Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2

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key review info
  • Game: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2
  • Platform: Playstation 3
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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 Review

Without a doubt the Star Wars franchise is one of the biggest ones of all time, and in recent years video games have played an increasingly important role in the fate of the saga, taking its action beyond the movie trilogies or the animated series currently broadcasted on TV.

The original Star Wars: The Force Unleashed established a very interesting side story between the two movie trilogies and, despite quite a few technical flaws, made people care about Starkiller and his interactions with Darth Vader.

Now, LucasArts has tried to follow up on the surprise success of the first game with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, which promises to deliver a more polished gameplay experience, improved graphics, better level design and, most importantly for hardcore Star Wars fans, the next step in Starkiller's saga.

Was the Force strong enough in LucasArts to succeed? Let's find out.

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Use Force powers ...
... and wreak havoc

Story

While previous Star Wars games were pretty content with just rehashing stories from the movies or from the separate TV series, The Force Unleashed carved out its own niche between Episodes Three and Four by showcasing Darth Vader's secret apprentice, Starkiller.

The first game, even if it had a few faults, shined because of Starkiller's interesting story, and how he slowly backed away from Vader, and gave the Rebellion a new chance before the start of the Fourth Episode.

The Force Unleashed 2 cleverly side steps the canon ending which shows Starkiller becoming a martyr, and reveals that Vader had used the cloning facility on Kamino to create clones of the Jedi warrior.

The game starts with Starkiller (or perhaps one of his clones) being awoken by Vader and tasked with overcoming his broken memories about his love, Juno Eclipse, and former friends, like Jedi General Kota.

Seeing as how he can't erase his feelings for Juno, Starkiller stuns Vader, escapes Kamino, and starts searching for Juno and for his own identity.

While that may sound pretty interesting, the game is quite clumsy with delivering the key elements, and relies too heavily on players already knowing what happened in the original game. As such, characters like General Kota or Juno are extremely one-dimensional, and new players can't relate to them nor to the events that are happening on the screen.

Also, Starkiller seems a bit too selfish in his search for Juno, and may seem a bit obsessed to quite a lot of players., not to mention that all his actions are telegraphed from a mile away, so you won't expect any real say in what the Jedi warrior does.

Another downside is that his search takes him to a completely gratuitous level on Dagobah, where Starkiller meets Yoda. On this level you just walk around for a couple of minutes, uncover a few upgrades and start the cutscene with the green Jedi master. While that may be enough for serious Star Wars fans, this whole move was purely gratuitous and could have been solved through a simple cutscene.

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Embark on platforming sections ...
... or just free fall to your goals

Gameplay

As you can see above, the story doesn't exactly match up to the great one seen in the original, but the gameplay makes up for that in some part. The Force Unleashed 2's fighting mechanics are much tighter, and the platforming is more straightforward than in the original.

Starkiller has pretty much the same powers as in the first one, but you can't use most of them until he "remembers" the moves from the memory of the original Jedi warrior. You can upgrade all these powers and even go into a special mode called Force Rage that allows extra damage.

There aren't as many combo moves this time around, unlike the first one, but the ones available are pretty intuitive, so you'll be stringing together lightsaber attacks with Force powers in no time.

Speaking of powers, LucasArts definitely made them feel more impressive this time around, with Starkiller devastating anything in his path to find Juno. Sadly, there aren't a lot of different enemies that he encounters, usually ranging from regular Imperial stormtroopers to units invulnerable to lightsaber/Force powers, plus a few types of robots.

While the level design is improved in terms of actually seeing where you have to go, it's also quite repetitive. Many areas are recycled over and over again, with textures and structures appearing so frequently that you get sick of them. The game also forces you to go back through environments multiple times, in search of items or other characters so expect boredom to ensue quite rapidly.

But while that may not annoy quite a lot of people, the end boss fight will certainly make you consider shutting down the game altogether.

Let's explain. You will fight a certain character around the cloning facilities in Kamino, yet you will hardly be able to damage him. Instead, you'll spend your time jumping around on platforms, as he is running away, and must fight against other enemies while trying to track him down.

Once you caught him, he'll just escape once more to the outside of the cloning facilities, where the actual boss fight will occur. As such, you'll just have wasted 15 minutes jumping around for no concrete reasons.

This time around the quick time events are better implemented, but Starkiller's limited number of special moves, coupled with the recycled enemies, make seeing him in action a bit dull.

While that may not be so bad in games that last a longer time, The Force Unleashed 2 barely manages to clock in at around 6 hours, so don't expect a long saga of adventures, instead just ones that are barely longer than the episodes from the Original Trilogy.

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Battle against usual stormtroopers ...
... and against unusual robots

Graphics and Audio

Visual-wise, The Force Unleashed 2 looks pretty good, with characters and levels looking extremely crisp, as opposed to the first game. Even though it has the same engine, LucasArts did spend some of the development time polishing it up and it really shows.

Starkiller's moves are more natural, while the CGI cutscenes are top notch, thanks to the expertise from Industrial Light and Magic. Sadly, the things these scenes portray are a bit weak, but they still are some of the most gorgeous you'll see this year.

In terms of audio and sound, things are once again very good, with the impressive orchestral score being the highlight of any cut scene. The stormtroopers are always communicating with each other, but given the power Starkiller wields, you won't even need to know their strategies.

The voice acting is pretty good, although Starkiller's angry voice disappoints completely, especially when trying to talk with General Kota. Juno's British accent is pretty hot, but, sadly, she barely gets to say anything during the game.

Conclusion

Despite its flaws, I liked the original Force Unleashed, and with all the promises from LucasArts about polishing it up and really focusing on the story for The Force Unleashed 2, I was eagerly awaiting it.

Sadly, my expectations were pretty much shattered. The whole title just feels like something brought together in a hurry to bank on the unexpected popularity of the first game. It's short, the story goes completely off the rails and the characters become extremely annoying.

The hack and slash gameplay is more polished, while the visual are great, but these aren't enough to redeem Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2.

story 6
gameplay 8
concept 6
graphics 8
audio 8
multiplayer 0
final rating 6.5
Editor's review
fair
 
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