened. So there is only like 4 or 5 levels that look unique.

All your favorite sound effects return. The music is decent and carries that Star Wars vibe. The voice acting is pretty good as well. And seems to fit well with the story. The man from the Chad Vader internet skits does an excellent job as Vader.

I think the story is the best part of this game. It kept me going when I would become frustrated. Its not Shakespere, or even Michael Crichton. But I enjoyed it up until the end. The game has two endings, and I may go and play the game on a harder difficulty level to see if I can see the other ending. But then again, I think I would rather play something else, and avoid throwing my controller through a window, or it bouncing off the wall and striking my dog...

The Force is not really with this one. I get it a C

Feeling Robbed Moment: Star Destroyer... How could you ruin that moment with bad game play.