Some of you may have read that I was planning on picking this up. Well, I did, and I couldn’t be more surprised. The Force Unleashed is pretty pitiful. I can’t get over how unpolished and rushed this game is.
For example, in an early level, on several occasions I fell through some hole in the level design; as my hero spiraled out into oblivion the screen was filled with those replicas of my hero as the game slowly crashed. Speaking of level design, the clipping is a big issue. It seems that very few smooth textures exist in the game as I found myself getting hung up on invisible solids along the ground or hugging a rail… Or even misplaced textures - tree roots especially, you can walk right over the root and then get stuck a few pixels over on a shape that feels like a tree root. The biggest annoyance of all is during the Star Destroyer fight. If you accidentally blow up one of those engine things that float close by it’ll catapault you ontop of the rail at the very back of the platform you’re on. At this point you can a) attack no enemies, b) are contained to only one small part of the rail anyway, c) you can’t really defend against attack and d) can’t get down without dying and starting the fight over. (Top it all off with the game giving you faulty instructions on how to actually destroy the star destroyer and you have an hour long fight thats shaving years off your life by the minute).
I also found the game to be rather off in the leveling system. For example, there are far fewer force combos than either powers or talents. So at the end of the game when you’re banging your head against the wall in a certain hanger fight on a certain deadly star because you have extra force combo points and no combos to add them too, and half of your force talents and powers aren’t leveled up to a useful point. because they require so many more points than the combos. it just doesn’t really make sense. This is my only game play complaint. Because that hangar fight is vicious, and you can level up some more by playing earlier missions - but it just makes more sense for them to either have more combos so you can use the points you gather or not give as many of the combo points out so that either that battle is winnable or that you have more to gain from going back and playing some levels over.
There are lots of ways to fix these problems, the first that comes to mind is a patch. Those are some fairly big problems with the design (and that hole I spoke of was no random glitch, I fell in again on purpose)
I dunno, it’s a Star Wars game, but while sometimes the story lacks or the gameplay is a little off Lucas Arts usually releases gorgeous, playable games. Not that this game is unplayable - far from it. Most of us (here, anyway) have played games a long time and have a laundry list of insanely difficult games that we’ve conquered with style, and The Force Unleashed isn’t anywhere near as difficult as the games you’re thinking of right now. All the same, I’ve come to expect more from what could have been a $60 purchase. Needless to say, Lucas Arts would be getting several angry letters had I paid anymore than $30 for this game.
That being said, I love it because it’s Star Wars, but it could be a lot better. Thoughts?