Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
- February 06, 2008 14:37 PM PST
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The ultimate power of the dark side, the way it should always be.
As a Star Wars fan, it can sometimes be difficult to look at someone with a straight face who has yet to see the movies. As a gamer, on top of that, it's even harder to do the same with someone who has never picked up and played a Star Wars title. Still, they exist; those select few who were neglected that so-necessary joy of our childhoods that existed a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Lucas Arts has taken different measures with The Force Unleashed to attract people who would otherwise shun at the sight of yet another Star Wars game. Mimicking the type of over-exaggerative, heart-pounding action that we've seen in such games as Devil May Cry and God of War, The Force Unleashed gives players the chance to abuse the Force in a way we've never imagined possible.
The dark side has never looked so swarthy.
Unleash the Force
The game takes place between episodes III and IV, where you take on the role of Darth Vader's secret apprentice. Your mission: seek out and destroy the last of the remaining Jedi - leave no witnesses. That's right, not only are you a Sith, everybody's favorite Star Wars epithet, but an especially bad one to boot. Very few Star Wars titles have solely based their stories around a character bent on breaking the rules, mindless rampage, remorseless killing, and blowing the living crap out of everything.
Because you take on the role of a dark Jedi, you have every excuse to abuse the Force as you see fit. And to ensure a more ingratiating experience of Sith-induced chaos, Lucasarts has implemented two brand-new programs into the experience. It will be one of the first games to feature Natural Motion's Euphoria engine, an animation-based program that makes characters move as naturally and fluently as if they were motion-captured. But the bread and butter of The Force Unleashed has to be DMM (Digital Molecular Matter) by Pixelux Entertainment, which simulates the way certain materials react to different types of trauma. Glass will shatter when objects pass through it and steel doors will bend under the traumatic push of the Force. It truly is an entertaining sight to see.
Force Powers are no longer your ally but your tool, one to bend to your will.
The Art of Apprenticeship
But what about the gameplay, you ask? As mentioned before, The Force Unleashed is one of the many titles mimicking the over-the-top action of other recent successful titles. You're given a healthy set of combos and moves to perform with your lightsaber alone (after all, what's a Jedi without his lightsaber?). An interesting touch to the combat is how tapping the attack button furiously does a flurry of lightly damaging saber attacks, while slowly pressing attack deals slower attacks, but more damage. An even cooler move that I saw was the player used Force Grip to lift a storm trooper into the air and then tossed his lightsaber at him, impaling him right through the gut. The fast paced gameplay does a nice job of providing methods of combining both Force powers and saber attacks. There are even some light RPG elements in the game, as you collect Force Points to upgrade your Force Powers and earn newer, better lightsaber combos.
Dining with a Rankor? Be sure to bring your Sith, and leave your wimpy blond Jedi at home.
The game is shaping up to be quite a looker, too. Different stages in the map provide a lot of eye candy, and the sheer scope of some of them can cause you to skip a few breaths. One stage, a junk planet called Raxis Prime, began with the player on the butt-end of a junked Star Destroyer that had been vertically shoved into the ground. Believe me when I say this game does a great job of providing visual examples of the scale and scope of the Star Wars universe.
The title is set to ship around April and Star Wars fan or not, you'd do well to keep an eye on this game. It's shaping up to be a solid title, pushing the bounds of technical artistry, and will undoubtedly appeal to both fans of the Star Wars franchise and those deprived individuals who have never seen any of the films.
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- Jun 13 2008 at 11:50:07:PM PST
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