Star Wars: The Force Unleashed user reviews (Xbox 360)

4.0 stars

"Good single player game" on October 9, 2008 by hydra38811

Pros: The graphics are good.
Variety of enemies with different abilities

Cons: A few glitches in the game play.
Boss fights are boring.
Short game from start to finish.
No Multiplayer.

Summary: This was the first Star Wars game I've purchased and I can definitely say I wasn't disappointed. Despite the few downsides in this game, it is definitely worth you time to play. The weak boss fights are made up for by the hundreds of peons you fight on your way through the levels.

4.0 stars

"Awesome game, bad camera." on September 25, 2008 by DMC94

Pros: Gourgeous graphics, a great story, the controls are good and easy to use, great designs for new characters.

Cons: The cinematic camera is extremely frustrating when fighting other saber-wielders, in some areas there are just too many enemies around you, for instance on Imperial Kashyyk.

Summary: Overall this is definatley the second best Star Wars game ever made, even with the crappy camera.

2.0 stars

"Really a very average game." on September 23, 2008 by MrBig1000

Pros: The force powers are good fun for a while, but become a bit repetitive. The story is good and it all looks great.

Cons: Very limited, linerar level design

The camera angles are horrible.

The lightsaber duels are just a series of button mashing exercises, I much preferred the Jedi Knight series in that respect.

Full of glitches, getting stuck on scenery.

Summary: Gameplay-wise this is a very ordinary game indeed, In some areas it seems to borrow heavily from older titles such as Bounty Hunter (level design) and Revenge of the Sith (appalling, OTT button mashing - especially on the end of level boss sequences).

The much talked about DMM stuff is fun for a while, but I can't say that it really adds a lot more than if it had been just faked animations.

In a nutshell, this seems to be another example of a Lucas venture that spends too much time on the little details of the special effects and not enough time on the on the real point of the project (in the case of the films this is story and the case of the games it is how it plays)

I found that saber fights and use of force powers much more satisfying in Jedi Outcast, I suspect partly becuase they were less over the top and therefore you felt you have a greater degree on control over them.

In short, when you strip away the Star Wars element, this is just an average button masher! Very, very disappointing for the a game that 3 years in development and delayed by almost a year.

2.5 stars

"Major disappointment" on September 22, 2008 by johnbuker

Pros: -Stunning graphics
-Interesting Story

Cons: -Horrible level design
-Too many glitches

Summary: I just got a 360 about 6 months ago and I've been eagarly anticipating this game ever since. They did some things very well- the overall presentation of everything is stunning, but the level design harkens back to the days of very linear first generation FPSs. A starship (or planet or whatever) the game should be designed so that you get the feeling that you're in the environment that they're trying to depict. The different rooms, hallways, paths, etc are mostly fine from an artistic standpoint, but my biggest complaint is that none of the levels really fells like a cohesive whole- they feel like they were designed as a series of obstacles instead of as part of a living world. I'm fine with a linear story for this type of game, but at least make it feel like what I'm doing is contributing to how the game plays out instead of just feeling like I'm hacking my way through one room to get to the next.

Other things that are less than they should be:
-The game freezes here and there for about a half second- always in the same places. The freezes aren't frequent but still occur often enough to be annoying.
-The cut scenes (while well written and acted) are jarring in the way that they're presented. They look good while they're playing, but they hit you by surprise both in the way that they start and where they throw you when they end. In this day and age, cut scenes should be working in a lot more seamless then they are in this game.

The graphics and story make the game worth playing, but in the end the whole game feels incomplete. A bit more thought into the level design and some more time working out the glitches could have made this game a homerun, but as it is it's a renter at best. Not horrible, but not great.

Updated on Sep 22, 2008

I apologize for my poor grammar in my review. I wish there was a way to clean it up, but I can't seem to edit it.

I thought of another analogy to use when decribing the level design in this game. If you were designing a level to look like an ordinary house, then you'd expect that house to have all the rooms that an ordinary house would have- a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, a hallway, and one or more bedrooms. The problem with this game is that the levels are all living rooms and hallways with hardly any of the other things that would give them a realistic design. What's there isn't necessarily bad, it just feels incomplete.