I have never been more torn in my feelings for a game than I was for the original Force Unleashed. An essentially broken platformer that add repetitive combat and puzzles and rendered the player as ridiculously overpowered apprentice to Darth Vadar also contained one of the best Star Wars stories to date. Linking the prequels to the originals, TFU had moment of sheer joy pinioned with moment of pure tedium.
Like any good sequel TFU II does what the original did, only better.
TFU II returns the apprentice to Vadar’s side, a clone of the original Starkiller (one of many), that escapes his bonds to find the only thing that is clear to him, his transplanted memories of Juno, the love interest from the first game.
Armed with two (2!) lightsabers this time, Starkiller travels from world to world in a mish-mashed plot that feel likes a handful of swiss cheese. One could make the assumption that the cutscenes were the first thing completed in the game, and the team ran out of time and money to create the connective tissue between, so they dropped a bunch of the plot; it is that disjointed.
At the end of TFU Starkiller was so overpowered that the endless cannon fodder thrown at the character could be literally tossed aside en mass. The only real threat would be Vadar and eventually the Emperor. Starkiller begins the sequel with all of his force abilities intact, leaving the player to upgrade them as they see fit. Adding in the ability to “Jedi Mind Trick” enemies to turn on their cohorts combined with “Force Fury” allows the player opportunity to turn an entire group of enemies against one another, only to slice the survivors in half.
Unlike the brutally painful Star Destroyer sequence in TFU, TFU liberally sprinkles its painful moments throughout the game. Repetitive and uninspired boss fights are bracketed by poorly placed checkpoints. The only truly exciting and inventive moments take place in free fall, as Starkiller plunges down through miles of atmosphere, dodging and destroying enemies and the environment along the way.
The narrative and emotional climax of the game comes full circle to cloning facility on Kamino. The end boss repeats the same structure five (5!) times as you ascend the cloning tanks, making the battle a punishment to be endured to reach the truly dramatic and engaging end sequence. Only there does the game finally deliver on some of the emotional and narrative promise.
A full 50% shorter than the original and emptier than an bag of invisible popcorn, TFU II is a disappointing follow-up and at best a rental.
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