Star Wars: The Force Unleashed... with promises of a true next-gen Jedi experience, complete with epic lightsaber battles and fully realized force powers, gamers and Star Wars fans alike were thoroughly excited for what was sure to be the start of an amazing series of games. The Force Unleashed fell a little short of expectations, mostly due to bugs and some repetitiveness. Despite this, I actually liked the game a lot. Probably more than most critics, and I'm not even that big of a Star Wars fan. I thought they mostly nailed it, and after completing the game all I wanted was a sequel to right all the little wrongs and turn it from an enjoyable weekend rental into a must-own classic. Here we are two years later, and we now have Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2. Have the developers managed to retain what fans loved about the first game while fixing all the little things that we didn't, in order to deliver a game truly worthy of playing? No. Trust me, this hurts me more than it hurts you, but unfortunately... this game sucks.

I suppose I'll start with the one good thing about this game. It does look better than first, adding a nice layer of polish to everything. The graphics are a lot cleaner in general, the textures are much sharper, and character models and environments are a nice step up. It also benefits from a more stable framerate, but it's still not perfect with plenty of dips here and there when the action picks up. The effects are pretty good too, aside from the occassional explosion, some of which look awful. But for the most part, I'm happy with the improvements they made.

This is still Star Wars, and the sound effects and music have been mostly unchanged for like 30 years now. If they screwed up the sound of blasters and lightsabers at this point, we'd have a whole different problem on our hands. The music is nothing special, but as a mild Star Wars fan I'd say it's enjoyable enough. For the most part it's just generic action tracks that loop over and over behind all the battles. Sometimes during the lenghtier segments the music is just too much and you almost feel like you're being stabbed in the face, and just need to turn it off, but that's more of a gameplay issue. I'll get to that. Overall, not bad, but if you've watched Star Wars or played any Star Wars game, don't expect anything new.

Now, if you think that decent audio and visuals is enough to even begin to save this game, the force is obviously not strong with you. In The Force Unleashed, you played as Starkiller, Darth Vader's apprentice who is assigned to eliminate Jedi but found himself switching sides upon being taught the Jedi way by General Kota, as well as falling for a love interest, Juno Eclipse. What was great about this game was that even though it departed from the main story, it still made sense and felt like it fit within the Star Wars universe. In this game, you once again play as Starkiller, who may or may not be a clone, who rebels against Vader to instead chase down Juno and attempt to discover his true identity. That's it. Seriously. A game set in a universe filled with amazing technology, force powers, awesome characters and enemies, and the story revolves around you chasing down a woman... for no particular reason, while simultaneously whining about the fact that you might be a clone. The story makes very little sense and isn't the slightest bit interesting or compelling. I truly did not care about Starkiller or whatever nonsense he was going on about in this game and could not have cared less about Kota and his situation, or Juno, or anyone for that matter. This was massively disappointing considering I really enjoyed the story in the first game and was looking forward to seeing what happened after the conclusion. Instead it doesn't even feel connected.

There's also a really stupid Yoda appearance in the game that was hyped up before the game's release. It lasts about 5 minutes and has Yoda babbling about something that somehow makes even less sense and is less interesting than the rest of the game. Totally not a ridiculous and misleading marketing ploy.

Oh yeah, and there's the dialogue. Probably the most uninspired and poorly written thing I've heard in a long time, and needless to say the voice acting really suffers because of it. The people in charge clearly had no interest in quality, so I'll give the actors the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Let's be honest though, even if the story is horrible, great gameplay really could've made this one worth playing. At least once. Sadly, they couldn't even get that right. They've tightened up the controls in certain ways, and made them worse in others, but completely destroyed everything that made the first game fun. The main problem? Repetitiveness. I don't mean you have to fight the same enemies for a bit too long at certain times, like the first game, I mean you do the same thing and fight the same enemies in the same way, and in the same places, for the entire game. They didn't do anything to make it feel epic or cinematic and set you up with all kinds of cool situations in which to use your force powers. They just took random enemies, threw them all over the place and called it a day. They do it in a way that actually manages to make you sick of lightsaber battles and they suck all the fun out of using your force powers.

There are only like four levels in the whole game, and only one of them changes up the scenery. For the most part you're just trekking through endless space station hallways and random hangars. You'll get tired of looking at it pretty quickly. You'll also get tired of doing the same exact quick time events, all of which do nothing to make you feel like you're actually performing the actions yourself, over and over and over, and fighting all the same enemies, over and over and over. They try to mix it up ocassionally with some crazy chase segment or a boss battle, but every one of these just feels cumbersome, frustrating, drawn out and really boring. They just make you do the same stupid thing again and again through the entire game, and it's not even fun the first time! The Force Unleashed (2) is kind of a special title, as it's probably the worst functional game I've ever played. On a technical level, it is a solid game. There aren't many bugs or downsides within the engine itself, but there is just no fun to be had.

They also decided to tack on some platforming toward the end, and like everything else in this game, it lasts way too long when it shows up, and does nothing to keep it interesting. It is kind of intense, but only because the controls are so finicky that you never know if you'll actually make it or just kind of get thrown off. Awesome.

It's pretty clear that the developers just did not care about this title. The first one sold well, so why not just throw this together and make a couple bucks at the expense of those who really were fans of the first. There was zero thought put into this game. There's nothing but unoriginality and pure laziness as far as the eye can see. On top of all this, I managed to beat the game in a little over five hours. No joke. The game consists of 90% repeat segments and tacky fillers, and they couldn't even pack a solid 6 hours into it. If they're just going to rely on cheap tactics to extend the game in the first place, you'd think they would just make it the same length as the first. It's like they were too lazy to be lazy.

Honestly, this game has no redeeming qualities. It's shovelware to the highest degree, with the Star Wars name shamelessly slapped onto the cover. It's an absolute disgrace, and I completely recommend against wasting your time or money on this game, even if you are a hardcore Star Wars fan. Like I said, it's a 5 hour game with maybe five to ten minutes of fun sprinkled in throughout. That's it. No extra modes, no online, and collectibles and power ups that make no sense to bother with, because the game is over before you know it and you'd be crazy to want to play through it a second time. If the Force Unleashed games are going to continue down this road, unfortunately it may already be time for this series to go the way of the Death Star.

Visuals: 8.4
Audio: 7.0
Story: 4.5
Gameplay: 5.0
Entertainment Value: 3.5

Overall: 5.0

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