Gameplay

Gameplay-wise, The Force Unleashed is a standard hack and slash action game with some light RPG elements in the background, which have a very hit and miss effect on the gameplay unfortunately. The saber combos especially are pretty worthless.

The main character, known as Starkiller, is still only a Sith Apprentice at the start of the game and is therefore still growing his powers as time goes on, usually bagging a new abilities between every mission. In fact, the only abilities you start off with are Force Jump and Force Pull - the rest you have to buy using Force Spheres gathered throughout the game.

What’s funny though is that although by the end of the game you’ve accumulated more powers than you’ll ever really need (Force Lightning and Saber Throw are enough to get you through most anything), it’s Force Pull that really stands out as the highlight of the game.

The Force Unleashed is a game which has an excellent physics engine underpinning it and though ‘physics’ is definitely a bit of a buzz-word in these post-Ravenholme days The Force Unleashed is actually able to showcase realistic physics as an important element of the gameplay. It isn’t limited to just being able to knock crates around with your lightsaber or knock people off of ledges – it goes much deeper than that.


Using Force Pull, Starkiller can manipulate the incredibly detailed environments in a couple of dozen ways. With a flick of the right trigger and analogue sticks you can pick up the enemy and fling them down canyons, but with a more directed approach you can send your foes sprawling by tossing a trooper into the rest of his squad, damaging them all.

You can do the same with the rest of your environment too, knocking over watchtowers, flinging robots into forcefields and pelting rebel insurgents with rocks and barrels. The levels themselves can be bent to your will and you can shatter trees or bend steel girders up into the path of incoming TIE fighters if you so wish.

On the later starship based levels you can smash windows and let assailants be sucked out into space before the shutters come down. Personally, we prefer to pick up lone soldiers though and twirl them around in the air, letting them scream as we bang their arses on the ceiling.


It’s also good to see that the game doesn’t tread that old, tired formula of giving the player a new power or ability and then forcing them to re-use to that new power over and over in meaningless, endless and very fiddly puzzles. It’s an issue that even Braid only narrowly avoided. The Force Unleashed thankfully manages to avoid all this with only a few exceptions and the effect is that the game starts to feel more like a constant story than an exercise in hair-pulling.

Of course, if you’re of the persuasion where you actually want to see a fair bit of puzzle solving and frustration in your games or if you actually like to spend a while searching for each and every collectible in the game then Lucasarts has still got you covered. Not only are there tonnes of holocrons and Sith power cubes to collect and use, but there are bonus objectives too which can help pad the replayability out a bit further. There are combos and powers to gather, costumes and artwork to discover and the usual array of achievements for taking enemies out in a certain way.

That said, the game isn’t perfect and there are more than just a handful of flaws which start to wear the game down a point or two over time despite the ever-fun ability to swing Wookies above your head as you charge, screaming into battle.