I’ve finally had the time to run through the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo on Xbox LIVE a few times. The demo starts you out with “the apprentice” having a conversation with his master, Darth Vader. This really sets the tone for the demo and hopefully we’ll see many conversations like this in the full game.
You start the level oboard a giant ship and your goal is to kill everyone and everything. Before you go on your rampage, it’s a lot of fun to start picking up random containers and throw them wherever you please with your powers. The demo also starts you off with numerous force abilities including dash, defend, the saber attack, high jump, Force Lightning, Force Push and Force Grip. While nearly all work flawlessly with the simple control scheme, I wasn’t too thrilled with the defending ability. While standing still, it’s easy to defend against blaster attacks, but it’s a little tricky to defend yourself while moving. Other than that, movement is fairly fluid and feels right. Flinging objects at your whim is probably the #1 aspect of the demo. It’s definitely a fun feeling to fling a canister at a moving Tie-Fighter to take it out of the sky.
The environment is fairly destructible including windows, doors, people, droids, computer panels and other random objects. While running through the first level, I also discovered how to chain and discover various combo attacks. While they weren’t all that useful in the demo, I’m sure they will be in the game. The graphics are clean and about what I expected from the title, although they were a little off in some places. Hopefully that’s just a problem with the demo. While some people have been saying the graphics are mind blowing, I’d say they are simply on-par with what I expected. The only major flaws I could find with the game so far would be the inability to defend yourself properly while moving and the fact that your lightsaber skills flat out suck. I was expecting saber skills on par with playing “The Apprentice” in ‘Soulcalibur IV’, but I didn’t see any of that in the demo. I’m hoping it’s something that gets learned in the full game.
The end of the demo was certainly a cool way to finish something. You go head to head with an AT-ST. It seems hard at first, but it’s actually a very easy task. To finish off the AT-ST, you have to punch in a set of button clicks. If you get it wrong, you have to approach the AT-ST and do it again until it’s right. I’m not particularly a fan of this Heavenly Sword / Spiderman 3 punching of buttons as they are displayed on the screen to do something, but what can I do? Some people will love this and others will hate it.
In the end, the demo left me with feelings of hope and dread. I’ve been waiting a long time for this game to hit shelves and I expected it to be the greatest of all Star Wars games. The hope comes from the fact that the demo leads me to believe this will be one of the top five games of 2008 and perhaps the best Star Wars game we’ve seen in a while. The dread comes from the fact that I have a few negative opinions popping up when I was expecting this to be the game of all games from the beginning. I guess we’ll have to wait until next month to find out, but I’m still excited about the potential. We’re probably looking at the best story since KOTOR 2 and The Force Unleashed will probably be the most action-packed Star Wars game ever. Even with the negative aspects I mentioned, it’s more than likely going to be a very fun experience.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:35 am
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