Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

I will split my review in several key stages in order to make my opinion far more easy to understand. I will try to make this as unbiased as possible!

Gameplay: This game is fabulous fun to play. Manipulating the force in crazy ways, hacking your lightsaber at foes with fantastic feedback is simply a joy. The different combos keep the whole thing feeling fresh throughout, I never found it boring at any time during playthrough.

The AI and enemies: This is where the game shoots itself in the foot. For all the combos imaginable, you simply do not have the ability to use them efficiently. The scope of enemies you face are from the basic stormtrooper to walkers. Most enemies are killed in one or two saber swings, making it impossible to combo since they die so fast (I played the game on Sith Warrior, not too hard, not too easy). Then on the other end you will meet incredibly tough enemies such as the Purge Trooper (remember the name, they are horrific to fight) who take a lot of hits, allowing you to combo as much as you want, but its flawed by the preposterously efficient counter-attacking AI. Let me outline this problem to you like this: The AI is either dumb, or very good.
When the AI is good, it will wait for you to hit it a certain number of times to initiate a combo, and just before you hit the final button to exectute the combo, they will hit you with a powerful knockback shot, completely undoing your progress. When the AI is dumb however, they stand there as if their gun has jammed, easy prey. Ruins the immersion somewhat.

Bosses: Boss fights are a key part of the game, and it's such a shame that they only exist in two seperate spectrums - either very easy, or very hard. Some bosses are simply spammed and comboed to death, which to me is great as it's hilarious fun. But other times you will meet not only one boss, but perhaps 2 of them! The annoying part of this is that you pick up tactics and strategies for dealing with certain enemies throughout the game, only to have one boss utterly obliterate you and making your tactic void. This does stimulate a strategic element of thinking where you need to adjust to defeat a certain boss, but at other times the odds are horribly stacked against you, meaning you will die many, many times. Either it's me who sucked, or the boss fights can get really frustrating at times as the boss seems to have some godly moves, which leaves you in the shade thinking...ok... It's not nice having to beat one huge, really tough Rancor who knocks you down every few seconds, but then having a stealthed sith jedi pop out of the air and stab you in the back for big damage.

Story: This is one really important factor for the game, as it tries to tie 2 episodes from the insanely popular movies together. It has a lot to live up to, and it certainly delivers. The scripting is humorous and witty, and some cutscenes are utter genius. But what really impressed me was how the story managed to catch me off guard, leading me down one path, when in reality you are heading down another. All without me knowing! This is the best part of the game, as you don't have any choices to make until the end, but you are still cunningly decieved.

Content: Reviewers complained about this game's maps being virtually the same, and I agree. To an extent. You play on just a handful of maps, but there is a hint of variety in the zones and areas that it's bearable. Visiting Kashyyyk for the second time is interesting as the setting has changed since your first visit. Open areas are plenty, with big boulders to hurl at your victims. There are corridor sections too, especially near the end (big surpirse there?) which can bore, but using force lightning on 6 enemies at once in a tiny room is hilarious.
New costumes are available after every mission, with several unlockables too! Lightsaber crystals can either buff or colour your blade, and some options look fantastic. But these are all aesthetic, they don't make your lightsaber more powerful, just prettier. Spheres can be found and gained, allowing you to purchase force powers or buffs. In the last level, your character will be a god and he will look amazing, and the enemies get tougher too so it doesn't become a cakewalk by any means.
The puzzles are either dumb common sense of putting this here for that to happen, or they can be interactive and interesting. The former happens quite a bit however. There are a couple of bugs lurking around, specifically sound bugs. Nothing really gamebreaking from my experience on the PS3.

Replay value: Great fun and unlockables will undoubtedly keep you playing for perhaps a second run through, but after that the game will get stale. Without multiplayer, your looking at keeping this game for a week or so. It's only 10 hours long anyway.

Overall: Simply put, if you are a Star Wars fan by any measure, get this game and try it. It is definately worth playing for its huge fun factor. I consider as an on and off game. Don't play it for long stretches as you will get bored. Play it in bursts.
Good game overall, I firmly believe its positives outweigh the negatives. An excellent effort by Lucasarts, but the execution is sloppy in places.
My percentage score would be: 80%

I have to tell the truth here and say I bought this game expecting it to be a complete disappointment. Placing the story somewhere between episodes 3 and 4 of the Star Wars saga, I just expected it to be a little money maker for the franchise with very little thought put into it. Boy was I wrong. This is not just one of the most entertaining games I own, but it's also one of the most epic as some of the scenes placed within this game would make the original movie series blush at their own inferiority.

The story goes like this. As mentioned before it is set some time between episodes 3 and 4 of the film series. Vader is on one of his missions to eliminate all remaining Jedi when he comes across an orphaned child who seems to possess amazing force strength. Vader takes the boy under his wing as his very own secret apprentice and as he grows older, teaches him the ways of embracing the dark side.

The first 3 missions or so consist of you going on assassination missions and confronting prominent Jedi names in a fight to the death. Nothing is as it seems, however, and the apprentice can't trust his masters specifically the Emperor who orders Vader to kill his apprentice. Vader appears to do the Emperors bidding but it turns out Vader feels too much for the young apprentice and holds negative feelings towards the Emperor. So the remaining part of the game consists on you taking part in secret missions that will dethrone the Emperor from his empire.

So why is this game so special? Well first off as the name implies, it's a game that focuses around one of the main entities we are all familiar with from the Star Wars series and that's the Force. As Vaders secret apprentice, when you progress through the game completing numerous assassination missions, your force powers increase. These introduce you to more powerful aspects of particular force elements such as lightning and force grip. As your level improves in an RPG type style, you can upgrade your current skills. Say for example you can increase your force lightning strength or your ability to heal your force energy at a quicker rate.

Along with the force skills, your ability to wield a light sabre like the Jedi Masters of the movies is something very special also. It's very much just button bashing for the most part, but as you progress your learning you will develop skilful combos that will help you take out the level bosses in an instant. The absolute coolest level bosses have to be the menacing Rancor. Surely this animal is one of the most memorable Alien creatures to grace the Star Wars universe and considering its short appearance in the films, I'm glad they get a more prominent role in the game.

Along with it being fun to play the look and feel of it is just incredible. The scenarios and planets you find yourself on are detailed to the very last blade of grass and interact with your body and the force to present the realistic environment that just has you wanting to use your force moves that would interact with it, such as using your force grip to pick up a giant plant or boulder to launch at one of your enemies.

It's one hell of an entertaining game and I'm hoping for a sequel that will take us much later into the Star Wars saga, maybe placing your apprentice character at the end of the movie series and becoming the Dark Side replacement of Vader? That would be pretty cool and with you being the same apprentice, the movies already learned at max level can be included in the next one and you can increase on them which would be a lot of fun. Anyway, just get it. It's brilliant from start to finish, and if you're a fan of previous Star Wars games then you know what to expect and your expectations will be met and then some.

I was slightly skeptical about buying this game due to some of the negative reviews saying that it is boring and repetative. But being a huge Star Wars fan I decided to buy it anyway.

As the famous 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...' appeared I could feel the excitment building up inside me. It never disappeared, only grew more and more as the game went on! The opening cutscene is absolutley stunning! It completely captures the feel of the Star Wars universe. It's not just the opening cutscene that does this, it's every single cutscene in the game.

I wont go in to too much detail as I do not want to ruin the game for people, but on the first level you get to play as Darth Vader! How cool is that?! As Darth Vader you arrive on the Wookie homeworld searching for a Jedi that escaped the dreaded 'Order 66'. Along the way you cut down Wookies with the most awesome weapon in the Universe, the Lightsaber. Or you can choke them with your Force Grip, or my personal favourite Force Push them and watch them crash through walls and watch trees uproot as your Force Push hits them. I've read people moaning that the bodies disappear after you kill them. So what?! It's what you can do to them before that that counts!

I never go bored with this game once, and if you are a true fan of Star Wars then you won't either. Beautiful levels and stunning graphics add to the true Star Wars excitement. Trust me, buy it! It's fantastic!