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Preys-World - Star Wars The Force Unleashed Review

Tuesday 23rd of December, 2008 - 00:30:03 GMT

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Or at least, in 2004, in a LucasArts office somewhere across the Atlantic, probably in San Francisco; the concept for the latest addition to the Star Wars franchise was born. Strategy had been covered recently with Empire at War, shooting was sorted with the Battlefront and Republic Commando games, Knights of the Old Republic and Galaxies had the role playing and massively multiplayer genres covered and the loveable Lego incarnations of both trilogies sufficiently addressed the young platform game audience. Having named but a few videogame spin-offs of the Star Wars franchise from a vast list of titles dating as far back as the early 80s, none of these games truly explored the boundaries of one of the universe’s key ideas and trademarks, the Force. The Jedi Outcast/Academy series may have put you in the shoes of a Jedi, fighting in a 3D environment with lightsaber and force powers to unravel the bad guy’s plans but none of those games delve quite so far into the spiritual hoo-hah of a Jedi’s powers quite so extensively as this time intended.

Set between Episodes III and IV the game centres on Dark Vader’s secret apprentice, known only as Starkiller, as he hones his skills hunting exiled Jedi across the galaxy with the ultimate goal of helping Vader to overthrow the Emperor and establishing himself as ruler of the Empire, or at least right hand man to the new ruler of the Empire. Of course as with all things, it’s not as easy as that and such a simple plot structure is quickly thrown off course with an abundance of twists and turns culminating in one of two possible endings depending on the player’s choice at a pivotal moment. Reinforced by some excellent voice work and detailed facial animations the story to Force Unleashed is definitely one of its high points, which no doubt comes as a surprise when you consider the usual quality in such action-centred games. Remembering the period of the Star Wars timeline in which this is set the tones and development of the story are suitably dark and grim, covering the Empire’s brutal crackdown on resistant planets in its quest for dominance whilst making interesting and intelligent connections with the birth of the Rebel Alliance and the beginning of Episode IV.

The gameplay of Force Unleashed is ultimately where it’s main challenge lies and will ultimately make or break the game for you. Starting with basic push and grip your force powers are slowly trickled to you with the progression of each new mission as you upgrade powers, stats and unlock lightsaber combos alongside them until you’re fully kitted out. Whilst you will reach the maximum levels of your powers quite quickly it is nevertheless still very fun to charge up a ball of force energy before unleashing it on a group of hapless stormtroopers (remember, you’re a secret apprentice, nobody must meet you and live to tell their friends), a combination of the semi-destructible scenery and sound effects will sufficiently make you feel like a bad ass. Well, until you reach level four or five that is. After a certain point in the game regular fodder enemies become much less frequent and are generally replaced with specialised troops who are more resistant (read, almost completely resistant) to your force powers. Whether it’s a shield which protects them until you hit them enough times with your lightsaber to disable it or simply that they are clad in a massive amount of armour you will quickly find that relying entirely on your force powers to win the day will result in a lot of loading from the last checkpoint. On the surface this doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all; after all, how often would you really object to having to pull out a laser sword to mercilessly cut down your foes? But in reality this might turn out to be more often than you’d expect. The last third person action games in the Star Wars universe saw an expansive lightsaber system whereby with correct sequences or just random mashing of controls and jumping you could pull off some very nifty and innovative looking moves in epic lightsaber duels with your foes. The lack of any lightsaber wielding enemies, save for the boss fights and occasional mini-boss, and the games desire to show off how much damage you can do with the Force alone means that the lightsaber melee combat in this game is very much simplified and shallow. Gone are the skilful arts of mastery you loved in Academy, replaced with a very arcadey and simple hit-hit-LIGHTNING-hit combo affair which will deplete your foes health bar but otherwise have very little effect on their physical model at all save for your final blow in the sequence which might knock them over.

In a game where the developers really wanted to focus on the aspect of the Force it might be forgiven that they don’t include a number of different lightsaber stances and models to choose from. But the Star Wars universe has always been just as much about the lightsabers as it has the Force and to achieve a balance between the two instead of simply neglecting one side would have been nice. The lack of intuitive melee combat really hits home hard when you’re forced into it for the majority of enemies you encounter after the first few missions who are resilient to your force powers and require taking down a peg with a few blows from your laser sword first. This leaves the combat feeling repetitive and frustrating at the best of times; I’d much rather spend my time blasting stormtroopers off the face of the planet than being thrown to the ground by a purge trooper because he shrugged off my chained lightsaber attack and when I tried to force push him away afterwards he simply laughed at me as he wrapped his big metal hands around my throat. On the plus side a lot of the combat is avoidable so if you aren’t feeling up to taking out hordes of enemies you can quite happily skip straight by a lot of them with a bit of Jedi guile, or just hammering the speed boost button. Levelling up your laser blast block skills couldn’t hurt either.

Reach the end of each level and you’ll typically be faced with a boss fight. The gameplay flaws already mentioned still translate to these fights though they are undeniably some of the coolest moments of the game. The stage will typically be designed in a manner so as to form an arena where you’ll brawl with your opponent, dodging their combos and knocking them down with your own until you eventually wear their health so thin as to execute a finishing quick time event. The same criticism that has been levelled against every use of quick time events in the past is still a valid one here today and whilst it may give you a feeling that you’re helping to pull off these nifty looking final moments of the fight it still detracts from the overall experience when you have to focus all of your attentions on a small blipping section of the screen to press the right button at the right time. These moments look cinematically excellent, but with your attentions focused on the bottom half of the screen it’s difficult to always keep up with what your character is actually doing. Dare to avert your eyes from the quick time HUD to glimpse the action and you’ll often be knocked back a few stages of the event and have to input the key combination again, unless you’re fighting a mini-boss mid-level such as a rancor or AT-ST in which case it’ll effortlessly swat you to the floor and you’ll suffer some damage before having to start again.

At this moment in time it might be worth bringing up the difficulty level of the game and how each one might impact your overall play time. The levels are aptly named, Apprentice, Sith Warrior, Sith Lord and Sith Master, the latter only being unlocked after a play through the game on any of the lower levels. A save on the standard difficulty (Warrior) resulted in a six hour play through before completing the final stage with Sith Lord doing little other than slowing the combat down since the enemies are notably more resistant than normal to your powers. Whilst Sith Master offers a much greater challenge since your health drains to zero after only suffering a few wounds none of the difficulties really change the dynamics of the game play or serve to provide added entertainment since you can still blaze through in a decent time. Boss fights on harder difficulties aren’t as harsh as you’d think since every battle tends to be broken up in between a cinematic where there will be a checkpoint saved; dying after one of them returns you to that moment and with a nice bonus of 100% health. As action games go Force Unleashed is by no means a long one. There are few locales and only nine levels overall, with you revisiting a number of planets twice, the only difference being a variation on the set of enemies you face. Whilst games of this genre aren’t notorious for their length it is still somewhat disappointing that the potential to visit some of the more interesting planets in the Star Wars universe is stamped out by a second visit to Felucia or Raxus Prime instead. The lack of variation is made up with the fact that the levels are generally well thought out and entertaining to work through, tip of the hat goes to the final level in particular for some intuitive design.

What Force Unleashed boils down to is a fun arcade action adventure which will bring a few hours of joy to fans of the series. It’s not the best game LucasArts have ever put out but by no means is it the worst. And Proxy isn’t quite as annoying a robot, programmed to kill you when you least expect it, as you’d initially think. If anything he’s quite a nice chap.

- Dave K