Star Wars : The Force Unleashed
The Force Unleashed - Busy Gamer Score 3
First Glance:
Ok, it’s a Star Wars title, with like 2 years in the making, has the potential to be a really big hit – dazzling effects and a great demo to try out, sounds like a winner to die hard fans.
The Short Story:
You are Vader’s secret apprentice, raised from a child to possibly be the most powerful sith ever. No spoilers here, but the story is this game’s strongest point.
The Score:
I am giving this a BusyGamer rating of a 3. Making it an average bang for your buck. This games downfall (as sighted later) has dragged this down from being a top dog of your collection. Remember we are talking about time investment here, not so much how this game is overall.
Body of review:
Very sadly, this game has too many shortcomings that ultimatley bring it toppling down from all that its great genre has inspired. Die hard fans will buy this game, I bought it. I will keep it, and possibly replay it in the future. Lucasarts seems to have yet again screwed the pooch on developing a Star Wars game that can bring a long time of enjoyment to all gamers around. It hurts me to spit back out some thing with great storytelling and an enviroment that I could literally immerse myself in till doomsday.
The good. There is a lot of good stuff in this game, don’t get me wrong. The world is alive in Force Unleashed. The scenery is spectacular, the backgrounds response to your force abilities puts this game at the very top rung of the ladder as far as how the game looks and feels. The costumes are extremely detailed, as are the lightsabers which immediately appealed to me. The first 2 hours of gameplay I was jumping out of my seat, oooing and ahhing at how cool things looked and how I liked punting jawas 50 yards back.
I really think that the developers spent too much time on the reaction of the levels and the details of the worlds then the actual gameplay itself. Not a big suprise for these titles. And it really bums me out, I thought they may get this one right.
There are bugs within the first 5 levels that were hard to overlook. I would unlock costumes and find them relocked on the next levels making the achievement unfulfilling. I was awarded new lightsaber crystals after beating a boss and when checking the menus they were non existant. These two things frustrated me and made me cringe as I felt like I really gained nothing. How did these things get past beta testing? This has been a long awaited title too. I didnt see much power increases as I levelled because the enemies seem to also scale equally. Im not the memorize a ‘6 button combo move’ kinda person, as these were barely more effective than just hitting X (normal slash) repeatedly, so I would accumulate levelling points that would go unnoticed and unused in the combo upgrade section of my character.
Without giving spoilers, I want to say that the story is great. The game’s definite high point. Seeing young Princess Leia was awesome, the cutscenes were pretty good, better than average, great dialogue and enticing plot twists that did encourage me to get through the next level.
Overall after the niceties wear off this game doesn’t offer a whole lot. Replay will be low, there is no XboX live use at all. No co-op, no duelling, nothing that could have, and should have been included expanding some online playability. Bad bad bad lucasarts. I still revel in thought that this long awaited title may gather dust, I shall give it another try – I am a die hard fan, but I really hope a patch comes soon to fix some of its basic mechancial defeciencies.
Give it some time, buy it used and I feel you would enjoy it abit more, and atleast marvel at seeing more of the expanded universe of the Star Wars realm.
Crutchboy – Out
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Tags: Force Unleashed, Star Wars
