Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Some time last year, I decided to buy the seemingly well regarded STAR WARS: The Force Unleashed games, having never played them. Many recognized Sam Witwer in Days Gone and The Callisto Protocol (Captain Ferris) from knowing him previously as Starkiller in these two games. The first one is from 2008 (2009 on PC) so I wasn't expecting the smoothest experience -- older action games tend to have rough edges when it comes to gameplay.

Sort of a cult classic

The Force Unleashed is set in the same time period as the more recent STAR WARS Jedi games: after the Order 66. In the prologue, you play as Darth Vader who takes a young boy Galen Marek as his apprentice -- and who later takes (or is given?) the call name Starkiller. Vader trains him as an assassin to take out still remaining Jedi. Vader also seems to plot the demise of the Emperor. That may have some sincerity behind it -- based on Return of the Jedi and how the Sith generally behave -- but mostly it appears like a lie to feed to Starkiller to strengthen his Dark Side emotions.

With pre-Disney Star Wars comes the iconic opening theme and text crawl -- as well as the credits theme -- that used to be in every audio-visual entry in the franchise. They really should've kept them: I wonder if there's more to it, like it being a LucasArts signature not allowed to be used in other than the mainline movies. Surely it can't be just because they thought it a cliché. Different entries in the franchise keep repeating the same themes and character archetypes over and over; I doubt having the iconic opening would hurt. It sure gets you in the right mood, though -- Star Wars, hell yeah!

In general, the game uses extensively the original compositions of John Williams. While I've heard them a thousand times, it does feel great to hear the familiar melodies backing your lightsaber fights.

An attempt at the rule of cool

Evidently the infamous reverse grip goes back a bit. As seen here, it's older than its appearance in the third Star Wars film trilogy and Netflix's Witcher -- it's probably even older than this game. It's so fucking dumb: the blade's arc and reach so limited when the weapon is held backwards. I didn't investigate the animations too intensively but I reckon Starkiller flips the saber around as you continue through a combo. He does parry with the reversed grip and and the first attack starts with it too. However, the horizontal swing ends with Starkiller holding his saber properly. I recorded a clip to see where and how it ends up that way: towards the end of the swing he lets go of the hilt to let it turn 180 degrees. That is a highly dubious trick to perform in combat but then again, Force users do get away with all manner of stunts.

Mowing down standard enemies and even some of the more specialized ones is fun. The problems start once you get enemies that don't die quickly and/or have attacks that knock you down. Getting up takes too many seconds and it's always so awkward. Sometimes you even get completely stunlocked. The game claims that almost any attack can be blocked but it sure will be too late if the attack is already coming. Starkiller takes his time getting into his silly reverse-grip blocking stance -- no smooth parry mechanic here.

Tougher enemies can be taken down with a quick-time event but you don't initiate them yourself. Instead they happen automatically when you're close to a low-health enemy -- always so suddenly. I failed quite a few because I didn't realize quickly enough that I was in a QTE. In boss fights, QTEs are more expected. I didn't enjoy boss fights all that much. They came down to me finding which move or force power works and then just spamming it, while refusing to engage otherwise with the boss. Boss fight phases have checkpoints -- at least on the second of the four difficulties -- that start you with full health so you can power through them even if things are not going too well.

Give me more frames. More. More!

The Force Unleashed PC port is locked to 30 frames per second but cool people have made .exe files with more playable framerates. Running the game above 30 may cause crashing but it wasn't too much of a problem for me. A bigger issue can be how Force-grabbed objects and enemies will start going up, making it difficult to throw them where you want. It's debatable if that is easy normally either, though. In the Coruscant DLC you do have to switch back to the 30 fps .exe because there are trials that make you trace a path with a grabbed object. It's simply impossible to complete them if the object is constantly trying to escape your grasp.

The game's probably most memorable boss fight was initially a massive pain with Force grab being so fiddly but then I realized Force Lightning is able to reach the tie fighters flying by. You can quickly blast them instead of having to throw stuff. And then you can focus back on the arduous QTE. I have to say that there's quite a bit power level cap there between Starkiller and The Empire Strikes Back Luke Skywalker who can't even lift an x-wing from a swamp. Admittedly, Starkiller has had comparatively a lot more training than Luke.