My take on ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’
I have been eagerly awaiting the release of ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’ for a long time. I knew I had to play the Wii version of the game so as to take advantage of the motion controls. I wanted to be able to control my character’s lightsaber moves with a swing of the remote control (Wiimote). I knew it wouldn’t be perfect, but I guess I should have lowered my expectations several more notches.
The controls for this game do involve movement from the Wiimote, but they are combined with button presses and joystick toggling. There are SO MANY different Force powers you can wield, but no one could possibly remember all the different controls necessary to conjure them all. The Wiimote movements aren’t really registered verbatim by the character. When you swing the Wiimote, the character swings his lightsaber, but it doesn’t mimic the movement you made which makes it hard to duel a second player (a feature that only the Wii version offers).
Cosmetically, this game has a lot of problems as well. The graphics are just very poor. Nothing is smoothly rendered and there are a lot of bugs. Now, I know the Wii doesn’t have the ability to have great graphics in its games. It is one of the big faults of the Wii system. So I might be impressed by the game graphic-wise if I could see it on another system like the Xbox360 which can render games in 1080p resolution.
The story line takes place between Star Wars Episodes III and IV and follows an apprentice of Darth Vader. Sounds cool, right? Well it is and it isn’t. First, he doesn’t act like someone who was raised by a Dark Lord of the Sith. Someone raised by Vader would be cold, angry, tough and reserved. Instead, he just comes across indifferent and talkative. Second, there really doesn’t feel as if there is any mystery about him, even though there is. We see him as a young boy and then we see him as an adult. We have no idea what happened to him growing up and the game obviously doesn’t think that is important. Third, he creates the Rebel Alliance. I really don’t see the founders of the Rebellion getting behind some young guy just because he knows how to use the Force. But then again, they did that with Luke Skywalker.
I found the game easy at some points and extremely difficult at others. A group of 4 Stormtroopers with shock staff killed me 5 times in a row but I beat Darth Vader and the Emperor without dying once. That doesn’t really even out.
Overall I still enjoyed the game. Though my review was pretty much all negative, I would still play it again. One of the cool features of the game is that when you complete it and sit through the credits, it saves all the outfits (you can change the apprentice’s clothes), lightsaber hilts, lightsaber crystals and Force powers that you’ve unlocked and allows you to use them all the next time you play so you won’t have to worry about collecting them all over again. Hopefully the next time I play the game I will be able to learn the controls for other Force powers so I can really experience the Force Unleashed.
Have you played ‘Star War: The Force Unleashed’? What did you think of it?
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