Star Wars: The Force Unleashed — PRE-OWNED - Xbox 360

People love or hate this game. Controls are shoddy. But you'll feel like a god. Good story, good characters.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a valiant effort at rejuvenating the largely underwhelming Star Wars videogame franchise. Some of the technology here is a little too far ahead of its time, though that could prove to be promising for future installments. Uninspired level design and some tedious enemy battles mar an experience that gives you power over the Force like we've never really seen before. While it's far from perfect, Star Wars fans will find that it's worth playing through simply for its story and the ability to use the Force in fairly awesome ways.

It's a pretty solid game. Much better than its sequel. Fun action game. Sometimes repetitive.

Interesting story, good graphics, good constant action

This game is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it game. Fans of the Devil May Cry series might actually enjoy this game since it has similar gameplay in that you kill enemies with combination attacks and you try to mix up your abilities to get more "experience points". It also lets you use some pretty nifty Force powers, like throwing your lightsaber, or shocking enemies. Plus, you don't have to deflect blaster shots by yourself; hit detection does it for you, and it gets more accurate and reliable as you level up this ability. Neat! There are also times when you're allowed to conduct a finishing move on larger enemies (it's obligatory with bosses), and you press a button sequence. So it's a little similar to newer Resident Evil games were you have to act quickly, usually to dodge something; but in this, you're actually attacking. What I also like is how if you mess up during this sequence while fighting a boss, you don't have to land another attack in order to get another chance at it; you still get to restart the button sequence, but usually at the very beginning. The bad news about this game is that is has a linear plot, so you can imagine that is a pretty harsh blow to the replay value, one of the most important concepts of playing a game, in my opinion (would you pay sixty dollars to play a game just once?). You can always try and collect the Jedi holocubes which contain costumes and lightsaber crystals that change the colors of your lightsabers, and sometimes give you Force Points or just an orb in order to level up one of your three categories of abilities. The problem with this is that it's sometimes a very tedious process and holocubes are intentionally placed just outside of your reach. I actually had to grab a box with the Force and then place it on top of a TIE Fighter wing platform in a specific place, then jump a platform and use my Force dash just to reach the platform with the holocube on it. Seem like a headache? Well, that's because it was. What also boggles my mind is how while enemies do indeed get stronger, your Force powers get greater in power and quantity as you continue, but doesn't really look more powerful. While it does do more damage, there are some sequences where you perform ridiculous Force abilities that would make Darth Vader commit seppuku by a lightsaber. For example, you can kill Rancor by hurling your lightsaber at them, sticking it in their mouth, and then unleashing a tremendous wave of Force lightning as big as the Rancor itself. So while you do get more powerful, the game seems to deny you that slight satisfaction of aesthetic strength; i.e., you don't feel like you're getting powerful. Another huge letdown was the incredible difficulty curve. The game is indeed sort of challenging on the lowest difficulty, but on the second-to-lowest, it's actually ridiculously hard; you take enormous amounts of damage from attacks. Some times, you just feel like you can't avoid some attacks in this game, and usually these supposedly unavoidable attacks with massive radius or seem to follow you are what do the most damage. This is especially true when you're fighting the second boss in the game (the introduction notwithstanding), who seems to enjoy slowly torturing you by using the Force to control "Scrap Titans" that will rip you a new one. They stomp in pretty quick frequency when you get near them, and their ranged attacks have considerable range. It also doesn't help that you don't have a ton of area to run away from these ranged attacks when fighting the second boss, so it's like "tough, you're playing hardcore now". The second lowest difficulty is ridiculously hard, and unless you're a master at this game beforehand, you're not going to succeed without dying several times and eventually giving up and lowering the difficulty. I haven't played with a difficulty higher than the second lowest, but I imagine the two highest are absurd. You think Devil May Cry is hard? Try Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. So besides all these flaws, it's actually worth buying for maybe twenty dollars or less. Definitely not worth sixty dollars, but in conclusion, it's an alright game. It's fun to quench your curiosity, but you'll just wish that you were playing Devil May Cry 4. The fun seems to come and go like ocean waves. The storyline was pretty robust, except for one part where... well, I don't like including spoilers in my reviews, so I'll let you decide that for yourself.