Oh Star Wars, you have a mountain heap of games on you. Some are absolute gold and deserve a modern day upgrade, while the others are absolute shit that even LucasArts admits that they are shit (no kidding!). So where does this one come in? Well, somewhere between the lines of decent and mediocre.

You have sharp claws and all but I have THE FORCE!!

First, the story. In SWTFUUSE (who the hell came up with this name??), you mainly play as Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice that he adopted (I guess) from the jedi he killed under Order 66 in the first level of the mission. As Vader’s apprentice, you scour the galaxy with your pilot Juno Eclipse and robot assistant PROXY. From there, its all visit planet A to find Jedi B and put Lightsaber C into Jedi B’s head; until the plot expands of course.

The main emphasis in TFU is the Force Powers. All of them look awesome, force choke, force lightning, and force throw. Couple in the fact that they used Euphoria and Havok means that you will have a ball of a time grabbing people and tossing them at some Star Cruiser’s windows, smashing it and sucking up nearby troops into the void of Star Wars’ very noisy space.

Noise travels through vacumn!!

The enviroment is beautiful itself. If you have a powerful rig, you will find a very pretty game here. Shiny interiors in the spaceship, the sunshine and luch greens of Kashyyyk, to the frozen battlefield of Hoth, its a sight to behold.

Sound and voice acting is brilliant of course, with Star Wars scores and some very impressive voice acting, though James Earl Jones didn’t reprise his role as Darth Vader. Oh well, can’t get everything in life I guess.

Gameplay wise, its a linear game with a linear path where you hack, slash and force blast your way to the end of each level, so yeah, it may get repetitive. However, linear gameplay isn’t the downfall of the game, it is the controls and the mechanics.

I’m gonna be honest with you, I couldn’t stand the controls, its utterly horrendous. Navigating even the starting menu’s option screen is a riddle. It has no buttons whatsoever to tell you to switch to the Audio submenu or the Video submenu. The only way I figured it out is by starting a game and pausing the game, then entering the options menu from there, only then does it show me that buttons [ and ] toggle the menu screen. You may be asking, why don’t I use a controller instead. Well, the game doesn’t automatically detect controllers and there is no way for you to do so on the fly, so you must save the game, quit the game, go back to the menu screen, then adjust it from the options. Really?? Is there not a way to just let the game auto-detect the controller when it starts up?? Even Prototype does that!

While I have not much problems about the Force Powers, Force Throw utterly infuriates me. My first problem with Force Throw is the object lock-on. The game will automatically lock-on on the nearest object in the direction of your camera and there is no way to select the actual object you want to manipulate without going close to the object or if they game decides that you are worthy of the object u want a lock-on on. I know this is a problem with the consoles but couldn’t they just put a reticle on the screen just to make this less fustrating?

WHY WON'T YOU LOCK ON TO THAT OTHER GUY DAMMIT!!!

Another problem is that once you have the object in hand, you naturally want to hurl it at other people. However, hurling say, a box to hit another rebel trooper is a task by itself. If you have a high sensitivity mouse, you would most likely send the object flying anywhere but where u want it to be. So not only are you not able to select what you want to throw, you can’t even tell where is the object going to head to once you throw it.

The loading times are also a bitch in TFU. There is a loading screen for every damn thing you do in TFU. Even the simple task of going to the Options menu during a game will give you load screens, upgrading your character gives you load screens. Hell, even going to the in-game Star Wars database gives you load screens. I don’t know what kind of weed they were smoking to put so many load screens into one game.

My biggest problem on the whole with TFU is in the name. Star Wars The Force Unleashed ULTIMATE SITH EDITION. Okay, first off, the main game is a direct port of the old with just upgraded details with all the old game’s fault, and the 3 new missions that come with it  (Hoth, Tatooine and another one I can’t remember) is gonna be released as paid DLC for the older versions. That is not Ultimate in any sense of the word, because if 3 maps and shinier graphics are worthy of being called Ultimate, you have really low standards.

THATS FOR CALLING IT ULTIMATE!!!!!

Overall, SWTFUUSE is disappointing, much like the old version. It didn’t fix the old problems that existed, and the PC port is so slipshod that I never actually finished the second mission in the game. Yes, it has physics, shiny stuff, force powers, lightsabers and all that stuff ; but the fact of the matter is…its disappointing.

It reeks of mediocrity, so unless you need an urgent Star Wars pick-me-up, skip this game or go get a second-hand version.

Score : 56/100

Pros :

-Brilliant Voice Acting

-Beautiful Scenery and Interiors

- Euphoria and Havok makes the game interesting

Cons :

- Controls are absolutely lousy and you have to manually switch to your controls

- Loading screens aplenty

- Its not Ultimate in any sense of the word

Tags: Star Wars, The Force Unleashed