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It's been a long time since the heyday of LucasArts, churning out excellent point-and-click adventure games and inspired Star Wars interpretations of popular PC genres like Dark Forces and TIE Fighter. With the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, many fans were hoping for a return to form now that the creative juices had seemingly once again been let flow. Others feared a letdown of epic proportions. While fear does sometimes lead to the Dark Side, at other times it's sadly justified.

From a certain point of view

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed tells the story of Darth Vader's secret apprentice, codenamed Starkiller. As an official canon story, it covers major events between the two Star Wars film trilogies, and is very well told. Starkiller and his supporting cast are all interesting and likeable characters, and the story is mercifully free of misplaced comic relief. For instance, Starkiller's droid, Proxy, could easily have become the Jar Jar of the game, but instead is an appealing mix of C-3PO and Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.

This is a surprisingly adult take on Star Wars, and uncompromisingly depicts a very dark Galaxy Far Far Away, as befits the time period. The early part of the narrative deals with Vader sending Starkiller to hunt down survivors of the Jedi-exterminating Order 66, but events quickly unfold that change the course of galactic history. The Force Unleashed makes some very interesting things canon, both in terms of the storyline and the characters and elements it uses. You also get to see Vader acting like the merciless villain that Anakin never really was, even in Episode III.

The other truly strong point is the visual and sound design. Obviously a ton of care and work went into making The Force Unleashed look and feel like the Star Wars we remember from the original trilogy. This attention to detail shows in every character, costume, location, and object's design, along with audio to match. New locations like Raxus Prime, the junkyard planet, feel like they belong in the Galaxy, and the "used universe" aesthetic is exploited brilliantly.

It's a trap!

What's not so strong is the gameplay itself. The first stage, which casts you as Vader himself striding through a Wookiee village in search of a fugitive Jedi, offers much promise. The environment is beautiful, a battle rages on the beach below, Wookiees fall before your Sith powers, and generally you feel like a badass. Once you take over as the apprentice, the gameplay is substantially sketchier.

Starkiller controls rather jerkily. He moves fast, but the speed with which he's able to maneuver far outstrips the camera's ability to cooperate, and changing direction drastically tends to leave you blind. It's also difficult to gauge height and distance, again mainly due to the camera placement, which makes the mercifully scarce platforming sequences a chore.

You'll spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with the camera. It tries to show you what you need to see, but doesn't succeed very well. Against larger enemies, it's actively against you, often refusing to show you the full enemy or their health bar. Mid-air attacks are useful against large characters partially because it's the only way to guarantee a view of their health meter.

Wars not make one great

A bigger problem is the uninspired combat system. There are a lot of good ideas in it, with a number of over the top Force powers that create havoc among troops, and the option to combine a few of them into a more powerful attack. For instance, levitating an enemy with Force Grip and then hitting him with Force Lightning will turn him into an explosive projectile that can be tossed into other foes. Trouble is, there's not a lot of flow to the whole thing. Unlike more polished hack and slash games like Ninja Gaiden or God of War, Force Unleashed doesn't let you flow from one move to the other very well. Using Force Grip makes you stand still with no option for defense, so many of the combo attacks aren't nearly as effective as simply zapping enemies with lightning or whacking them to death with your lightsaber, which is distressingly lacking in cutting power.

Killing enemies and completing bonus objectives will earn you upgrade points to modify Starkiller's abilities, and you have a large amount of control over his evolution as a fighter. But even with the wide range of powers and combos available, you'll probably find a couple of go-to moves and stick with those. Getting creative with your attacks often results in the camera stabbing you in the back again. Nearly every offensive Force power is impacted by the lack of a reliable targeting system. The game tries to guess which item you're trying to point at, but it's a crapshoot when you're in the middle of a fight. You're often left grabbing random objects or firing off multiple Force Pushes hoping the game knows what you want to do.

The levels may look great, but they're not all that interesting to navigate. You're generally on a fixed path through repetitive combat with less-than-brilliant enemies. Much was made of the Euphoria animation system in the pre-release hype, but Force Unleashed seems to make rather sparing use of it, unlike Grand Theft Auto IV. Enemies very rarely show any initiative or behavior out of the videogame ordinary. Boss battles are slightly more successful in terms of setting up interesting situations, but all too often they're just an enemy who is inexplicably immune to all but one or two of your attacks. The boss fights should have been a time to open up the combat and let the player turn loose against a similarly-powered enemy, but instead they constrict you into following simple patterns.

The most egregious example of this is the battle against the Star Destroyer late in the game. True to the teaser trailers, Starkiller has to pull a full-sized Imperial Star Destroyer down from the sky. Unfortunately, the controls for this involve very slowly rotating the ship into position with the Force, then slowly pulling it down a few feet before a wave of TIE fighters forces you to break the grip and deal with them. By the time you're done shooting the fighters down with the sketchy targeting system of your Force powers, the Star Destroyer has moved and must be rotated back into position. Worst of all, the onscreen control help that tells you when and how to push the analog sticks to move the ship are flat-out wrong much of the time. You often have to maneuver the ship into a position outside of the indicated one in order to get the prompt to begin pulling it down. What should be the most badass moment in the game ends up tedious and frustrating.

They told me they fixed it!

The above issues alone simply result in an average brawler, but the retail copy we played was chock-full of bugs and glitches. Numerous enemies ended up pushed through walls or floors, some were totally invulnerable to everything but death by falling, others refused to acknowledge the apprentice was even in front of them and simply waited for death. No less than four hard crashes on three different Xbox 360s resulted in having to reset the systems entirely. And, perhaps worst of all, the Bonus Objective on the final level is listed simply as 'Default Text,' and the Force Point and Holocron counters don't function at all, meaning that the upgrade points for those objectives cannot be earned. It's rather disturbing to see such serious bugs in what should be an A-list game from an A-list franchise.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed should have been much better than it is. The concepts are solid, the story is excellent, and the characters sustain. Aesthetically it is a beautiful piece of work. It's just not all that much fun to play, especially when bugs have left parts of the game incomplete. Fans should rent it and go through the story to see what happens to the apprentice and the key events in Star Wars history he takes part in, but they shouldn't expect to have much fun between the cutscenes.

Review by: Matt Keil