New Release Tuesday: Star Wars - The Force Unleashed

I was pretty excited when my brother-in-law said he'd let me borrow The Force Unleashed when he was done with it. This excitement lasted all the way through the first level, when I got to walk through Kashyyyk as Darth Vader and throw Wookiees from bridges to their death. The second level brings you into control of Vader's apprentice (who you find as a child in the first level), and from there things seem to go sour.

First of all, the combat is bad. When my character is facing a bad guy and I press X to attack him, the Apprentice should not turn around and attack at an explosive pod that causes him to lose half of his life bar. It would be funny if it happened only once, but its a continual problem. I was faced up against a rancor and pounding away at him, only to have the Apprentice decide that a flower was more dangerous and turned his back, allowing the rancor to pummel him from behind. Also the typical enemies can negate about 90% of your force powers, which takes away everything that makes being the Apprentice cool. Let me run down a typical combat encounter for you: press x 4 times... watch the Apprentice's lightsaber connect one of the four times... try Force Lightning... watch the enemy reflect/ignore the blast... get knocked over by the enemy.... get attacked on the ground and during the animation while you get up... die... scream expletives and throw controller into couch.... repeat.

Moving away from the combat, the camera has got its own set of issues. Take for example the time that I Force Pushed a door open and proceeded into the little room to get the hidden holocron, only to find myself stuck behind the same doors I had blown open, because the camera decided to move to a position that made them invisible. I had to Force Push another 10 times before the Apprentice magically jumped from the room back into the hallway. I also spend way too much time babying the camera, contiunually moving it into a position so that I can see what's going on around me (and yet it's still not enough to keep from being hit by unknown baddies that always lurk beyond view.

Before I get into the story, I have to admit that I am not finished with the game, I still have 3 missions left to accomplish. With that said, the story is pretty good so far. There hasn't been anything life-changing to come from it yet, but I understand that the ending is supposed to be pretty dang awesome. It's a pretty neat idea, giving Vader an apprentice to go around and hunt down the last few Jedi (I can believe that some escaped Order 66 - they are Jedi after all). I just hope that the obligatory choice between the Light Side and Dark Side that I sense coming never actually arrives. It would be nice to just continue on being a bad guy and not have to worry about making a choice that will affect the ending of the game (although I already know there will be).

To put this simply, if you are a Star Wars fan - rent or borrow this game first. You might find that everything I've said doesn't apply to you, then you can go ahead and buy it. Just be warned - it's not the greatest Jedi game out there, for that I suggest playing the Jedi Knight series (particularly Jedi Academy).