Let’s face it, every single kid dreams about having a lightsaber or being able to force choke a bitch. Heck, I even wave my fingers in front of automatic doors and chuckle a little on the inside at my own cleverness. So it was with much anticipation and slight trepidation that I downloaded the demo for The Force Unleashed over the weekend to give my lightsaber a whirl.
All I’ve got to say is: TFU just may be the game Star Wars geeks have been waiting for.
I first became interested in The Force Unleashed after LucasArts gave a tech demonstration of it at E3 a couple of years back. I remember reading impressions about it from some game blog or another, talking about the realistic ways that astromech droids teetered off of tables, careened through glass or whatever other kinds of robot torture they put those guys through. The point was, the physics were going to be something to behold.
Since then, I’ve been waiting to see how the game felt to the player, what it was like to completely take control of the force as a gamer. The Force Unleashed starts with a simple enough tutorial, designed to teach you what else: throwing junk at dudes. Control took a tad getting used to, but eventually it seemed to make sense, and the use of the thumbsticks to direct pitch, height and throwing direction feels very organic. Beyond that, stringing together force lightning/lightsaber throw/force push combos came pretty naturally.
Once the action begins in the actual demo, I couldn’t get enough of it. Admittedly, I got lasered up pretty bad in the early portions, considering I was trying to chunk everything I could at all the enemies, rather than dispatching them with my trusty lightsaber. It took me a bit to get over this fascination of mine, and that’s when the fun started. The combination of force powers, lightsaber combat and physics makes the game a blast to play, and taking down waves of storm troopers has never felt better.
All told, the demo was terribly short, and I hope that the actual game offers up somewhere between 10-15 hours of dark-side destruction for us Star Wars fans. It was essentially over after a couple of stormtrooper-filled runways and then a QTE (quick time event) battle against an AT-ST. I’m definitely looking forward to playing this game once it hits in September- it might actually live up to the hype.
CONCLUSION: FANBOY FEVER
Hey, did you get the hardcover of this yet, the force unleashed book? I have it, just have to finish my epic fantasy book right now before I get to it. Looks cool, though
I wanna get the force unleashed book, looks sick. Anyway I tried the demo and it was awesome! Can’t wait for the release.
I agree. This is definitely going to be phenomenon. Or so I hope.
I think I’ll hit up this demo while everyone else is having fun at PAX, and I’m at home drinking away my sorrows.
I’m very exited. I’ve seen the novel and I liked it very much.
I feel very disappointed with the demo, I really wanted this game to surprise me and be great but, it just wasn’t. It felt just like any other Star Wars game I had played and the controls on the 360 just felt clunky and I really did not have a fun time with it, also it was super short and unsatisfying.
Well, it was a demo and it did end abruptly, but a demo is meant to give you a taste.
This will be a rental, but it looks to a solid action game, delivering a perspective of Star Wars we have yet to really get in a game.
[quote comment=”51″]It felt just like any other Star Wars game I had played and the controls on the 360 just felt clunky…[/quote]
Yeah, the controls felt clunky to me too at first, but something just clicked eventually. I can see how some are concerned about the game, given all we saw was something very typical in the Star Wars universe- storm troopers in a hangar.
Hopefully the game offers up more varied locales and cooler force abilities to experiment with.
I don’t know how many people noticed this, but at the end of the demo, the game trailer shows you dueling alien samurai. That’s right. ALIEN SAMURAI. I don’t think it gets much better than a swordfight with green-skinned shogun.