The Force (Unleashed) Completed

Well I got the game Monday/Tuesday midnight and completed it as of 10pm Thursday. In all, it took me approximately 7-8 hours of gameplay to beat it on its easiest setting. What did I think of it? Well IGN has the accumulated rating of 7.3, or "decent", after averaging the reader average (8.6) and press average (6.6). The 7.3 sounds about right. I would probably say 78/100, or 7.8. The game is fun and it isn't too hard to please me. The planet and creature graphics are top-notch. The only image problem I had was the human characters looked a bit force and not nearly as polished as other games human characters, such as Halo and the sports games.

The story is decent too, however I do not like the "evil" ending. I want give away any spoilers so you can keep reding. The "good" ending is much more realistic and appropriate canon-wise. The Force action are pretty slick and you'll have to play the game a few times to master them all. My favorite is the simple force push and force lightning. The animations for scripted battle outcomes are decent, but I would have liked your actions during theme to be a little more difficult. At most you have to push 4 buttons over a few seconds that flash on the screen. Making this more difficult would have made the game a little better.

Some of the most bothersome aspects of the game were the difficulty of some mundane events. I couldn't figure out how to cross a bridge at one point. I also found it very troub,ing to take down the Star Destroyer. Then finally aligning the rings on the Death Star was more difficult than it should be. Maybe I just didn't pay attention to the on screen instructions but I had to result to Google search results to figure out what I was doing wrong. In the end all of those problems were easily correctable but I felt the instructions and directions on screen could have been better.

The reason this game fails to bring in the high rankings is because of the hype it got. The game has been in the works for 3+ years and has been delayed numerous times. LucasArts has been shoving the aspects of the game down everyones throat for 18 months and it just didn't deliver. It's a fun game and I'll play it through again on harder settings. But minus multiplayer, after defeating it multiple times, it will lose its luster. Its great to wield the force like this for the first time but it lacked repeated playability. If this game just came out without many previews or hype, it may be rated higher. But for a team to be working this long and this to be the final product is a little disappointing. It's too short. The parts that should be hard are too easy and some things that should be easy are too hard.

It's a definite rental and would be a great buy at $30. At retail price their just isn't enough substance for me to recommend it for everyone.