Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
The more you tighten your grip...
I went to see a play recently called "Contains Violence". In the programme, the writer mused over the choice of name, saying in effect that if you're going to call a play "Contains Violence" it had bloody well better do, or else the audience may decide to invent their own. At your expense. So it is with The Force Unleashed. If you're going to make a promise like that, you'd better come up with the goods. Even more recently, we sat down with the functionally identical Xbox 360 and PS3 builds of LucasArts' latest to see how they do.
The Force Unleashed, of course, has a lot to prove and not just because of its ambitious name. It's also the first outing for LucasArts' much-hyped new engine technology. Moreover, it's arguably the first real attempt to reinvigorate the Star Wars brand in videogames after a series of utterly lacklustre games punctuated only by the fantastic (and non-LucasArts) LEGO Star Wars titles.
It's promising, then, that pretty much the first thing it does is break some of the unspoken and restrictive rules of Star Wars games to date. By way of a prologue and tutorial level, you're given charge of the ultimate Dark Side fantasy - you play Darth Vader, slaughtering countless yowling furry beasts in an all-out assault on the Wookiee homeworld.
The introduction to the game's controls is almost buried under an opening level that's bombastic, graphically stunning and incredibly good fun. Accompanied by the Imperial March, black cloak billowing in the wind, you stalk through the level trying out the various powers at your disposal as the game prompts you. Overhead, Star Destroyer-style ships hum through the atmosphere. Off to either side, troop deployments and AT-ST walkers ravage the forest. It looks very good.
As you progress, the game starts to make good on its Force Unleashed promise. Gone are the wimpy, special-case Force powers of previous games. With you playing as a Dark Side character, The Force in this game is a heavy-duty power - enabled by a comprehensive physics and AI engine that lets enemies and objects alike react realistically to the abilities you're flinging about the place.
The very first problem you encounter is an enormous wood and metal gate, which stands at the entrance to the Wookiee village. No problem - blast it with the Force Push ability, and the gate strains inwards as metal buckles and wood splinters. A few more blasts and it's off its hinges entirely. This is how it works from here on out: Sith Lords don't open doors. Even heavy metal doors aboard ships and space stations can be buckled by the Force. Better again, we discover later on that you can pick up Imperial troopers and hurl them bodily at doors, smashing them open while simultaneously killing the troopers.
As you move through the village, the basic powers - and combinations of powers - that form the basis of your arsenal when you take control of Vader's Apprentice in subsequent levels are revealed. Push will remain a major part of the game the whole way through, we suspect, but it's the Grip power that really lets you cut loose and start ripping up the scenery. Just about any object - even huge things that would be scenery in any other game - can be lifted, moved and thrown around. Powers like Lightning and Repulse (which fires enemies away from you in a wide circle) are fun, but compared to the potential for causing mayhem with Grip, they pale.