I think I wanted to get this game after Disney said it wasn’t canon anymore. After playing it myself, there were some parts that I decided shouldn’t be canon either, like Darth Vader being responsible for starting the Rebellion vicariously. But it’s still interesting when they want to fill in parts of the story through the medium of video games, and there’s obviously a lot of design effort put into this project, with new characters and locations that fit right in, as well as the use of music.
Force Unleashed is set several years before Episode IV; you meet Princess Leia as part of the plot, as well as other more minor players from the films like Mon Mothma and Bail Organa (who shows up briefly at the end of Episode III), as well as obviously Darth Vader and the Emperor. I always like sources like this that are set around the time of the original Trilogy, but made after the prequels so they can insert lots of references to them. You do get all the lovely original trilogy Imperial visual design in the ships and installations though.
The game is about Vader’s so-called secret apprentice, Starkiller, who he’s training in order to one day overthrow the Emperor. Or maybe he was lying about that, there’s a few twists and turns so it’s not clear. Starkiller is the blandest of bland protagonists, coupled with a generic love interest in a bland blond pilot. His robot sidekick is cool, though. As the game progresses he supposedly is conflicted about his motives, but it’s not explored as fully as it could have been. At the end there’s a token choice with two endings; one leads into the next game and one interestingly leads to a series of DLC missions where you kill Luke and Leia and Han, etc. I was playing the basic game without extra scenarios, but it was still a fine, complete story.
Speaking of which, the different versions do have a number of extra levels and things; whether you’re playing on the HD consoles, Wii, DS, PSP, or even the N-Gage. The HD versions are the lead versions though, with the most fully realised physics engine; this is the main draw of the game and the most fun thing about it: throwing around debris and Stormtroopers with your Force powers, bouncing them off each other and plunging them off cliffs. Between this and your double jump and air dash, it turns into a fun sandbox-style traversal experience at times, although it’s quite linear and there are also a fair number of corridors.
As I said the environments look good with Imperial bases, jungle planets, and the scrapyard planet (Garbage World comes to mind for you Red Dwarf novel fans) (look out for easter eggs in the scrap, like a Clone Wars drop ship or a wrecked sandcrawler). Unfortunately the latter half of the game has you going back through the same environments—not backtracking mind you, there’s new level designs—while I was hoping for more new sights. But there’s reason to scour these places, as collectibles will help you unlock upgrades for your stats and Force powers, a nice addictive little system.
Combat is the main focus of the game though with your abilities giving you many ways to fry groups of enemies: lightning, violent Force Pushes to send them hurtling into walls, different saber comboes. Having a range of abilities makes you feel powerful but in a new play session I had to take a minute or two to remember all the controls. My preferred method of dealing with tougher enemies as I went on was to buff up my bar for Force power and just hold down the lightning button to drain their health. Maybe a bit cheap but it does get kinda brutal at times. Some of the boss battles too took many retries but you learn the tricks, that’s what it’s about after all.
So I did have some complaints, and the cutscene models were firmly in the uncanny valley, but it was lots of fun and felt appropriately Star Wars-y. From what I’ve heard the sequel improves on the formula so it’s on my wishlist now. I did feel a bit sore when I found out about the later release which included the DLC (and another extra non-DLC level), but it’s all extra stuff and the core of this game was enough. Plus you get to crash a Star Destroyer, cool!
