We’ve all known, ever since Obi-Wan Kenobi first clued us in way back in Star Wars: A New Hope, that the Dark Side has an irresistible allure.
And now we know exactly why. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but it’s a total blast to throw around.
The developers at LucasArts have described Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as a game about “using the Force to kick someone’s ass.” And that sums it up: Unlike games where you have to earn your power by endless hours of level-slogging, you’re a beast from the get-go, able to use Dark Force powers to lift and drop TIE Fighters on unsuspecting heads, blast lightning from your paws and bowl boulders and exploding plants into crowds of onrushing enemies. (Amazingly, it gets even more powerful from there.) The game awards bonuses and quicker upgrades for doing what you’ll want to do anyway—find as many creative ways as possible to crush, hurl and fry storm troopers, Jawas and anything else that gets in your badass way.
The story’s cleverly couched in the hallowed Star Wars mythos between Episodes III and IV, and involves the Empire’s biggest mouth-breathing Sith Lord acquiring himself a secret apprentice. That’d be you, Darth Vader’s newest weapon in the effort to off straggling members of the disbanded Jedi council—and, in what has to qualify as a shocker that totally changes the way you view Episodes IV, V and VI—overthrow the Emperor himself.
The next-gen versions of the game sport amazing graphics, including environments that are vast and cinematic. (If the individual pieces of debris drifting on the gravity streams on the junk planet Raxus Prime aren’t enough to slacken your jaw, you’re not paying attention.) The levels are also wonderfully destructible—try tossing an enemy through a plate glass window and watch the blast door snap shut. The last–gen versions, meanwhile, get extra missions, exposition and cutscenes. How’s that for an egalitarian approach?
Ultimately, the Dark Side has its own dark side, and it’s an old enemy of action games like this: camera control and clipping. Using the lock-on button can help to offset the loopy targeting system that often has you force-pushing a piece of the environment when you were aiming for an enemy, but not always. In the next-gen versions, the camera will sometimes choose to follow an enemy you’ve tossed as they sail hundreds of feet away into a cliff chasm or a giant mushroom growth—cool to watch, sure, but totally disorienting, especially if you’re in the middle of a huge throwdown.
Consider it a minor dent on Darth Vader’s helmet. We’ve been waiting for an epic Star Wars game for years now, and Force Unleashed is it.