Be Excellent To Each Other

Don't waste your money if you haven't already. It's riddled with bugs and it's fucking shit.

By far the most annoying thing is when you get knocked down by an enemy - it takes you ages to get back up, and in that time you're bombarded by more enemy hits, causing death through absolutely no fault of your own. Also, you spend a lot of time near ledges with big insta-death drops. Fine, except when you fucking use your lightsaber you edge forward all of the time with absolutely no way of stopping if you shimmy too far, and it's a lottery if you manage to kill an enemy before strolling of the edge swinging an illuminated stick.

It also has serious slow down issues, screen tearing, getting stuck on the terrain etc. Oh, and your lightsaber changes colour from cutscene to cutscene despite the fact that I've been using the standard red one all the way through. The controls are shit, the autoaim rarely focuses on what you want it to focus on, and using the most exciting thing - the force throw power - is a chore thanks to unsure controls that are good in theory but somehow don't work properly. And the quicktime events, oh the fucking quicktime events.

I'm a couple of levels from the end now on medium difficulty, and I feel like smashing my controller up. I've just turned it off because I died, again, through no fault of my own, for the seventh time in a row. Then, it expects you to watch an unskippable cutscene every time you respawn. WHAT THE FUCK LUCAS ARTS? How can you tumble so far from Jedi Knight 2? Absolute shite.

I did enjoy the feeling of pure badassness but those QTEs and boss battles in general are horrible.

The level design varies wildly from fun to chore as well.

Did really like the physics and throwing things through windows and watching stormtroopers fly off into space.

I heard one podcast announce that this game was surely to be the death of Lucas Arts.

A slight exaggeration given the ravenous hunger some people gobble down any old star wars shit with. Bear in mind I haven't played a star wars game since Rebel Assault.

It's interesting to note that Eurogamer gave it a respectable 7/10, before plastering their site with advertising. It would be lucky to get a 5 in my book, and that's purely because throwing things is fun, but we did that in Half-Life 2 already.

AND ALSO: It has taken me a couple of hours to get to the second to last level (and most of that time was dying and re-doing some particularly annoying sections where I get knocked down and can't get up again [Chumbawumba style]), and there's no multiplayer that I've noticed. What the fuck did I spend 40 quid on?

So you didn't get it for 30 from Asda? Cripes, I would be angry.

Yeah, it was sold out so I picked it up in GAME. Even wasted £2.50 of my reward points on it to get it down to 37.50.

I knew it would be fucking shite.

Im waiting til its sub £10, then Ill get the minimal force power thrills from it.

Even in the fucking demo cutscene darth vaders lightsaber is orange. What a joke.

I want a new X-Wing game in HD on the 360.

Hell, yeah. That would be acebest.

Just a remake of X-Wing/Tie Fighter/XvT/X-Wing Alliance all HD'd up and bundled together on the XBLAH for 800 points would do me.

I don't ask for much.

And multiplayer.

XvT is multiplayer only.

Star Wars died as a cool thing when Firefly came out, and then it died again the first time I saw a Colonial Viper in Nu-BSG... where's my colonial viper sim on the 360?

When most people repeatedly rape their offspring, they get sent to prison. George Lucas sees his marque at the top of another chart every time he does it. Star Wars is now chav sci-fi. Gah, etc.

WRONG! Balance of Power.

As I may have mentioned, when I bought Burny Pee from CEX the staff looked at me like I was Gary Glitter when I said I *didn't* want to buy Force Unleashed.

It is indeed cack... the demo was mildly entertaining, up until the AT-ST. So I need to throw things at it, do I? But the Force Throw controls are UTTER SHIT and by the time I've grabbed hold of an object, aimed it at the AT-ST and started pushing it forward to release it, I've been shot, Titface has flinched, and dropped it. The AT-ST then fires a huge stream of blaster fire into me, taking my health down by half. So I run around behind it, and it does a SUPER STOMP SHOCKWAVE ATTACK that causes me to fall over, at which point it finishes turning around, puts another stream of fire into me and my health is now so low that the natural death of a few skin cells kills me.

Sorry, I should've said Vanilla XvT.

Fortunately, later on, you get force shock and you can literally float in the air above them when you use it. Two long bursts drops them, completely removing the necessity of any skill. Not that skill helps you before you get force shock, because it's a case of being knocked down and unable to get up until you're dead syndrome. AGAIN.

I really, really enjoyed The Force Unleashed. So much so that I completed it in one long sitting, which I never do with games. (It helps that it's quite short, of course.)

The colour of my lightsaber being wrong in cut scenes did annoy me - even the PSP version uses the coolour you're actually using in its cut scenes, FFS. (Talking of the PSP version, it's okay, but a bit hard and the camera is appalling. Lovely extra modes not in the big versions, though.)

The bit was fucking awful, but only because the game was lying to me about the direction to move the sticks in. Once I worked that out it was fine, but it should never have happened.

I did have to restart once when I fell off a ledge and the game didn't kill me, instead letting me run around on an invisible floor over some lava without me being able to jump back up. And once the level and enemies disappeared and I had to run about for a couple of minutes until they came back.

Apart from that, no complaints. A little bit of screen tearing, but no slowdown that I noticed. And I mostly managed to focus on what I wanted to focus on when it came to using the force.

I wonder if it makes any difference that I was playing the PS3 version on Easy? I certainly didn't have trouble with flinching or dying all the time. I probably did die about twenty times in total, but most of those were near the end. And I hardly used the block button.

I found it fluid, exciting and amusing. I just had a great time flinging stormtroopers about with gay abandon and drop kicking jawas.

I haven't decided whether to keep it or trade it in and I certainly wouldn't recommend spending £40 quid on it unless you're a Star Wars freak, but I think it's going to be a good £20 buy for anyone who doesn't actively hate Star Wars.

Playing it on easy probably explains it. You lame-o.

Anyway, thinking about it, the title - The Force UNLEASHED - got me very excited when it was announced ages ago. The videos looked promising and all of the associated hype from the developers etc. Actually playing it, it's easy to see that it's one boring level after another with a bit of force powers tacked on. I mean, every fucking level is just a linear path carved out of either trees or spaceship. God I HATE it more the more I think about it. Still gonna milk it for achievements, though. Anyone want to buy The Force UNLEASHED?

Complaining that a game is too hard (unfairly hard or otherwise) is a bit unfair if you're not playing it on the easiest setting. That's what those settings are for.

Geez, what an obvious sales pitch.

I'm pretty sure you can change the difficulty mid-game from the pause menu.

Might be a good idea.

NEVER! It's not too difficult, it's just frustrating. Plus, you lose out on the achievements if you drop the difficulty.

Plus, strolling through it on easy isn't really the best way to get your £40's worth.

It is if it's the best way to have fun, I reckon.

I deliberately put it on Easy because I wanted just to be a powerful bastard who didn't have to worry much about dying and I got what I wanted.

I've seen several Eurogamer reviews recently mark down games for being too easy and it makes me want to bonk the reviewers on the head.

I didn't actually complain about the game being too hard, though. I complained about a variety of niggles and broken things, and I complained about it being fucking shit. I was only joking about the lame-o thing.

So obviously

And sorry Jonarob, my mistake. But even after a re-read it does look like your are complaining it's too difficult.

Well I'm not 'onest guv! It's just frustrating more than anything, and it's the bugs rather than difficult enemies that slow progression.

I know not that, sir, but there is an excellent BSG standalone Freespace mod called 'Beyond the Red Line'. Only a demo campaign but it is excellent.

I have no idea how the controls would map to a pad though. Just the power management stuff would take up all the face buttons.

I bought a new joystick for X-Wing that had a twist-grip, so I could pitch, yaw, and rotate the ship about its axis, Elite-style. That was ace.

Edit -- mind you if they did work the controls out I'd pay 800 points each, let alone for a bundle. I loved those games.

X-Wings are a billion times cooler than Colonial Vipers. They have lasers, for goodness sake.