STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED
Lobbing TIE fighters, pulling down Star Destroyers and Darth Vader as a playable character? Play gets hands-on with The Force Unleashed, and discovers a more powerful Star Wars game than you can possibly imagine…

It’s strange to think that LucasArts was, once upon a time, a studio worthy of George Lucas himself. The developer/ publisher was created to protect Lucasfilm’s massive franchises from clichéd, moneyspinning tie-ins that were the bread and butter of lesser publishers. In recent years, however, it’d clearly lost sight of that vision – one look at our ten worst Star Wars titles on page 114 will remind you of the nastiness that we’ve had to endure, in spite of our immortal love for the saga.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a title that strives not only to best the horrendous Star Wars games of the new millennium, but to also compete with the best third-person action titles on the market. The Force is here, in full swing, and it goes far beyond anything you’d expect from a contemporary Star Wars game. That said, this is still a simplistic hack-‘n’-slash that should, in all honesty, have adopted a more complex approach from similar titles of its ilk (Devil May Cry, for example). The use of the Force is easily the title’s most excitable trait, though, as entire environments can be converted into projectiles, and it never takes more than a few commands to initiate such brutality.

In case you weren’t aware of it, The Force Unleashed follows Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, and serves as an interquel between Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope. Given that the time period between the films is approximately 19 years, LucasArts had a huge gap to fill. With no new films on the horizon, it is using the combination of narrative possibility and crazy technology to explore the franchise’s unseen history. LucasArts wants The Force Unleashed to carry as much weight as the movies, which is why it sought George Lucas’s approval before moving forward with the game.

And so, we have a mixture of familiar settings, character archetypes and ideas, but with explosive use of the Force that is essentially unexplored. The Force moves have physical manifestations, such as blue flashes of light, and there are some that are far more volatile than what you’ll have seen in the movies. Apparently, Lucas asked for ‘crazy Force’, which was certainly a sensible request – the Force powers in this title are mostly thrilling to see pan out, and the sheer energy within the Apprentice is quite infectious. Blast doors can be crumpled with a mere push, for example, while enemies can be tossed around with little effort. The Force lightning is a proper, full-on electrical storm, so even the most recognisable Force powers have been re-interpreted as combat-ready super abilities. In a childish, worry-free way, you could spend a lot of time messing around with them, and the three-button combinations certainly make it accessible. If the Jedi in the movies were mere warriors, then the Vader Apprentice is the superhero equivalent. The Force Unleashed features adrenaline-filled encounters that combine Lightsaber combos with Force powers, with delicious animations following some of the more elaborate abilities.

Entire sections of the environment can be torn off, before being hurled at enemies with the Force. In practice, we saw stormtroopers trying to grab on to objects, and even each other, but the best animations came when we used Force push, sending enemies flying at an absolutely back-breaking speed, before seeing them crumple onto the floor afterwards. It’s a definite step up from previous Star Wars games, and the various survivalist reactions often capture your attention during the action. Stormtroopers can hang from the sky by a single limb, as you summon objects to brain them with the shoulder buttons.

Still, it isn’t the Euphoria or Digital Molecular Matter technology that makes The Force Unleashed one of the ballsiest, franchise-worthy Star Wars games in two PlayStation generations, but rather the shallow amusement that ensues as you plough through each level. Despite seeing it in action a few months ago, the TIE fighter factory was a much more enjoyable venture when we tackled it ourselves. Starting in the midst of an intergalactic battle between the Rebels and the Empire, the familiar John Williams-esque score lent The Force Unleashed an immediate seal of quality as we gazed down a corridor. After stabbing a few droids in order to acquaint ourselves with the controls, we completely blew off the following doors with two Force pushes.

Suddenly, we entered this immense spaceship hangar. TIE fighters hung overhead and, knowing that they could be manipulated as missiles for use against enemies, we immediately began to enjoy The Force Unleashed. The giant hangar was already laced with stormtroopers, so we hopped down from the bridge we stood upon, and embraced the Empire in battle.

Yes, we were fighting the Empire. The Sith Apprentice, you see, serves no master other than Darth Vader himself – as you may remember from Revenge Of The Sith, the rather nasty Order 66 was initiated, and this is an ideology that Vader is still fiercely committed to. Bumping off the last few Jedi, it would appear, is the last stage of the Apprentice’s training, in the same way that defeating Vader was part of Luke’s.

As we battered the stormtroopers via a series of gravitational pulls, Lightsaber slices and lightning onslaughts, we began to experiment with the combat system. One unlockable attack, for example, called Demolition, lets you charge an object with Force lightning, before using it as a projectile against oncoming enemies. The overall effect of combining Force powers is quite overwhelming; after battering one enemy to death with a Lightsaber, an immediate Force push in the other direction sends an enemy flying into space. It does sound a bit shallow on paper, but LucasArts has taken several measures to ensure that this isn’t the case.

Sensibly, both the Force powers and combos can be upgraded. It remains to be seen as to whether or not the combat can face up to the complexities of Devil May Cry, but LucasArts appears to be trying its best. By using more varied attacks during levels, the Apprentice earns a greater amount of experience points – sound familiar? Anyway, it’s a welcome relief from some of the meeker RPG-style systems we’ve seen in other Star Wars games – Battlefront II and Jedi Knight II, for example – so we’re all for it. Demolition is just one case study of the Apprentice’s customisable options, as the Force abilities by themselves can also be augmented. Force lightning will conduct more enemies with experience, while the mighty Force repulse (a countering gravitational explosion) evolves into something you’ll need to try in every crowded brawl.

The objective while aboard the TIE fighter factory was, essentially, to leave no survivors, but the main target was General Coda, a renegade Jedi intent on controlling the TIE factory. We didn’t get to face him in our hands-on, but we caught a glimpse of him in his last-gen form: the battle seemed like a close-quarters affair. What impressed us more about this level was the sub-boss, which looked like a sort of demon hybrid between an AT-ST and a large satellite dish: it was actually called the AT-CT, and it was a damned good bit of design. The AT-CT had its own gravitational pull, and hurling objects at it with the Force seemed like the most gratifying way to bash it apart.

At the end of the fight, a Quick-Time Event reared its ugly head. Although not to the cinematic standards of the God Of War franchise, seeing an AT-CT crushed into a cube is quite a brilliant scenario to witness. Unfortunately, the QTEs are far too simplistic, and there isn’t really a terrible consequence for their failure, leaving us with slight reservations about their worth. The TIE factory, however, isn’t the only time that we noticed the problem…

		SMOOTH OPER-VADER Anakin makes a Wookiee mistake (arf!) When Vader cropped up in The Force Unleashed, we were all taken aback (by ‘all’, we mean the one person we sent to San Francisco to see the game). To ease the transition between Episode III and this new instalment in the saga, LucasArts included a Vader-led prologue mission to get you pumped for the game’s events. This is what it’s all about: It’s all sea and platforms, on Kashyyyk. This is where Yoda was saved by Chewie in Revenge Of The Sith. Vader can use Force choke, unlike his Apprentice. He also marches coolly against the enemy, and never runs. The full-scale ground invasion occurs around you, sadly. You can’t join in on the action, but it makes for an atmospheric setting.

Overall, the TIE fighter factory was full of moments that we enjoyed. One really cool bit let us Force push some beams over, before a TIE fighter went smashing into it on its way out of the factory – and that, really, is what The Force Unleashed is all about. This is a game that wants to bombard Star Wars obsessives with fan service, and it’s all made pleasurable by the fact that the game is much more successful than it has any right to be.

Graphically, The Force Unleashed is looking solid. It’s not yet as aesthetically flashy as these clearly gussied-up screenshots suggest, but it’s somewhere between good and excellent, even though it’s bound to improve in the remaining four or five months leading up to its release. The frame rate runs at a steady 30fps, and we didn’t encounter a single trace of slowdown throughout, so it’s looking like the massive development period behind this title (at least two years) was worth it – on a technical level, at least. There were still a few visual glitches, here and there, such as textures disappearing on character models, or missing lighting effects – this, however, is something that can quite easily be ironed out.

The Force Unleashed looks and sounds like a brand new Star Wars movie. Boasting an all-new soundtrack in the John Williams vein, each level in The Force Unleashed has its own theme, as to establish itself as a canonical entry in the franchise.

One of the other planets we saw, Felucia, had a completely different art style to that of the TIE factory, which made us appreciate the graphics even more. This planet had a lot of soft, bouncy ground, and the horizon around you was strewn with various flora and fungi. Felucia isn’t immediately identifiable as a Star Wars world, but several vital elements give it away: the giant rancor, for example, is a rather obvious clue.

Felucia presented another case of the “Force playground” idea, something that LucasArts was rather keen to get across during our session with the game. Structurally, it seemed like Felucia was identical to the TIE factory – battle an increasing amount of small enemies, as well as a sub-boss and an end-of-level Jedi – but the environment was distinguished enough to set it apart. Stabbing a rancor in the head is quite the feat, once again instilling that passion for Star Wars that we’ve had ever since our youth.

Felucia, however, could easily be written off as a generic Star Wars level. Granted, the rancor looked impressive enough, but it didn’t seem to pose that much of a threat. Compared to Return Of The Jedi, where the creature was menacingly unleashed from its den upon a fearful Luke Skywalker, a slightly fruity-looking rancor in a massive arena doesn’t quite have the same effect.

Undoubtedly, it was the Darth Vader section in The Force Unleashed that made us the giddiest. We were, outside of LucasArts, among the first people in the world to actually sample the Dark Lord in action – it wasn’t disappointing. Instead of hyperactively springing around environments like the Apprentice, Vader merely struts through battles, marching confidently through enemies without breaking into a sweat.

Vader is only playable during the prologue, but we have an inkling that he’ll be unlockable once the game is completed. It looked quite fun as a training mission, because it was set in the midst of an Imperial invasion. Therefore, Star Destroyers were soaring overhead, and a heavy ground assault was taking place in the distance – this was Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s home world, and the Empire was here to crush the last remnants of the Wookiee resistance. It’s interesting, though, as a Star Wars fan, to take a wider look at the role of Vader’s Apprentice. The fact that Vader’s hidden this powerful Sith away from the Emperor represents, in many ways, that same insurrection that plays a major role in Return Of The Jedi. Instead of tossing the Emperor into the abyss, however, this embodies a slow-burning resentment that follows-on from the events of Revenge Of The Sith. If you remember rightly, the Emperor tricked Anakin into losing Padmé – given that there can only be two Sith at any one time, there’s a clear hint of a coup to Vader’s actions.

It doesn’t matter too much, we suppose – we’re probably talking about Star Wars in slightly too much depth. Outside of the slightly shallow combat, though, The Force Unleashed’s story is by far the most attractive element of the game. It actually threatens to be canonical in a half-convincing way, something we haven’t seen since 1996’s Shadows Of The Empire on the N64. Like Shadows, it’s a cross-media project that tries relentlessly hard to carry the weight of the movies, but The Force Unleashed may come several steps closer to achieving it than anything we’ve seen before.

Outside of the TIE factory, the junk planet Raxus was probably the most fun to play around with. First, we noticed that the level started on the bottom of a Star Destroyer, half-sunk into the ground – what an awesome spectacle! Second, we also picked up on the fact that this level, unlike what we had previously seen, actually forced a little intelligence out of the player. With the entire planet consisting of a huge junkyard, linked together by platforms over a filthy sea, this level had you Force pushing beams over to build bridges, as well as using explosive scenery to destroy progress-impeding walls. They weren’t really challenging puzzles, but at least it represents a departure from the hacking-‘n’-slashing, something we’d definitely had our fill of, at that point.

The objective on Raxus was to find Kazdan, a renegade Jedi who was exiled by the Council many years ago. Order 66, of course, is a good excuse for the developer to take the player anywhere it wants – whether this is Bespin, Kashyyyk or Felucia, The Force Unleashed has, at the very least, a range of locales that will excite most braindead Star Wars fanatics. Visually, Raxus was possibly the most impressive of all the levels we saw: with thousands of wayward spaceship parts floating around the skyline, the game was once again running at a solid 30fps, without any slowdown.

The highlight of this level came shortly into it, after the Apprentice took down the aforementioned wall that blocked the path forward. What did we see, once the wall was peeled down? Jawas. Jawas, people! These weren’t your thieving Aladdin-type Jawas, however, as these little punks had a real chip on their shoulder. What did they do that inflamed us so? They attacked us! These Jawas were somehow meaner than the wimps that sit on their sandcrawlers all day, waiting for an ambiguously homosexual translator to salvage. Luckily, we discovered that Vader’s Apprentice could drop-kick them. Sorry, did you misread that? We said you can drop-kick Jawas in The Force Unleashed, which is possibly a reason to buy the game in itself. The terrified squeaks that accompanied this were worth the trip to San Francisco alone. As with the TIE factory, playable Vader sections and the rancor battle before it, the whimpering Jawas indicated that this team is extremely mindful of the expectations that long-term Star Wars fans have.

Without wanting to sound overly harsh, Kazdan could’ve been a much better end to the Raxus level. Oddly, the battle takes place in a Tekken-resembling arena, as the camera freezes in a pseudo-beat-’em-up mode while you and the Jedi battle it out. In its present state, this camera system obscures a lot of what is going on, but LucasArts was quite adamant that this would be fixed before release. It wasn’t the camera that really bugged us, though; it was the simplicity of actually beating Kazdan. One three-button combo – attack, attack and lightning – saw us through every single time.

After damaging Kazdan for a while, he summons a Junk Titan, made of scrap bits of metal that circle the arena. You’ll find a screenshot of the Titan elsewhere in this feature, but he basically fought in a similar vein to the rancor. He lumbers about, while you slap his head with the Lightsaber, and, before long, another QTE (ho-hum…) flashes up for you to finish him off. This would have been a good idea for a mid-battle stopgap, but we fought the Junk Titan three times. After we killed him for the third time, you could pretty much smell the boredom under our armpits.

If LucasArts insists on repeating elements in between levels, that’s fine. Somebody, however, will have to make The Force Unleashed more challenging if this is to stay the same. At the end of the Kazdan fight, we endured yet another so-so QTE, which we must’ve failed at least eight times, before finally getting it. We admit that we were kind of rubbish for slipping up on so many occasions, but it didn’t seem to matter: unlike God Of War or Heavenly Sword, where the game often kills you for messing up the QTE bits, The Force Unleashed lets you start again without dying. Okay, this prevents casual gamers from messing things up and getting annoyed with the game, but what’s the point of having QTEs without a challenge? The Lightsaber bits with Kazdan were actually fairly fun, as we explored more ambitious Lightsaber/Force combos, but the QTEs need considerable improvement before the game’s late summer release.

We’re not saying that all is lost, though, by any means – the issues we have with The Force Unleashed aren’t exactly irreparable. This will probably be the best Star Wars game since Battlefront II, back in late 2005. The franchise may have had its ups and downs with internal games in the past, but we could tell that the team was really buzzing about this title. As we sat in one of LucasArts’ obscene ‘demo rooms’ (it was a cinema), sampling the title, we realised that this may be a breakthrough for the long-suffering studio. Anyone with half a memory will remember The Force Unleashed from the last decent E3, back in 2006. Think of all the other games you remember from that event: Resistance, Heavenly Sword, even Assassin’s Creed – every one of those titles has been released since then, but The Force Unleashed has not. That should give you an idea of how pedantic the development process has been, and how relentlessly hard LucasArts has worked to make an accomplished Star Wars game for the PS3.

Therefore, we can’t help but be cautiously optimistic. For every glimpse we got of a cute Star Wars Easter egg, Darth Vader’s angry mask or the Apprentice’s awesome starfighter, we couldn’t help but be satisfied with The Force Unleashed. The gameplay is shaping up to be steady, if imperfect, but the overall package will give Star Wars fans the fun, franchise-friendly title that they deserve this summer. We would end this feature with some stupid pun about the Force, but at this point, we think we’re ready to go pun-free to make our final point: if we, as Star Wars fans, found gratification with The Force Unleashed, what else do you need to hear?