My SECOND Impressions on The Force Unleashed

As you know, I’ve been really looking forward to LucasArts’ The Force Unleashed. Playing the much anticipated demo tonight, though, I’ve realized my high hopes for this game may have to be downsized, or I’ll be disappointed. Overall, the game still looks great, I think it’ll be a wonderful addition and a new flavor to the Star Wars franchise. My beef with the game, at least that which was seen in the demo, can be broken down into 3 areas: the weakness of the lightsaber, the protagonist, and the AI.

The Lightsaber and It’s Shortcomings: This is probably where I’m most disappointed with The Force Unleashed. The lightsaber is supposed to be the all powerful weapon of choice for self-defined, and battle approved, bad asses. This is not so in the Force Unleashed. The Apprentice’s lightsaber takes several slashings to an opponent before putting them out of commission, which is ridiculous. In one swing some extremedy is going to removed from its original place, it only makes sense. Part of playing as a secret Apprentice to Dark Jedi Numero Uno is to feel bad ass, but you just don’t in this game, or at least not like you should. Throw dozens more enemies at me, but let me slash through them.

The Protagonist: The Apprentice, a.k.a. Star Killer, is simply not very cool. You can tell the developers wanted to go for the Altair in Assassin’s Creed look. A lot of raggedy clothing, bundled up, some loose ends falling down and accentuating and jumps of flips you may do. I get it. What I don’t get, though, is why the Apprentice isn’t “dark” looking. Let’s look at some examples. The Emperor, by far the darkest and most manipulated by the power of the Dark Side, chose Darth Maul (supreme bad dude, albeit a little too devilish looking) and later Darth Vader. I think it’s okay that Vader picked a human, that’s cool, but that this dude is so plain looking is not. I just don’t get a sense that he has any evil in him, and while the game is about redemption and whatnot, I still want to have the perception of a Dark Side student.

Artificial Intelligence: One thing you’ll find in any Star Wars game is a massive amount of enemy soldiers. This is doubly true in the Force Unleashed, as Starkiller is ordered to kill any rebels or Imperials standing in the way of his mission. That being said, the hordes of enemies are not the brightest. Utilizing some pretty cool physics engines, enemies still act quite silly in the presence of someone who so easily hacks through their buddies. For example: if one of the AI soldiers should happen to see me Force Grab their buddy and throw them into space, one would imagine they’d be scared and would maybe run and start pounding on the locked door I’m about to Force Push open, screaming for help from the other side. If I had the chance to Jedi “Own” those guys, or maybe just politely push them out of my way, I think it’d add a great level of realism to an otherwise completely unrealistic game. Instead, silly Rebels will continuously shoot at you regardless of your apparent skills and their unavoidable and imminent deaths. Also, I found it kinda stupid how much enemies will hold on to objects when their being Force Grabbed by you. Hold them in the air next to one of their friends, and thanks to the games “Euphoria” physics, they’ll grab on and won’t let go. What I would like to see is some more dialogue in that respect, maybe a couple “Please! Put me down! I won’t shoot!”

What it comes down to is that I wish this game would 1) Make the player feel like he is really running the show, without so much emphasis on Force powers, and 2) Wise up the non-Jedi AI so that hacking through the masses of enemies doesn’t turn into a “Let’s see how many times I can flip this Imperial Stormtrooper before he dies!”

Despite the rant, I am still really looking forward to this title. I think that with a strong storyline and some hardcore online play (1-on-1 lightsaber duels are pretty much the tops in my book) we’ll really have a treat with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Posted by Daniel on 08/22 at 08:06 PM
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