The Force Unleashed was definitely on the top five most anticipated games of '08 for me. I had been hoping for another Star Wars experience since KOTOR 2, and when I found out about TFU I just about had a mild stroke out of excitement. I mean c'mon, the chance to finally kick some serious butt with a lightsabre in good old button mashing $tyle, along with being able to throw dudes around with some force push action just has to be good, right?

Well not entirely. Although this sounds as sexy as two hundred asian school girls chasing you around the bedroom (large bedroom needed), it doesn't quite all fit together as nicely as that.

For all the hyping that was done about the three engines running this beast, which apparently are so awesome they could brain wash you into taking over the world with only a toothpick and a lighter, they aren't really impressive at all. Sure, seeing stuff fly around and bash up real nice is cool, but it isn't THAT much of a jump ahead of what other games have -- at least, it's not the lightyear leap that they made it out to be.

As for the actual gameplay, dueling the lightsabre is pretty cool albeit a tad monotonous. They tell you to experiment with combinations to find the apparent plethora of Storm Trooper and Rebel Soldier pwning moves, but for the life of me I counted about four of five...which was mildly depressing. During the demo you are given the standard force push and force lightning powers to do with as you wish. Force lightning is pretty cool to combo with, and force push can cause some cool damage on some poor foes. Basically the game seems to throw crap loads of enemies at you at once, all shooting constantly, and so you basically in most cases have to pick something up using the force and throw it at them to thin out the larger groups. From there you can force dash your way over to the stragglers and proceed to cut up fools until theres nothing left, and then move on. It repeated this throughout the demo, and the strategy never really changed. Hopefully this won't always be the case, or it will get to be a grind pretty quick.

What made me a bit puzzled was the constand use of force push to open doors. Yes, it would be cool to have the OPTION to blow the doors open with a charged up force push to make a sparkly entrance, but I don't want to see it become the only means to open a damn door -- which is what the demo shoves in your face as if to say, "See! Those three engines really DO make this game awesome!"

Graphically the game does a pretty good job of things. The character models are well done and animations are pretty smooth and realistic -- well, as realistic as a force weilder can seem. The environment the demo was in looks great even though it seems a bit cookie cutter. I'm sure that some of the other worlds you'll travel will show off the graphics more than the grey walls of the demo world. The sound is good also, bringing the familiar sounds together to immerse you in the Star Wars universe.

Overall, if you want to hear about it on an experience level, The Force Unleashed seems to be a pretty solid game. It seems to make a genuine attempt to slide a good chunk of new Star Wars lore into the series, and it looks to have done a decent job of doing so. The fighting may be a bit weak in spots, and the developers may be force pushing the whole "World dominating engines" thing down our throats, but on the whole TFU is shaping up to be a good game. For the fun of it, I'll project the score to be a 8.0.

That's all I've got for now folks. This was the first real game related blog I've done in a while, and I must say it feels good to be back on track haha.

Have a good one!

XR