Review: “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” PS2 game - 2 stars (out of 5)
Since I wasn’t feeling well this weekend, I opted to stay home, get some rest, watch movies, and play video games. Fortunately for me, the previous weekend I’d picked up some used/new-to-me games using trade-in credit. I found a great deal on “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” for the PS2 at Zia Records for $13, so even though I’d heard some mixed reviews about the game from friends I decided that for the price in trade-in credit, it was worth playing myself.
I wanted to like the game. I still want to like the game.
The voice acting is good (I’d heard a friend make complaint about the voice actor of Darth Vader, but I had no difficultly suspending my disbelief even though I knew the voice wasn’t James Earl Jones), the story is good, and the Force powers are a lot of fun. The title of the game is no lie; if you want to go to town on a bunch of stormtroopers with the Force and a lightsaber, “The Force Unleashed” has action a plenty. Force powers regenerate rapidly, so the player is meant to use Force powers in every combat.
Inexperienced gamers should have no fear that they can’t complete the game, as checkpoints are plentiful. Death happens frequently, but backtracking isn’t much of a problem as most combat happens so quick repeating the same fight a few times takes only a couple minutes. I could easily give the game three stars because I believe the average “Star Wars” fan who might not normally take an interest in video games can play this game and get satisfaction from the story and the characters.
Unfortunately, I have a number of prejudices against the game that knock it down a star.
1) Repetitious gameplay and a bad in-game camera.
The cardinal sin of a video game is to throw the same thing at a player over and over again and call it new because there’s a different boss at the end of the level.
“Hey, we’re fighting stormtroopers again! Isn’t this fun? And look! More stormtroopers! More fun! Yay! And look. More stormtroopers. And more stormtroopers. Oh wait, the AT-ST is cool! Except I get to fight at least four of those. But the rancors are cool-wait, I get to fight a half a dozen of those. And look, more stormtroopers.”
Force powers are great, Force powers are fun, but you are so ridiculously overpowered at the beginning of the game you spend more time fighting with the squirrely camera than you do trying to use any sort of combat tactics. I got to the point where I leveled Force Lighting as fast as I could so I could just run-and-gun my way through the levels because 99% of the action in game is to kill people. There are a few points where you have to stop to use a Force power in order to progress, but the gist of the game is kill lots of stormtroopers/aliens/Rebels, cutscene, kill more, cutscene, kill boss, rinse, wash, and repeat.
You end up revisiting the same worlds, and if a level wasn’t very exciting the first time around, the second run is a bore. I didn’t bother to look for any of the in-game “secrets” because I just wanted to get through it for the story.
2) I felt weird playing a game where my mission was to kill Jedi and anyone who got in my way.
I play Mature rated games, which includes series like Resident Evil, Legacy of Kain, and Silent Hill, to name a few. With Resident Evil, you’re killing zombies or in the fourth game you’re killing people infected with a parasite who are actively trying to kill you. With Silent Hill, you’re killing monsters and trying not to go insane because the character is a just a regular person and the game is freaky.
In Legacy of Kain series, Kain is a vampire. Kain is an anti-hero who kills people in violent, messy ways and occasionally drinks their blood if they feel so inclined.
I feel weird admitting this, but the body count in “The Force Unleashed” really started getting to me. I know the character is Vader’s secret apprentice, but the apprentice isn’t a maniacal villain who kills people for the fun of it. Later in the game as he’s becoming more of a Rebel sympathizer, he refers to himself as being a Jedi. Thing is, he still has all the same “Dark Side” abilities he started with at the beginning of the game, so how is supposed to be a Jedi/turning away from the dark side when he’s still busting out the Force lighting every ten seconds?
Force Lightning = EVIL. Thank you Jacen/Darth Caedus for proving that point, as it was argued that green Force lighting in “Star Wars The New Jedi Order Destiny’s Way” was not evil, but then the person wielding said green lighting went evil/to the dark side and killed lots of people. Certain powers are evil, or at the very least approaching the black side of the moral gray spectrum, so I would have liked to see some in-game acknowledgement that the apprentice was moving away from the Dark Side.
I am okay with playing a “good” character. I am okay playing an “anti-hero” character. For some reason the moral grey of the apprentice kind of got to me. I reached a point where I didn’t want to kill anybody anymore in game and went out of my way not to kill the Wookiees, the noncombatants on Cloud City, and the Rebel Troopers because in my mind it’s bad to kill them but the game offered no penalty if I did.
3) It is too short (8-10 hours worth of game play).
Granted, I’m actually quite grateful that it’s a short game because if I had to revisit the same worlds more than two times I would have absolutely hated it.
Through my run-and-gun tactics where I blew through combat as quickly as possible, I finished the game in a little over seven hours. I feel really bad for any kid who begged their parents to buy them this game or bought this game with their own money when it first came out because the quality of those seven hours of game-play do not warrant a $50 price tag (or $60 for a PS3 or Xbox 360 version).
A good game does not have to be twenty hours long, but a good game needs good game-play so that when you blow through the first time you’ll want to play again to go find the secrets you missed the first time. I have no desire to replay “The Force Unleashed.” If I want to revisit the story, I’ll go check out the novelization from the library.
In all honesty, if the game hadn’t come with a monstrous amount of hype, I would have given it a three star review, mostly bolstered by a good story and good voice acting. I am disappointed that so much time was spent advertising and showing off the game when it really could have used more development time (i.e. the targeting system that doesn’t actually target so there’s not a whole lot of use to pick up anything in game with Force push because you usually don’t pick up what you want or hit what you want).
It could have been a great game, but I think only the most hardcore of “Star Wars” lovers are going to love “The Force Unleashed” and most of the love is going to be for the story, not the game-play.
I wanted to like the game. I still want to like the game.
The voice acting is good (I’d heard a friend make complaint about the voice actor of Darth Vader, but I had no difficultly suspending my disbelief even though I knew the voice wasn’t James Earl Jones), the story is good, and the Force powers are a lot of fun. The title of the game is no lie; if you want to go to town on a bunch of stormtroopers with the Force and a lightsaber, “The Force Unleashed” has action a plenty. Force powers regenerate rapidly, so the player is meant to use Force powers in every combat.
Inexperienced gamers should have no fear that they can’t complete the game, as checkpoints are plentiful. Death happens frequently, but backtracking isn’t much of a problem as most combat happens so quick repeating the same fight a few times takes only a couple minutes. I could easily give the game three stars because I believe the average “Star Wars” fan who might not normally take an interest in video games can play this game and get satisfaction from the story and the characters.
Unfortunately, I have a number of prejudices against the game that knock it down a star.
1) Repetitious gameplay and a bad in-game camera.
The cardinal sin of a video game is to throw the same thing at a player over and over again and call it new because there’s a different boss at the end of the level.
“Hey, we’re fighting stormtroopers again! Isn’t this fun? And look! More stormtroopers! More fun! Yay! And look. More stormtroopers. And more stormtroopers. Oh wait, the AT-ST is cool! Except I get to fight at least four of those. But the rancors are cool-wait, I get to fight a half a dozen of those. And look, more stormtroopers.”
Force powers are great, Force powers are fun, but you are so ridiculously overpowered at the beginning of the game you spend more time fighting with the squirrely camera than you do trying to use any sort of combat tactics. I got to the point where I leveled Force Lighting as fast as I could so I could just run-and-gun my way through the levels because 99% of the action in game is to kill people. There are a few points where you have to stop to use a Force power in order to progress, but the gist of the game is kill lots of stormtroopers/aliens/Rebels, cutscene, kill more, cutscene, kill boss, rinse, wash, and repeat.
You end up revisiting the same worlds, and if a level wasn’t very exciting the first time around, the second run is a bore. I didn’t bother to look for any of the in-game “secrets” because I just wanted to get through it for the story.
2) I felt weird playing a game where my mission was to kill Jedi and anyone who got in my way.
I play Mature rated games, which includes series like Resident Evil, Legacy of Kain, and Silent Hill, to name a few. With Resident Evil, you’re killing zombies or in the fourth game you’re killing people infected with a parasite who are actively trying to kill you. With Silent Hill, you’re killing monsters and trying not to go insane because the character is a just a regular person and the game is freaky.
In Legacy of Kain series, Kain is a vampire. Kain is an anti-hero who kills people in violent, messy ways and occasionally drinks their blood if they feel so inclined.
I feel weird admitting this, but the body count in “The Force Unleashed” really started getting to me. I know the character is Vader’s secret apprentice, but the apprentice isn’t a maniacal villain who kills people for the fun of it. Later in the game as he’s becoming more of a Rebel sympathizer, he refers to himself as being a Jedi. Thing is, he still has all the same “Dark Side” abilities he started with at the beginning of the game, so how is supposed to be a Jedi/turning away from the dark side when he’s still busting out the Force lighting every ten seconds?
Force Lightning = EVIL. Thank you Jacen/Darth Caedus for proving that point, as it was argued that green Force lighting in “Star Wars The New Jedi Order Destiny’s Way” was not evil, but then the person wielding said green lighting went evil/to the dark side and killed lots of people. Certain powers are evil, or at the very least approaching the black side of the moral gray spectrum, so I would have liked to see some in-game acknowledgement that the apprentice was moving away from the Dark Side.
I am okay with playing a “good” character. I am okay playing an “anti-hero” character. For some reason the moral grey of the apprentice kind of got to me. I reached a point where I didn’t want to kill anybody anymore in game and went out of my way not to kill the Wookiees, the noncombatants on Cloud City, and the Rebel Troopers because in my mind it’s bad to kill them but the game offered no penalty if I did.
3) It is too short (8-10 hours worth of game play).
Granted, I’m actually quite grateful that it’s a short game because if I had to revisit the same worlds more than two times I would have absolutely hated it.
Through my run-and-gun tactics where I blew through combat as quickly as possible, I finished the game in a little over seven hours. I feel really bad for any kid who begged their parents to buy them this game or bought this game with their own money when it first came out because the quality of those seven hours of game-play do not warrant a $50 price tag (or $60 for a PS3 or Xbox 360 version).
A good game does not have to be twenty hours long, but a good game needs good game-play so that when you blow through the first time you’ll want to play again to go find the secrets you missed the first time. I have no desire to replay “The Force Unleashed.” If I want to revisit the story, I’ll go check out the novelization from the library.
In all honesty, if the game hadn’t come with a monstrous amount of hype, I would have given it a three star review, mostly bolstered by a good story and good voice acting. I am disappointed that so much time was spent advertising and showing off the game when it really could have used more development time (i.e. the targeting system that doesn’t actually target so there’s not a whole lot of use to pick up anything in game with Force push because you usually don’t pick up what you want or hit what you want).
It could have been a great game, but I think only the most hardcore of “Star Wars” lovers are going to love “The Force Unleashed” and most of the love is going to be for the story, not the game-play.