Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Investing in a Star Wars computer game as much of a gamble as watching one of the six films; will you get ‘Empire Strikes Back’ levels of genius like ‘Knights of The Old Republic’ or ‘Tie Fighter’, or just yet another tedious cash-in like ‘The Phantom Menace’?

The hype for The Force Unleashed boded well indeed, with promises that players would take on the role of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice and travel the galaxy, wielding near-omnipotent force power as you hunt the last of the Jedi. If that doesn’t sound cool, you should probably never have started reading this review. Not long after starting the game, however, I began to get a very bad feeling about the developers’ commitment to this idea as it quickly becomes clear that your character, despite being called ‘Starkiller’, is something of a wet lettuce.

In early cut-scenes, rather than glorying in his limitless Dark Side power, we see a moody boy racked with emo guilt about the missions he undertakes for his heavy-breathing boss. This disconnects somewhat with the initial glee that the player feels as you casually fling stormtroopers and rebels into chasms, electrocute them or crush them with a slightly camp gesture. Somewhat predictably then, Starkiller is going to go on a ‘journey’ and it isn’t much of a spoiler to reveal that he doesn’t take very long to swap his red blade crystal for a nice blue one.

On the upside though, the cut-scene videos are superb, and the story they tell makes the game worth renting all by itself, creating a satisfying bridge between episodes III and IV. Sadly, the game itself is something of a chore, a task you have to carry out just to get your next fix of cinematic goodness. Starkiller’s lightsaber is more of a glowing stick, requiring several blows to kill even weak enemies, his force powers are reduced to a game of scissors, paper, stone as you find most enemies will be somewhat unconvincingly immune to one of his powers, but vulnerable to another and you never really feel any kind of danger as even an unblocked attack from an enemy force-user will cause only an insignificant speck of damage on his rapidly-regenerating life bar.

In general, this is a middle of the road offering. It’s certainly worth picking up if you’re already quite into the galaxy far, far away, but I can’t imagine it would hold much appeal otherwise.