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Reviews |  |
Reviews provided in partnership with Crispy Gamer. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3)
Kratos, a lightsaber, a gravity gun and Darth Vader: Will it blend?
Positive
The story
Negative
The actual game
Shocked. Shocked and appalled.
Early on in The Force Unleashed, there's an almost breathtaking iconic image. Shortly before the events of the original Star Wars, Darth Vader has hunted down a fugitive Jedi and is in the process of dueling him. The Jedi's tiny son happens upon the scene. The boy uses his latent Force power to grab Vader's lit lightsaber, which is longer than the boy is tall. There's a two shot of Vader, black and majestic, towering over him and the child uncertainly holding the lightsaber, his face reflecting the red glow. Nearly 15 hours of mostly attractive next-generation gameplay later, it remains the most powerful visual in The Force Unleashed.
The basic plot involves the young boy, having grown up to look vaguely like a cross between Billy Zane and Ashton Kutcher, serving as Vader's secret apprentice. He's sent out mostly to hunt down fugitive Jedi, but he also seems to be doing a little subterfuge on Vader's behalf. Hence the opportunity to slaughter Stormtroopers left and right. There are some great side-quests that turn out not to be side-quests, a few memorable set pieces and more plot twists than you'd expect. Unfortunately, many of these twists have been ruined by LucasArts' trailers for the game. If you've avoided the trailers, you're going to enjoy The Force Unleashed much more.
The apprentice helps choreograph the annual Stormtrooper production of "Swan Lake."
But then there's the actual game. While the writers clearly understood what made Star Wars great, the actual game designers had no such insight. Instead, they've stitched together a sloppy God of War clone -- Kratos with a lightsaber -- and not a very good one at that. At least the fighting is animated nicely; the apprentice's fighting style, characterized by holding the lightsaber behind his back until he needs it, looks great. The interactive animations between clashing characters is almost on par with Assassin's Creed. But the actual hack-and-slash is a sadly limited set of combos that do nothing to suggest the awesome power of a lightsaber. Instead, The Force Unleashed relies mostly on Force powers, unlocked by a desultory and superficial role-playing game system.
Maybe if you'd learn to shoot straight, you'd have a fighting chance.
Here's where your choice of platform comes into play. Frankly, the biggest differentiating factor between the otherwise identical Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions is which gamepad you're comfortable with. Do you want to Force Grasp stuff with the mushier PS3 controller's trigger, or with the crisper analog trigger on the 360 controller? It's not much of a difference. There's no trophy support in the PS3 version, so the 360's Achievements are going to be a selling point for Gamerscore whores. But it's worth noting that the levels each have some a special optional objective that's almost like an Achievement.
Also inexcusable is the lack of quality assurance. There are weird glitches throughout, involving collision detection, frame rate, artificial intelligence, animation, scripting and hard lock-ups. I've fought boss battles from underneath the level. I've fallen outside the world. I've gotten stuck in walls and had to restart the level. I've managed to play with the graphics clicking along at one frame per second. I've been stymied, only to realize that the game wasn't doing it what it was supposed to do. This passed muster?
He's not really a boss battle, but he'll do until one comes along.
This is my Soul Reaver look. Like it?
This review was based on a review copy of the game provided by the publisher. Copyright © 2007-2009 Crispy Gamer. All rights reserved.
Tom Chick
2008-09-17
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