Review: "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" for Wii

The mantle in my living room features a Lando Calrissian action figure (also known as Little Billy Dee). Thus, I call my mantle "Cloud City." That's how much I love Star Wars. Not surprisingly, I was in awe of the idea of this game from the videos and pre-release hype.

And then, of course, the hype died with mediocre reviews. But I refused to believe it. I had to debunk the solid stream of "OK" reviews with my own, fresh, good perspective. So I rented the game, ready as ever to fall in love with it.

The plot, in a nutshell, is this: you are Darth Vader's apprentice. Lord Vader is sending you on secret missions across the galaxy where you must do his bidding, yet nobody can know of your existence, so you have to kill everybody who crosses your path (Rebels, Stormtroopers, Rancor monsters, you get the picture). To carry out your tasks, you have a lightsaber and some awesome force powers that make you seem more powerful than The Emperor himself.

But it's not a strategy based game at all. You know games like Final Fight, River City Ransom and No More Heroes? They're called "beat em' ups." That's what this is. It's a super fancy looking beat em' up. However, since The Force Unleashed wants so badly to be some sort of Tom Clancy-esque mission based game, the beat em' up format doesn't really work.

The game advertised itself, essentially, as the next major Star Wars story (excepting the Clone Wars stuff). The novelization even hit the top of the The New York Times bestsellers list. If the game would've been more low key and less hyped, like Shadows of the Empire, it would've been fine. But there was a huge campaign behind this game, toting it to be not only the next great Star Wars game, but one of the best games period. And it isn't. You essentially run around and do the same few Force moves over and over to kill redshirts.

I'll just list the annoying stuff.

1) The camera angles are extremely frustrating. If you're fighting somebody, likely you're going to lose half of your health while trying to whip the camera back in the right direction.
2) There are no consequences for dying. You get killed, you respawn in the same place, the same people are dead, and you continue playing into infinity. You can save any time, you don't have a life meter. You just keep living. No wonder those Stormtroopers look so frustrated.
3) You have to kill droids and wookies. I'm ethically against the mistreatment of wookies.
4) The game has no replay value. When I beat it, I returned it right away. There's not much reward in playing it again, so what's the point of keeping it around?
5) The lightsaber duels are clumsy and obnoxious, which should feasibly be a really cool part of the game.
6) You know those videos of The Apprentice character crushing an AT-ST walker with The Force? Yeah, you basically do that by shaking the Wiimote and Nunchuk at the appropriate time. Over and over again. It's less than compelling.
7) The writing is pretty bad. I just really couldn't find the magic of the original Star Wars films in the story (which is an unfair comparison, but it does tack the name Star Wars on the box, so it's a necessary one). Maybe it's that on the Wii, the graphics allow two emotions for characters: indifferent and angry. But the voice acting is no good, there's a totally pointless love story, and the whole plot is circular and just echos "George Lucas needs that money!" Plus, at the end, I'm not sure as to whether or not I'm supposed to like the character.
8) No James Earl Jones.

I have one last problem, but it's for a totally nerdy "sci-fi logic" reason. So the main character is an all-powerful jedi who can take down Star Destroyers and toss TIE Fighters across the room with the flick of the wrist. Uh...Luke Skywalker could barely lift an X-Wing. He would probably have a small heart attack at the thought of crushing a giant machine with The Force. And ultimately, Luke ends up accomplishing what this Apprentice can't do. It makes no sense at all.

Really, the whole thing feels like a rushed job. They had a good idea and then they wanted to get it out there. It shows. Example - throughout the game, Vader keeps sending you back to the same three places, where things "just happen to be going on" (i.e. they didn't have time to create another two or three worlds). I mean, come on, are there really that many ongoings at the Jedi Temple? I think not.

Ultimately, though, the game utilized the Wii's controllers quite well. Plus, there's that epic John Williams score to back it up, which is always helpful. Oh, and you get to play as Darth Vader for the first level. During that level, I kept giggling like I would've in the fifth grade. It's pretty exciting to be one of the most evil, powerful characters of all time.

It's a decent beat em' up, but if you really want to check it out, rent it. It's nowhere near being worth the money. It looks like mediocrity wins the day for this game.

Grade: C+ (DON'T BELIEVE THA HYPE!)