Star Wars: The Force Unleashed First Impressions

August 22, 2008 on 1:45 pm | In Preview, XBOX 360 | No Comments

For those that don’t know, the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed went live last night on XBOX Live’s game download service. At this point, you need a gold account to access the demo currently, but for everyone else, wait about a week and you’ll be able to grab it.

I’m incredibly impressed with this game, moreso than I thought that I would be. In fact, it may be the most fun Star Wars third person game that I’ve ever played. Shadows of the Emipre was amazing, but it’s been over ten years. We’re overdue for a great third person Star Wars game. You take the role of The Apprentice (some may recognize him as one of the worst characters to play in Soul Calibur 4), Darth Vader’s secret pupil and you’re really not on anyone’s side here. Your mission is to seek out and destroy the Jedi and annihilate anyone (Rebel or Imperial) that stands in your way. This is where the fun begins.

While I won’t give away anything that happens plotwise in the demo, you start out with a whole lot of force powers. You’ve got Force Push (which can be charged to repel objects and bend locked doors so that you can enter), Force Lightning (which can be chained to your lightsaber so that it becomes infused with deadly blue sparks), and Force Jump (…it’s exactly what it sounds like. You jump really high.). The objective of the demo is to get to a Jedi, destroy him, and bring Daddy Darth his lightsaber. That means destroy anything that gets in your way.

You can pick up and destroy pretty much any object in the game. The way that you choose to dispatch your enemies is entirely up to you. You can take a lightsaber to their body, shock them with force lightning, throw an exploding barrel at them, or crush them with a TIE Fighter (Yes, you can pick up a TIE Fighter.). The possibilities are endless, and that may be what makes the demo so much fun. At the end of the demo, you don’t get to fight the Jedi, but you do get to go up against a full squadron of Stormtroopers and an AT-ST walker. You whittle down its health and at the very end, deliver a finishing blow by inputting the correct button commands.

If the demo is any indication, this game is going to be incredibly fun. I just hope that there are going to be other force powers and combos that can be dealt in-game. As fun as shooting force lighting at your enemies is, it starts to get old after a while.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed releases in September.