Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is literally a flawless 10/10 masterpiece (pc version is like a 4-8 out of 10 depending on how many bugs you exp), and anyone saying otherwise is straight up coping. This game doesn't just bend the rules of Star Wars it completely snaps them in half and throws them into hyper space. It is the most beautifully unhinged, over the top piece of star wars media to ever exist, and it makes the movie Jedi look like absolute toddlers.
Now lets get into what makes this game so great.. THE PROTAGONIST
starkiller is one of the coolest dudes you've ever seen even outside of gaming
the game completely throws "balance" out the window to make you feel like a literal god.
as starkiller you dont just kill normal grunts nah you get to pack up vader himself!
Starkiller doesn't just use the Force. He weaponizes it to a point that it makes Darth Vader look like a regular guy with a glowstick.
You press one button and thirty Stormtroopers go flying like team rocket from your force push. (The ragdoll physics are wild.)
He can wrap his entire body in a ball of pure Force Lightning, turning himself into a walking electric generator that vaporizes anyone near him.
Did i say he was strong in the force because i forgot to mention he literally drags a whole ass Imperial Star Destroyer out of the sky with his bare ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hands. A massive, mile long spaceship. Just pulled it down because he felt like it. Peak fiction.
Making him hold the lightsaber backwards is prob the coldest aesthetic choice they could have picked because how smooth he swings. He slices through entire armies like they’re wet paper.
He is Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, meaning he has all the dark sides edge but with no armor for life support holding him back.
The game lets you unlock an absurd amount of lightsaber crystals and skins, letting you rock Sith robes, heavy armor, or even secret bounty hunter gear.
Now im going to talk more so about the game and less starkiller
Although this game is not cannon It actually filled the gap between the prequels and the original trilogy perfectly. It showed how the Rebel Alliance was formed, making Starkiller the literal catalyst for the entire rebellion.
They used DMM and the Euphoria eng, meaning wood actually splinters, metal bends realistically, and glass shatters exactly where you hit it. Stormtroopers will literally grab onto each other or the environment for dear life when you try to blow them away.
For a game with as much chaos happening at once as this one has, the telekinetic targeting is incredibly smart. It automatically prioritized the giant explosive barrels or the exact Stormtrooper i wanted to chuck into a chasm.
Every single planet feels distinct and alive, from the massive junk world of Raxus Prime to the overgrown fungi forests of Felucia.
and one thing i really respect about this game is when your fighting rogue Jedi like Rahm Kota or Maris Brood it felt like an actual high stakes anime clash rather than just hitting a health bar.
the music is what you can expect, dark sith style to match the aggression shown on screen.
Starting the game as Darth Vader on Kashyyyk is one of the greatest openings in gaming history. Walking slow as hell while effortlessly blowing Wookiees into the stratosphere perfectly set the power scaling for the rest of the game imo.
The Quick Time Events for boss finishers were pure cinematic gold.
One of them you Slice the legs off a massive AT-ST. ♥♥♥♥ is so dope looking
And you weren't just fighting regular dudes. The game threw everything at you from cloaking shadow troopers and massive purge troopers to giant alien monsters and junk golems.
CONS
now I need to completely pivot for a second to talk about what the game does bad and what makes the pc version the worst version
the PC Port is a Straight Up Crime
On PC, the game is hard locked to 30 fps You could have a liquid cooled NASA super computer with an RTX 4090, and the game will still run like a slideshow unless you go download a community mod to uncap it. but If you do use community fixes to uncap the frame rate, the game's physics completely lose their mind. Objects you try to grab with the Force will rocket into the sky at Mach 5 because the game's physics engine was literally tied to the 30 FPS tick rate.
Not only that the graphics menu is a joke. You can basically change the resolution and that is it. No texture scaling, no anti-aliasing toggles, nothing. It’s an incredibly lazy copy n paste job from the consoles.
For my people who have already played this game back in the day, you think pulling down the Star Destroyer was hard on console? On PC, the mouse and keyboard controls for this sequence are completely broken. The on screen prompts are actively lying to you, and it takes like 20 minutes of fighting horrible camera angles just to align the ship. It is pure torture.
Next why on earth does the game need a full loading screen just to change starkillers lightsaber color or upgrade a force power? You click a menu, and the game pauses so you can think about life for 10 seconds just to change from blue to red.
Another thing If a giant enemy or an explosion knocks Starkiller on his back, there is ZERO recovery time. Enemies will literally hit you while you are trying to stand up, knocking you down again until you just die. The ultimate Sith apprentice can get bullied because he can't stand up fast enough is the dumbest ♥♥♥♥ ever.
Not to mention Scout Troopers on high difficulties will snipe you from across the map, instantly knocking you down and taking half your health. And they love to put them in awful platforming sections where the trash camera makes you fall to your death anyway.
it is hilarious and painful to also mention that the game is a massive 30 GB download. Back in 2009, that was an absolutely universe-sized file. And the funniest part? Like 15 GB of that space is just uncompressed, duplicate video files for different language options that you can't even delete without breaking the game. It’s the ultimate proof of how lazy the port was.
Lastly for a game called The Force Unleashed, there are way too many random endgame grunts who are just completely immune to the Force. It completely ruins the power fantasy when a Purge Trooper just ignores your max level lightning blast.
(besides the jank in the pc port if you are lazy and dont patch the game)
It gave us top-tier storytelling, and a combat system that made you feel like the main character of the entire universe.
It was a peak era of gaming where developers just asked, "What if we made a character so broken it ruins the lore?" and everyone just agreed. 10/10, no notes, go play it right now.
