I finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed last week. I had a lot of fun with this game, but I was disappointed to discover that I mostly agreed with the reviews I read. This is a game that has great elements. Playing a dark Jedi means that you get to destroy basically everything in your path. And the designers wrap each level in a story which is about as good as video game storytelling gets. Unfortunately, the overall experience is diminished by a couple of annoying flaws which really should have been caught by quality control. First of all, there is the targeting system. I can’t even begin to describe how annoying it is to repeatedly lose a boss fight because you are trying to grab the box right in front of you but the game keeps trying to grab the static object which is unmovable behind it. Now, this is challenging programming task to get right… and while it occasionally frustrated me, I was able to overcome the targeting problems. The more serious issue is with the Star Destroyer.
Here is a set piece which has the potential to leave the gamer screaming, “that was awesome!!!” but instead, it causes him to get increasingly frustrated, have to read several online guides after unsuccessfully trying for 30 minutes, return to his computer 15 minutes later to get some help from YouTube videos, and then he finally is able to complete it. And why did this happen? Because the little joystick images at the bottom of the screen which direct the player to the proper alignment of the Star Destroyer do not correspond with the actually game mechanics. In other words, you have to ignore what the game is telling you to do in order to beat the game. Huh? How did this ever get past the testers? (For anyone curious, the star destroyer is not properly oriented until it is rotated so that you can see the underside of the ship)
Unfortunate to see a game with so much potential get dragged down by a couple of careless problems.
