It's difficult for me to get excited about a new Star Wars license anymore. It's not just because of the fact that George "My Ego is Fatter Than I Am" Lucas has taken something that I thoroughly enjoyed in my childhood and digitally raped the heart and soul out of it so many times that everything added to the canon now feels like bad fan fiction; It's mostly because so very few of these projects reproduce the awe and wonder I felt for the franchise in my youth. It's not really a feeling that I can articulate with base words, but I felt it in several of the stages in Knights of the Old Republic, the original Dark Forces, and both of the Battlefront games. When it does come, it is a joy that can rarely be paralleled by other properties - but when it doesn't, my interest doesn't just falter, it puts down the controller and writes an angry blog.
As you can probably tell, the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo has produced the latter.
STORY: You play Darth Vader's secret apprentice who has the aptly "evil-Luke" last name of Starkiller. Vader has trained this pupil in secret, and anyone familiar with Star Wars lore will know that this means that Vader is planning on usurping the Emperor at some point. There is obviously some connotation that Vader or the Emperor killed Starkiller's parents at some time in the past, giving the young man the impetus for dark force hatred. The first mission entails Starkiller infiltrating a shipyard that is under Jedi and militia control, and he is ordered by Darth Vader to kill the insurgents and all witnesses (so that the Emperor won't know about his existence).
I am so sick of this needless crap. Every Star Wars game or book feels the need to introduce "original" characters who are all just pale imitations of main-story characters (Dash Rendar == Han Solo, Kyle Katarn == Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade == pre-incest Princess Leia, etc). The "apprentice" is obviously just an Anakin Skywalker clone (not literally, but characteristically... well, maybe literally depending on how the story plays out - he does perform some very Anakin-like moves, and the name Starkiller could just be a play on Skywalker, implying a clone... so if that's how the story turns out remember - I called it first!). Regardless, its just new developers exploring the same tired old ideas yet again.
GRAPHICS: I have no gripe with the graphics - they are terrific, and the first stage consists of the inside of an Imperial shipyard, with all of the familiar Imperial bric-a-brac covering its cool color scheme walls in all of the familiar generic ways. It looks amazing and ho-hum all at once. The most cringe-worthy part of the whole game was when one of the loading screens mentioned Felucia, implying that this pastel-colored eyesore of a planet will be visited in the game.
SOUND: The James Earl Jones sound-alike they got for Darth Vader seems pretty impressive, and all of the familiar Star Wars sounds you've heard in the other million movies and games are all included. It was cool in Dark Forces and Super Star Wars, here it just seems like they used a 99 Star Wars Sound Effects CD that they purchased in the impulse-buying rack at their local Office Depot for $5.99. Come up with something new already!
CONTROL: You've never had this much control over the force in a game. Having said that, I don't see the need for so much control over the force in a game. It's cool being able to throw people and the THOUSANDS of conveniently-placed crates at Stormtroopers, sure - but the gimmick just seems to get old really fast. I'm sure that there are many, many button combinations and tricks to doing all of this stuff more destructively, but when one crate equals the death of three or more adversaries, why do you need to do anything else? It's also really annoying that despite nearly unlimited force powers that the apprentice has so much trouble fighting an AT-ST at the shipyard. I couldn't beat the damn thing because I couldn't affect it with the force, blocking the blasters is impossible for some reason, and throwing crates at it didn't seem to do anything other than stun if for a few useless seconds. Having so much control just seems like adding a level of complexity to something that doesn't warrant it, and while it might make for innovative Star Wars gameplay it still seems like a bland imitation of the combat in God of War or Ninja Gaiden.
GAMEPLAY: As stated above, it just feels like yet another shiny-yet-bland hack-and-slash game with stupid gimmick powers added for the point of appeasing fan boys. You can level up the character, which is original for this type of game, but so did Jedi Power Battles all those years ago and I honestly think that it was more fun. The learning curve seems easy enough until you come to something that doesn't make any sense, then it becomes a matter of trial-and-error, which doesn't account for good gameplay.
OVERALL: In the case of most over-hyped major properties, this game has already secured its spot in the "top ten" lists of dozens of game reviewers everywhere, right alongside Mass Effect (my contender for #1 on the top ten list of criminally overrated games of all time), Devil May Cry 4, and the ever-uninteresting Metal Gear Solid 4.
I think I'm going to pass on this one.
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