Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is the latest entry in the ever more diluted Star Wars universe. Not a movie this time, but a video game. A video game that looked pretty sweet, to be honest. I mean, look, you can pull down a Star Destroyer! How cool is that?
Let me tell you how cool it is...it isn't. It's such a stupid thing in the game that it took me 45 minutes to finally bring the damn thing down and dying repeatedly because wave after wave of Tie Fighters come at you making you break your grip on the ship so you can destroy the Tie Fighters and essentially start over on bringing dow the Star Destroyer. You have to use the controller to position the Star Destoyer for a certain amount of time to bring it crashing down. It took me forever and I had the game on easy!
The game takes place in that magical time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, which at least means that it's not dealing with the already boring Clone Wars. You play as a Sith apprentice named Starkiller. Vader has been training you in secret and is now sending you to kill the remaining Jedi for him.
It's a very linear story. After Knights of the Old Republic, I kind of expect more from a Star Wars game. I don't want to sit down and play through the story, I want an experience. Maybe KotOR is the wrong kind of game to compare it to. Maybe I should compare it to something more linear, like Gears of War or Bioshock, but it still wouldn't fare any better.
It's not a very deep game. While the use of the force is exciting and over the top at times, it's not enough. The game play mysteriously hovers somewhere between over simplified and overly complex without ever finding a happy medium. The story, while filling in an area of the mythos that hasn't been explored too much is interesting, but kind of silly at times too.
The game itself was kind of fun, most of the time, but for $60, I want something that is more than just 'kind of fun'. It's certainly worth playing, just not worth buying.
