STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED
Platform: X-Box 360, PS3, Nintendo DS
Genre: 3rd person action/adventure
Rating: T - Teen
Producer: LucasArts
Politics: It's... well... Star Wars
I downloaded the free demo of this game on X-Box Live and I highly recommend you do the same. Now, the problem arises when the demo tricks you into shelling out $60 for the full game, which is less fun than the free demo. You see, the demo shows off all the great concepts in the game in a user-friendly, very Star Wars-y level. The full game shows that the developers had no idea what to do with all those great concepts.
Let's start with the basic controls: You constantly feel like you're slipping and sliding around. Your character is unable to grab ledges or exert any other basic survival instincts in the face of sudden drops, so you end up showing off your deep connection to the force by falling down a lot. Tricky jumps become seriously frustrating as you run into the lack of personal character physics. To explain, imagine you run off the top of a building, trying to jump onto the next building. As you fly through the air in a vertical position, your feet hit the ledge of the next rooftop, but you don't fall down because the majority of your mass is still moving forward, and you flop onto your face. In SWTFU, you're dealing with Mario/Castlevania-style "my character is a non-dynamic rectangle in space" type movement. You get your feet on the ledge, or you fall down. Combine this with various invisible walls and "drawn on" ledges that don't exist, and you've got a recipe for frustration.
Combat: Combat would be great if you could reliably target something. Suppose you are trying to lift a Stormtrooper with the Force, so you can have great fun bashing him against the walls. You might get the Stormtrooper. You might get a grenade the Stormtrooper threw at you. You might grab a box near the Stormtrooper. You might grab these random, destructible tiles in the walls and ceilings. Theoretically, you could just hurl whatever you grabbed at the Stormtrooper to kill him, but by the time you figure out what you've got, you'll probably lose control of it from all the people shooting you in the face or beating you with sticks.
Yeah... that's right. People will beat you with sticks. People will beat your behind with sticks. They will walk right through a swing of your awe-inspiring lightsaber to brain you with a simple iron rod. If that doesn't work, they'll stomp their feet.
Wait, why would I be afraid of something stomping it's feet? Because 90% of the enemies in this bloody game seem to have the ability to near-insta kill you by hitting the floor with something, usually feet or a fist. You're constantly lying on the floor with the whole world shooting you in the butt because something stepped on the floor to create a Jedi-killing shockwave of... stuff.
Screw the lightsaber. I want an iron rod and some steel-toed boots.
At least you've got the Force, right? Sorta. Tougher enemies constantly shake off your Force powers by summoning up a red swirly mist. Remember in the movies where Darth Vader started choking out an Imperial officer and the officer summoned up a red swirly mist? Me neither. Ultimately, really stomping through enemies requires mastery of Mortal Kombat-esque lightsaber combos that alternate between mind-numbingly simple and needing three hands. Boss fights are totally non-intuitive exercises in going online to find out the necessary combo.
Story: Good, for the most part. Star Wars can usually be relied on to have a nice, family-friendly, good-vs-evil story that only George Lucas could screw up. So it goes for SWTFU, with an interesting tale of betrayal between your character, Darth Vader, and the Emperor. (Spoiler Warning) If you go for the "good" ending, you find yourself standing over a helpless Emperor Palpatine. Bail Organa, leader of the Rebellion, warns you that killing him would be giving yourself back to the Dark Side.
No. NO NO NO NO!!! Killing Emperor Palpatine is NOT "giving in to the Dark Side"!!! He's building a ball that destroys planets so he can spread fear through the galaxy! Killing him is a GOOD thing! What, exactly, does Bail Organa think the Rebellion is going to do? Hug Stormtroopers?
I can only assume the whole, "Hey, killing is suddenly wrong," bizarreness that pops up in Star Wars is supposed to be some kind of Lucasian nod to the intrinsic moral superiority of pacifism. When Luke kills a million people on the Death Star, it's a great victory, but every time somebody finds themselves in front of Palpatine it's suddenly the deepest, darkest atrocity imagineable to kill someone for doing wrong.
Overall: Play the demo. Avoid the game. Dropping Stormtroopers into bottomless pits is a barrel of laughs, and is the most fun thing you can do with this otherwise awkward monstrosity.