Star Wars: Force Unleashed (demo) a Porter Perspective

Yay, another Star Wars game! After the countless awful games that Lucas Arts has thrown at us since Rouge Squadron III: Rebel Garbage we get another potential box with "Star Wars" labeled on it to add to our 'Tower of Useless Fanboy cash-ins.' And please don't email me with a better title for our tower, I like em' long and juicy.

However, if things go the way of this demo...*insert cliche'd Star Wars gushy praiseful phrase here*

The demo beings with a riviting cutscene with Darth Faker (voice isn't actually James Earl Jones) telling his never before mentioned apprentice how he should go about vanquishing the remaining Jedi that Vader was too mutilated (Obi beat down yall!) to take down. He also encourages him to kill off all things that may bear witness to the coming onslaught. As far as covert Jedi missions go, Vader sure didn't plan things well. I mean I can understand not wanting anyone to know you have an apprentice who wields the power of 1,000 mighty vagabonds (we'll get to that) but to send him to highly populated empireal complexes that apparently harbors a Jedi Vader missed just seems a tad....lazy?

Anyway, plot descrepecies aside letting us slay stormtroopers whether forced or not I guess isn't a bad thing. To get to the game, you control the apprentice who despite his odd if even mentally retarted way of holding a lightsabre is perhaps more powerful that Goku in Dragon Ball Z. Don't get me wrong, the way he holds the lightsabre is COOL but realistically borderline retarded and makes me wonder why Darth Vader didn't force bitch slap him for that filthy habit in Young Sith Training class.

Despite this, as the apprentice you can force bitch slap everyone with varing powers right from the get go. The basics are there, force pull, push, force explode? and force lightning. As far as I played it everything felt smooth as butter with minor annoyances. The lock on system concerning what you want to lift is obviously lacking. But actually thinking about it I can't think how they could improve it other than freezing the game in a super bullet time and letting you select any item you see to then start the action up again. It really isn't all bad and what you end up force holding can come into use on the fly whether you meant for it to or not. Force lightning is probably by far the easist to use since you just press it and things die.

The lightsabre portions are also free and easy. You won't find an inordinate of amount of combos like you would in Devil May Cry or God of War, but it's still fun none the less and I don't see it getting too stale since you combine force powers with 70% of what you're doing anyway.

The demo has you going down hallway after hallway killing off stormtroopers and slamming things into this or that. There weren't any puzzle elements to speak of unless you count using the force to unlock a door by moving the joysticks up and down as the game TELLS you to do so.

And the demo wraps up with you fighting a chicken walker (reference understood by Star Wars fans, if you don't get it then serves you right for reading something about Star Wars!). This battle is rather lackluster as you spam lighting and lightsabre at it until its hitpoints reach a certian amount to which you then "Simon says" your way to victory. By that I mean if you've played God of War it's the same thing where a button displays and you react by pressing it when prompted to see a pretty attack that you would otherwise be too stupid to do if the developers gave you the button sequence to do it normally....feel the force of my disdain!

The major flaw I see in the game so far stem from the enemies mainly. I've heard a lot of flack about the controls but I really didn't have that problem. The enemies on the other hand are extremely stupid, though maybe on purpose paying homage to stormtrooper I.Q's everywhere. Never the less, I was annoyed at how simplistic they were. They stand in one spot shooting at you awating you to either throw something at them or stab them relentlessly. They don't seem to work together or come up with uniqe ideas of dealing with a demi-god, but still I would have liked to see something more here.

Conclusion: I'll probably buy it.

*may the force be kickin' it real dawg, peace!*