Smithers, unleash the Force.
To get the biggest question out of the way: yes, The Force Unleashed is the best Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Knight 2, and I'd even rate it up there with the best of them. It's a smashing success in several key areas, but it's got some rough edges that bring the overall package down some.
The premise behind TFU is that Darth Vader had a secret apprentice between episodes 3 and 4 who went around doing his dirty work, mostly exterminating Jedi and all the hapless Stormtroopers and rebel soldiers standing between him and his target. You, of course, are said secret apprentice, after playing as Darth Vader in the opening level, which has got to be up there with the top 5 most awesome things a Star Wars fan could ever want. As the apprentice is secret, and even the Emperor can't know about him, you end up being allowed to kill everything in your path, imperial or otherwise, which is a good thing too, because you'll want to use your Force powers on people as much as you can.
You start the game off fairly weak, with only Force push and Force grip available, letting you push and throw objects and people around. As you progress, you'll gradually earn all your powers, a little slower than I would've personally liked, especially as the demo (and the introductory level) gave you most of your powers to mess around with, and being without them feels limiting and makes the opening levels simply not as fun as they could have been, as evidenced by a second playthrough with all the powers unlocked and powered up. It's an understandable design decision, but you'd expect to have all the powers available after the first three levels or so, but that isn't the case. Another thing that takes a bit of getting used to is that your lightsaber does not, as you might expect, simply cut people in half. It functions more as a blunt force weapon, which, again, is another understandable gameplay contrivance, as the game would be laughably easy if you could cut anything down with a single hit.
Maybe it's because of the lack of available powers, but I found the first few levels of the game, aside from the Vader prologue and and ensuing Tie Factory, pretty weak and frustrating on occassion. You end up fighting a lot of the same enemies over and over again, repeating many of the same methods, because you have no other recourse. Once you pass Felucia, the mushroom world, the game starts to really open up and it simply gets a lot more fun. You'll have been able to upgrade your existing powers and unlocked a bunch of new ones, making fights much more diverse and interesting. Combining grip, push, lighting and your lightsaber to create a torrent of destruction, leaving nothing but sizzling wreckage while the environment is decimated along with your enemies is super satysfying. Put simply, the first few levels it was a three star game, but after a certain plot event, the game just gets better and better, and easily became a four star game in my eyes.
But it could have been even better than that. However, it isn't all fun and wanton destruction. The Force Unleashed is saddled with a number of unfortunate problems that at best make the game seem buggy occasionally, and at worst can cause a good deal of frustration. It's easy to forgive some small stuff like minor physics bugs, given all the technology this game incorporates, but some of the game's design conventions simply feel dated. The worst offender is the camera, which at times is around Ninja Gaiden 2 levels of awfulness. It can get stuck in scenery, it can point in entirely the wrong direction in the heat of combat and generally is not what you'd expect from a camera in a third-person action game from the year 2008.
Also adding to the list of dated design are the boss fights. The fights themselves are usually not that bad, as most bosses have patterns that can be figured out, but sometimes you just can't help but feel that you're just cheesing your way through them using the same move over and over again. At least it can be said they require some tactics, and generally I didn't think they were too bad. But the QTE's? No thank you. Every boss fight ends with a God of War-style quick time event, wherein you have to push buttons are prompted on-screen and you watch a cutscene wherein the apprentice makes short (or long) work of the boss. I think we've seen enough of this in games, though admittedly the cut scenes are pretty cool. Fortunately, there is little penalty for faling the QTE other than having to start over, so I can't fault the game too much.
What annoyed me most is that getting hit by melee attacks makes you completely unable to do anything other than watch the apprentice stagger around, which can result in getting a severe beating as you're ganged up by a bunch of enemies all whacking you in quick succession. Get hit by one attack, and you're in for the full combo. Very frustrating.
That may seem like a lot of complaining, but if you can put up with the occasional glitch and moment of frustration, you will be richly rewarded. Not only is the game a lot of fun to play down at its core, it also looks amazing, especially if you're a Star Wars fan. It feels like the locations were ripped straight from the movies. Of course, the John Williams music doesn't hurt that feeling, but the game's aesthetic is one of its strongest selling points.
But the real treat, as a Star Wars fan, even a more casual fan such as myself, is the story. Being wedged between episodes 3 and 4, you'd think it can't be all that meaningful, as you already know Darth Vader and the Emperor aren't gonna get blown up or anything like that. But to the game's amazing credit, the story actually feels very poignant, and indeed makes you look at events in the original trilogy in a new light. The events of the game do not feel shoehorned in forceably at all and become a worthy part of the Star Wars saga, which is perhaps the game's greatest achievement.
The Force Unleashed doesn't quite live up to its full potential, and that's a shame. But any Star Wars fan would be remiss in skipping this game. It's the closest any game has come to making you feel like a supremely powerful Jedi and has a story that is worthy of a Star Wars movie of its own.
