Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Everyone knows the Star Wars franchise. It’s a pillar of nerd culture, has produced three good films (although die hard fans will argue the prequels to the ends of the earth) and spawned a tonne of products wearing the Star Wars Skin like creepy nerdy Leatherfaces.

Today I’m going to talk about one such abomination, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Now before I start bashing away at The Force Unleashed I’ll take this time to say that I like Star Wars: the first three films were great and Knights Of The Old Republic was a well designed RPG that had a lot to offer.

The Force Unleashed starts off with Darth Vader murdering people, fairly standard as that’s kind of his deal: wear a big black dildo helmet and choke people out, he does what he loves and loves what he does. It’s after all the death and destruction that he comes across a boy and decides to take him under his wing because he’s strong with the force, which is pretty much the Sith Lord tag line “Strong with the force? Well Uncle Palpatine needs you” with a big picture of the emperor pointing out at you. Vader hatches a plan to use his new found strong force boy who he names Starkiller (that’s one way to keep the bullies away at space school) to take down the Emperor so Vader and Star can rule the galaxy, which would be a solid plan if Starkiller wasn’t a 10 year old boy.

After years of mental torture and conditioning Starkiller is tasked with destroying a succession of Jedi’s because Vader couldn’t be bothered to do it himself, apparently taking over the galaxy turned into outsourcing all his shit along the way but I guess it hasn’t gone as far as Starkiller doing Vader’s shopping for him so that’s a plus.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that Starkiller gets betrayed by Vader because, as everyone should know by now, he’s a big, black prick. So Starkiller goes rogue and instead of killing all the Jedi’s befriends them in an attempt to create a rebellion against the the empire...now where have I heard that before.

During this assassination fluctuation Starkiller finds himself in many boring, samey locations such as Kashyyyk, Raxus Prime and Falucia that service the lore and nothing else, all of which start merging together quite fast. Which one was your favourite; the grey brown forest strewn with ship parts, the dull corridors of a wrecked space station or the tedious, ashen rocky terrain filled with smouldering trees and smashed masonry, oh and floating ship parts surrounding you. I can forgive the samey, tedious ares though if it wasn’t for the poor level design. Anytime you get near the end of a ledge there is a 100% chance you’re going to slip off, most of the time into the black abyss of vague death. Even when you think you’re safe by standing a couple of feet away from the edge Starkiller has a habit of dashing right off at the slightest nudge of the analog stick.

Along his journey, Starkiller does get some friends, although with his lack of emotion that I’m guessing Vader decided was just getting in the way and removed for his own good I’m not sure how Starkiller made any friends. PROXY is a training droid that every now and again decides to ambush Starkiller “apparently” in an attempt to help improve his fighting ability and definitely now kill him at all. Juno is the pilot of the Rogue Shadow, a ship that ferry’s Starkiller around from skybox to skybox, this only happens in cut-scenes though and has pretty much no impact on in game situations. Both of these side characters must have also been drained of any emotion because they’re just as bad as Starkiller when it comes to delivering their lines. You can almost see the cogs turning with every word that leaves there poorly animated mouths like they’re reading their scripts as they scroll slowly past them. What’s worse is that there’s an attempt to make Juno the love interest near the end of the game for no particular reason; there hasn’t been much established about either of them nor has the game bothered to make you feel anything for them which makes the whole thing wooden and incredibly unnecessary.

I should probably have a go at the gameplay for a bit. Starkiller has a mix of attacks, some including his lightsaber, that vwings it’s way through enemies, and others utilising his force powers to throw things around and hit them with lightning.

Everybody at one point or another in their life has pretended to swing a lightsaber around and I can guarantee that it felt more impactful than swinging one in The Force Unleashed. With every enemy there’s a flurry of lights and vwings and then all of a sudden they fall apart like a house of cards. There’s no satisfaction to swiping through droids or stormtroopers with no force feedback and there’s even less when you’re using force powers.

Luke Skywalker was supposed to be a prodigy with the force, as he strained to try and move a rock with his mind, but in comparison it’s like Starkiller is swatting a fly with a wave of his hand and takes half the room with it. Flicking enemies and debris around willy-nilly may seem like fun but, as with the lightsaber attacks, it doesn’t feel substantial and actually makes the game a tad too easy. Couple these force and lightsaber attacks with the token upgrades system and the gameplay goes from a easy to a Sunday afternoon cake walk but instead of actual walking it’s just someone wheeling you around to make sure your feet don’t start to hurt.

Overall The Force Unleashed falls down in a few areas; character development is non existent and what’s there of the characters already doesn’t endear me towards them. They’re stock, the lines and voice performances are stilted and it seemed like they just didn’t care. Level design is better but it does come down to a walking tour of dilapidated areas from the Star Wars canon, broken up with the boring vacuum of space filled with three incredibly dull and emotionally deadened, dare I say, protagonists that you’re going to end up wanting to fall into the nearest black hole.

If you’re really into Star Wars, to the point where you can look past all of the atrocious acting, sort telling and needless product placement, then this 8 hour mess would probably suffice. As an actual game however the lack of challenge and predictable story meant that I was just going through the motions with very little interest in what was actually going on. The Star Wars franchise will always be at the heart of sci-fi and nerd culture, I don’t think anyone can despite that. However, despite the resurgence with the third trilogy of films plus all of the side stuff, the Star Wars name has made some missteps over the years: Clone Wars, cannon changes and let not forget Ja Ja, now The Force Unleashed can feel right at home with all of them.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is available from most video game retailers, so head down to your local game store if you’re interested in picking it up.

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