The Force Unleashed: Don't bother

[Kietharr]

I have a difficult time really putting how shitty this game was into words, let me run down a bulleted list of what I thought was retarded:

- All boss fights have a scripted ending which requires you to hit a sequence of buttons, or swing the wiimote/nunchuck around like a moron for Wiitards such as myself.
- Cutscenes fucking everywhere, this is a short game and these scenes seem to attempt to make it seem as if it's not.
- As mentioned above, this game is pathetically short. I got it on the Wii (the longer version) and it still took me all of 4.5 hours to beat, start to finish.
- All starwars lore is decimated by this shitheap on so many levels it is not funny (will post major spoilers in white later)
- Fighting was hit and miss
- Camera was Sonic Adventure II bad, forcing the camera behind walls and into models on many occasions
- Obviously bad game design, lots of bugs
- Death is meaningless

Ok, with those basic grievances out of the way, let's get down to the detail. Fighting on the Wii version consists of swinging the Wiimote around to swing your lightsaber (certain directions do certain kinds of swings, but this was obviously a Wii port so the detection was pretty annoying) and using the nunchuck to use force. You can combine them for combos but this is pretty much never necessary. I literally got half way through the last level with like 4 deaths total before I figured out that swinging the wiimote in different ways did different hits, that is how easy this game is.

Bugs were somewhat frequent, a lot of them involved the so called amazing physics that I honestly barely noticed. I pushed so many enemies through walls that it got tiring. Most of them were killed by the push, but occasionally I'd get live enemies stuck in walls and had to run past them. Once I got an enemy that I had to kill to advance stuck and had to reload. I also noticed a lot of really awful boss design. The bull rancor boss will instantly take off 90% of your health if it hits you when you're near a wall. It will bounce you off of the wall and beat the shit out of you, usually resulting in an instant death. It wasn't intended either, the animations just looked a bit fucked up when it happened.

When you die, you just lose force points. Force points are basically experience and you can use them to make your force powers stronger, but really the only one you need is lighting/aerial lightning because it's the best way of consistantly dealing damage to bosses. Push, choke and repulse can be fun but you don't need them to kill the easy normal enemies and they don't effect many of the bosses.

As for the story, spoilers below, highlight to read
Ok, so you start on a super star destroyer (never mind that the SSD class ships weren't finished until after the first death star was destroyed) and your first missions are going around and killing Jedi. You literally throw the first one into fucking space, with him not wearing a spacesuit. He somehow survives and comes back later. You also kill Shaak-Ti who was supposed to have died in the purge but whatever. It really gets fucked when the emperor discovers you and Vader stabs you through the heart and throws you out a window, into space. You somehow survive and Vader orders you to create the rebellion in order to distract palmpatine. You run around talking to senators and shit, then you form the alliance on Correlia then the tatters of continuity finally fall apart as Vader attacks and brings all of the rebel leaders to the death star. You survive being thrown off a giant cliff and faceplanting in the snow and your pilot bitch rescues you so you can run off to the death star and save the rebellion, because Vader is a dick.

Finally, you get to the Deathstar (which is a clusterfuck of a level full of jet troopers that are much harder to kill than the final bosses) and then fight Darth Vader, who you of course defeat (some random puke can kick the shit out of vader, lol), you then have a choice, kill vader and be evil or attack palmpatine and be good. Good is the cannon ending, where you actually beat the emperor then your pilot smashes into the throne room and gets the rebel leaders out while your character sacrifices himself to cover their retreat.

Yeah, some random guy that is never mentioned in the EU before somehow magically formed the rebellion then beat the strongest sith lord to ever live, lol.

It might be worth a rent, but do not buy it. Don't play it if you like the star wars EU because honestly this game just stomps all over it.

 

[Darth Meanie]

I heard similar stuff about this game, but my sister insists that I buy it for her birthday, regardless of the bad things I told her about it.\

Also, I think this belongs in entertainment reviews.

 

[Firestorm]

Not going to read the white bits, but I'd heard that the only thing the game does right is the story? Isn't it supposed to be an official bridge between Episode III and Episode IV? I actually haven't seen the Star Wars movies (I plan to!) so this is just what I've heard. Tycho on Penny Arcade had something pretty interesting to say on the game a while back:

I really liked The Force Unleashed in its largely theoretical demo form, but the finished product (at least, on the 360 and PS3) is significantly harder to love. Significantly, as in, I doubt very seriously that Gabriel will complete it. I have done so, culminating both of the game's moral vectors, largely to verify my prior assertion: that they were prepared to deliver a significant, substantial middle chapter. This has absolutely occurred. And if you can find someone else to play the game while you watch, you might be approaching the optimal scenario.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/9/8/

Although you did say you played the Wii version and considering that's usually the worst version of any game, that could be a problem in itself.

 

[Mr. Hadwick]

Oddly enough I only hear good about this game from my friends, but that may be because we're all fucking insane starwars nerds, I'll probably borrow this.

 

[Surgo]

I don't understand the beef that it kicks established Star Wars continuity in the face. Who the fuck cares? This is why nobody can make good Star Wars anything anymore.

 

[NESgamer]

I have a difficult time really putting how shitty this game was into words, let me run down a bulleted list of what I thought was retarded:

- All boss fights have a scripted ending which requires you to hit a sequence of buttons, or swing the wiimote/nunchuck around like a moron for Wiitards such as myself.
- As mentioned above, this game is pathetically short. I got it on the Wii (the longer version) and it still took me all of 4.5 hours to beat, start to finish.
- All starwars lore is decimated by this shitheap on so many levels it is not funny (will post major spoilers in white later)
- Camera was Sonic Adventure II bad, forcing the camera behind walls and into models on many occasions
- Death is meaningless

Being a game with a shitload of versions i find it curious how these things practically apply for the version I played (PSP).Every single thing he said (with the respective controllers of course).

For starters i got at first infatuated by the game being portable and all, and the promise of a good story, all went well i guess until i found these lacks of game play, using the force around is fun ... on the first 3 levels of the game! then it gets repetitive and not fun at all, enemies are as well pretty much the same and mission over mission is just fight a bunch of guys and then fight some boss that can get spammed by electric shocks or force things, even the the Jedi you face feel.... well, pretty weak.

Like he said death practically doesn't exist, you die but you start right in the place you died, do you have a number of lives?, no, you have continues? obviously no!, what they take from you when you die?, something that is not even necessary to beat the game xP, like some "points" or who knows to buy even more force powers, but you will get a lot of them anyway...

The camera sucks on certain situations, like when you're cornered and you can't watch anything, and you have some guys shooting at you, but you can't even see them. To deliver final blows to your enemies you have to follow sequences of buttons (triangle, square bla,bla) and if you miss they recover some health, so if you fail over and over again you will be doing this for eternity... again, these were nice at first but as the game advanced it feels dull.

Again this is for the PSP version, i'm just amazed the problems of the game were exactly the same as the Wii version.

Story. I don't want to reveal or bother with spoilers, i just want to say it begins well, goes well until some plot twist when you must say "what the hell"?, and goes even worst to the end when they gangrape the beginning of the treasured old trilogy... in short, i was like this as the game advanced->
:D :) :O :s :/ :x

EDIT: Starkiller (?) or "the apprentice" is the main character and i think he is a douche, it's amusing that the main character of this story is the least appealing (imo), also he is broken for the reasons Kietharr said above, i mean for an APPRENTICE to do all the things he does is really stupid.

EDIT 2: Luckily i didn't buy it Firestorm xD, being PSP people should figure out how i ...emm "tested it" :rolleyes:.

 

[Firestorm]

Ok. So I guess I should retract my statement about the Wii version being the worst then.

360 >= PC >= PS3 >> Wii >> PSP > DS is the way games usually go. Stop buying the shitty versions of games! And if you're buying the Mobile version of games then I don't even know what to say.

 

[Morm]

I heard that this game was fun. I'm thinking it'd be a little similar to games like Jedi Academy or Jedi knight 2. Those games were really fun in their day, am I off the mark in comparing them in gameplay?

 

[Kietharr]

No, nothing like JKA/JKO. Imagine those games if your force push killed an entire room of enemies and all of the bosses died by you running around the room and hitting them with lightning whenever you had force power available. Also imagine that the MP was shitty.

As for continuity, it is important. Look at JKO, it didn't even effect continuity, it made its own story instead of stealing and brutally raping elements of other people's stories. I don't want to post spoilers, but what happened at Correlia has been established cannon for over twenty years, this is the first time it's changed, and not just slightly altered, I mean totally fucked in the arse with earthshaking events that have never been mentioned before. They didn't need to fly in the face of existing content to make a good game, but they did anyways and made a bad one.

But if you're not a person who cares about continuity, the story is still lackluster. The voice acting is annoying, especially the emperor's voice.

 

[the Lexx]

Shame, I was really looking forward to this game. It's also surprising that the Wii version turned out the best... something like faulty controls in the 360/PS3 versions had to have been known about why they were developing the game, why couldn't they just do what the Wii did with it?

Also read the spoilers and it wasn't that interesting anyway so I guess I didn't lose out by not buying it.

 

[Rock]

I wrote a review for GameFAQs because I disagreed with the bad reviews so much. ._.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/review/R128342.html

- All boss fights have a scripted ending which requires you to hit a sequence of buttons, or swing the wiimote/nunchuck around like a moron for Wiitards such as myself.

When you get the boss down to the last percentages, you gotta hit buttons to finish them off. It's not that big a deal. The buttons are easy to press and when you get them that far, you already won. Besides, it is pretty hard to get them down that low, just like a real boss.

- Cutscenes fucking everywhere, this is a short game and these scenes seem to attempt to make it seem as if it's not.

It's a Star Wars game that is official canon, the cutscenes telling the story is one of the major selling points for it. And the cutscenes and story itself was pretty awesome IMO.

- As mentioned above, this game is pathetically short. I got it on the Wii (the longer version) and it still took me all of 4.5 hours to beat, start to finish.

Dude, not possible. Unless the Wii version somehow is shorter than the 360 version dispite the levels or you played it on the easiest difficulty with cheats, 6-8 is the norm. And 6 is being generious.

- All starwars lore is decimated by this shitheap on so many levels it is not funny (will post major spoilers in white later)

After Episode 1-3, does it even matter anymore? Atleast we got a badass like Starkiller to watch.

- Fighting was hit and miss
- Camera was Sonic Adventure II bad, forcing the camera behind walls and into models on many occasions
- Obviously bad game design, lots of bugs

I disagree on how much this is emphasized, but these problems are there..

- Death is meaningless

I died after running down a hallway full of dudes, killing a massive robot and like, 30 Purgetroopers. I got sniped by a sniper and had to start all over from like, the last checkpoint 7 minutes earlier. Once again, unless the Wii version does something different, death is just like any other game. Back to the checkpoint.

Ok, with those basic grievances out of the way, let's get down to the detail. Fighting on the Wii version consists of swinging the Wiimote around to swing your lightsaber (certain directions do certain kinds of swings, but this was obviously a Wii port so the detection was pretty annoying) and using the nunchuck to use force. You can combine them for combos but this is pretty much never necessary. I literally got half way through the last level with like 4 deaths total before I figured out that swinging the wiimote in different ways did different hits, that is how easy this game is.

WiiS360 here. I never buy anything for the Wii or PS3 unless it's an exclusive. 360 is always the safest bet. And double that when the Wii version has the same game except with Wiimote interactivity tacked on. Sooo.. that's the Wii's fault right there.

Bugs were somewhat frequent, a lot of them involved the so called amazing physics that I honestly barely noticed. I pushed so many enemies through walls that it got tiring. Most of them were killed by the push, but occasionally I'd get live enemies stuck in walls and had to run past them. Once I got an enemy that I had to kill to advance stuck and had to reload. I also noticed a lot of really awful boss design. The bull rancor boss will instantly take off 90% of your health if it hits you when you're near a wall. It will bounce you off of the wall and beat the shit out of you, usually resulting in an instant death. It wasn't intended either, the animations just looked a bit fucked up when it happened.

I've had a bug that froze my game and it's been reported that you can fall through crap, but I've never seen that. Gonna blame these on the Wii aswell.

When you die, you just lose force points. Force points are basically experience and you can use them to make your force powers stronger, but really the only one you need is lighting/aerial lightning because it's the best way of consistantly dealing damage to bosses. Push, choke and repulse can be fun but you don't need them to kill the easy normal enemies and they don't effect many of the bosses.

Daaaaaaaamn! That's the Wii's fault ALL right there! The 360 doesn't have these. You die, you're back at full health. Dunno why the Wii tacked on that stupid gimmick.

That's my side of the story. If you're gonna dislike it, dislike it for the facts people. IMO, it's a fun game that is worth the time spent playing. Double if you're a Star Wars fan. And I'm not actually.

 

[GoldenRifle]

Honestly, I had a great time playing the game. But then again, this one was a sure buy for me. If you're not that interested, just rent it. It's in no way a bad game, it may just not be worth full price to everyone (then again, that should be said for any game).

Honestly, the story was pretty much a lot better than any of the shit they did with episode I to III. Honestly, as a Star Wars fan I thought this was damn well worth playing just for the storyline, I loved it (although it did had it's share of problems). I played the 360 version, so I can't exactly tell if it's better than the Wii version or not. But I think it's best to play the 360 version, most Wii port game have shitty tacked on motion gimmicks (before you flame me ; I own a Wii @_@), but I could always be wrong anyway.

The game took me around 10 hours to beat, mostly because I was playing around with the physics on this game and this game delivers some really good "Oh snap! Did I really do that?" moments, although they just don't come as much as you'd want. The hack'n'slash mode of this game did not bother me, although some time the camera did indeed made it a bit hard to find my enemy, but nothing that bad.

I mostly had fun with the hack'n'slash of this game because of the sick force combos you could do (Force Push combo ftw).

One thing that kept getting on my nerves was the fact that the power of the force in this game is a million times stronger than the original trilogy and this game overdoes it, so much, it gets ridiculous, although I can't stop but loving how fucking badass Star Killer is when he pulls down that Star Destroyer.

Anyway, I think it's worth renting if you guys were interested on it. Or really, just download the demo if you can. Yes, the game does get really repetitive passed the first few levels though.

 

[FreakShizzl]

This game is God of War but star wars. Basically, it's a big fucking ripoff and sucks my pokeballs.

 

[Darth Meanie]

I've been playing it, and its pretty good, but has such frustrating boss fights. The camera becomes uncooperative, and the second boss in the game is ridiculous. An attack that sometimes eats more than half your health, several similar looking combos, one that is unblockable, and is practically always blocking your attacks? Seriously can only get through by spamming lightning and only barely.

Other than that is great, targeting system occasionally decides to kill you though. Camera isn't very cooperative either. It's worth playing, but it seems to go downhill after the beginning.

 

[Iamslow]

I really hate how enemies take multiple Lightsaber attacks and how the game's developers made a big deal about the whole environmental logic engine (Or whatever they called it). Is it really that entertaining or necessary to juggle you're enemies around in the air while you could just blast them with the Force Lightning? I haven't played the game and I don't intend to. I've just seen videos.
I imagine Star Wars fans will get something out of the story, though.

 

[Rock]

First the radio and now the forums. And here I thought B. Rock was an original nick. ;x

 

[Iamslow]

First the radio and now the forums. And here I thought B. Rock was an original nick. ;x

Sorry about that...

I went to 3 different schools and everybody seems to think of that for me.

 

[Firestorm]

Here's a review that restates what I said. Stop buy Wii versions of games like this one: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/251-Star-Wars-The-Force-Unleashed

 

[Darth Meanie]

I played it. On Sith Lord, the second highest difficulty, this game is nearly impossible. Boss Fights are terrible, they're these massive tanks of HP that constantly block attacks, break guard, have 12 immunities, and have such great priority that if they start an attack while you hit with one it gets canceled?

Camera ranges from uncooperative to conspiring against you, and combined with the targeting system it makes you insane. You can't control your aim in the Star Destroyer sequence, and when you're trying to hit Tie Fighters with a lightning with a surprisingly small hitbox you want to pull your hair out.

Even regular enemies sport immunities to attack, which is even worse when these various opponents are mixed together. I can't hit you with lightning, you with anything but lightsaber throw because you have a flamethrower and force immune shield, and you have a stun shotgun.

Also, everyone in this game has superarmor. Except you. One enemy has a homing rocket, which if it connects, knocks you down and will hit you again before you can dodge. You meanwhile cannot do an ingame combo unless you hit them with lightning first to stun them.

If you want to enjoy the game, find someone else to play through to get all the powers, then watch them play on Apprentice difficulty, then you'll enjoy it.

 

[Iamslow]

I played it. On Sith Lord, the second highest difficulty, this game is nearly impossible. Boss Fights are terrible, they're these massive tanks of HP that constantly block attacks, break guard, have 12 immunities, and have such great priority that if they start an attack while you hit with one it gets canceled?

Camera ranges from uncooperative to conspiring against you, and combined with the targeting system it makes you insane. You can't control your aim in the Star Destroyer sequence, and when you're trying to hit Tie Fighters with a lightning with a surprisingly small hitbox you want to pull your hair out.

Even regular enemies sport immunities to attack, which is even worse when these various opponents are mixed together. I can't hit you with lightning, you with anything but lightsaber throw because you have a flamethrower and force immune shield, and you have a stun shotgun.

Also, everyone in this game has superarmor. Except you. One enemy has a homing rocket, which if it connects, knocks you down and will hit you again before you can dodge. You meanwhile cannot do an ingame combo unless you hit them with lightning first to stun them.

If you want to enjoy the game, find someone else to play through to get all the powers, then watch them play on Apprentice difficulty, then you'll enjoy it.

What a nightmare. That's cool they named it "Sith Lord" though.

 

[TheFourthChaser]

The game wasn't that bad, it wasn't super good, but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it and your description of the game made me laugh a bit.

 

[Solidus]

It was a complete failure. I read the review on Gamespot, and it got a 6.0. It should have got lower imo.