Elite Review: Star Wars the Force Unleashed (Wii)

When I got this game, I'll admit, I didn't do my research I would usually do for a game. I got it for three reasons: 1) It's Star Wars. 2) I saw some of the motion sensing capabilities and thought they were promising. and 3) My friend told me to get it. So I shelled out the 60 bucks without playing a demo, really reading too many reviews or watching videos. Let this serve as a warning for all Elite Wheelers...

Now this game isn't Jekyll and Hyde for NES terrible or anything, but it is nowhere near a good game. It is a good story, however, so let's have some background. The story takes place after Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and before Episode IV: A New Hope. Darth Vader finds a force sensitive child on one of his missions to purge the Jedi and sensing his potential takes him on as a secret apprentice. You, of course, are that secret apprentice and go around doing missions for Vader. The storyline evolves into Vader wanting to overthrow the Emperor with you at his side by inciting a rebellion, which obviously will come as a wtf moment if you've seen the movies. I won't spoil the rest of the story but you can read up on it somewhere on the internet.

The first gripe I noticed with the game was the camera. It is slow to center, meaning there are a lot of times where I'm standing there waiting for the camera turn so I can see if there's anyone in front of me. This results in me getting hit by a god damn Stormtrooper before the camera centers. I mean, fuck, I'm Darth Vader's apprentice, I should be able to kill these guys with zero effort. Which I can, if I could fucking see them. If they had added a camera centering button this game would have been 10x better. There is a lock on feature where you target one enemy, but this is useless 95% of the time as there are usually multiple people you're fighting and when you are going one on one you'd rather not have the lock on on so you could be more mobile.

Another thing this game got wrong is the linearity. The game is just mission after mission, usually you fighting through hordes of Stormtroopers or other footsoldiers then getting to the end of the level and killing a Jedi or someone else. There is literally nothing to this game other than fighting, the environments make the levels straightforward, and you can't go back to a level. It's quite frustrating and tedious.

I actually finished playing this game last night. And by finished I don't mean beat, I mean just finished. I got to the last level, on the Death Star, which ramps up the difficulty 1000%. It was late, I was tired, and I didn't really care, so I turned off my Wii. The only thing eating at me was how the story ended. So I just went online and read it. That's right. I was only playing the game for the story. When I was playing the latter levels I felt as if I was just pushing through the gameplay to get to the cutscenes. Now like I said I liked the story, and this is probably the best part of the game, but I'm not spending 60 bucks on a movie.

The one other thing that made this experience kind of enjoyable was the number of ways to kill someone. Lightsaber combos, force push, force grip, force choke, force lightning, throwing one Stormtrooper at another, tossing your lightsaber at a guy's chest, all amazing. There are certain points in the game where you need to kill a set number of baddies to pass on through the level. One of these is on a mission to Cloud City. I had one more guy to kill, and it being on Cloud City I liked force grabbing guys and throwing them off the side so they could plummet to their deaths. So I took this last monster, grabbed him, and whipped him as far as I could. He went off into the distance like an Albert Pujols homerun and turned into a speck and disappeared. I sat there for a few moments and waited for me to be able to pass this part of the level, but it told me I had to kill the last bad guy. I thought maybe I bugged the game but about 30 seconds later he died and it let me pass. Yes, I threw a guy so hard with the force it took him like a minute to land. This was the best moment of the game for me.

Multiplayer? Also not fun. Won't waste my time here. No online capability.

In the end however, a very disappointing adventure. Laborious, tedious, cumbersome, call it what you will, but I suppose it's my fault for not doing my research.

5.5/10