The Force Unleashed, Better Than Expected
When I played the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo, back when it was released for free, I was completely unimpressed. Now that I’ve rented the full game and played through the first couple of missions, I think the problem is that they wrote a bad demo. See, games like this need time to get you accustomed to the controls and abilities. That’s one of the reasons console RPGs make you unlock abilities slowly – it’s hard to teach you to use all of them at once.
The game opens with you playing Vader and massacring wookiees on Kashyyyk. Vader is a powerful former Jedi and a master of the Force, so the intro is basically just fan-service. I’m okay with that. In fact, plenty of games have opened with a fully-powered character and then switched you to a n00b once the intro is over. And honestly, who doesn’t want to play as Lord Vader?
The protagonist of the game is Starkiller (played by Sam Witwer, from Smallville and Battlestar Galactica). The character is well-rendered and shows good emotion – about like watching Witwer act on TV. The same character appeared in Soul Calibur IV. Clever cross-marketing.
I’m still at the beginning of the game, but I’m hopeful. The controls are a little clunky (but nothing like Too Human). Still, it’s also no Knights of the Old Republic. Of course, that’s a hard game to top.
Posted: February 11th, 2009 under Reviews.
Tags: first impression, force unleashed, rpg, sam witwer, Star Wars, xbox 360
Pingback from Epic Spoon » Put the Force Back on its Leash
Time February 16, 2009 at 7:11 pm
[…] Sam Witwer. He’s a good actor and, like I said in my first post on the game, brings a lot of life to Starkiller. And the best part is that in modern video games, you really […]