A Perfect Copy-Force Unleashed II (360)

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.

FU I am done

Beat Force Unleashed despite constant screams of CHEAP and resisting the urge to toss my controller through the window. The story is simply amazing and though the cutscenes are available on youtube, it is somehow more satisfying to have slogged through the messy gameplay for the sweet reward of story. Very Pavlovian. I only wish the gameplay was of the same caliber of every single other aspect of this game, then it would truly be one of the greatest games ever made.

Now its just mediocre.

The Force Unleashed

Force Unleashed or as I like to call it, FU, is like dating a person whose personality you can't stand but when you occasionally have sex, its like the best ever.

The game is beautiful to look at and has the single best Star Wars story (outside of Kotor) since return of the Jedi. It is however, horribly marred by lazy and/or plain stupid design decisions making getting to the story the time before you have done the crime.

Platforming is essential to the gameplay, but unlike other games it has taken many many cues from, FU fails to provide the player with simple courtesy's, like designing a platforming level with narrow ramps and bridges, but building in auto-catch animations should the player accidentally and often FALL OFF THE EDGE. You don't see Kratos falling to his death too often and he doesn't even have a lightsaber.

Sloppy controls, brutal camera and bad level design don't quite drive this game into the ground as the visuals and the story have enough heft to almost carry the player through. Almost.

After spending an hour engaged in an act that should have been the ultimate expression of pure unbridled power I was ready to toss my controller through the window. The developers had managed to reduce the ridiculously cool act of yanking a Star Destroyer from orbit using the force into a tedious series of minigames.

Par for the Force (Unleashed)