DS plays: Star Wars The Force Unleashed II (Spoilers)

[Dark Silver]

the year was 2008. Lucas Art had just released Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a stunning enough visual game that had massive amounts of promise and tech behind it, but which ultimately had...issues.

First amongst them was a spastic targeting system for your Force abilities, horrendous level design, and a story which made Palpatine and Vader seem like inept idiots.

On the bright side, the game gave you control of a powerful Force-user, let you cut through both Jedi and Stormtroopers with maniacal glee (until you got to the guys which were immune to your lightsabers, your force powers, or both) and let you visit wonderful vistas you had only glimpsed in the movies before. And it let you chose, somewhat, between ending the game with the Light Side or the Dark Side of the Force in your favor.

[spoilers]Still, the ending for that game lead to you either replacing Vader, or kicking the bucket after kicking off the Rebellion.[/spoilers]

The Force Unleashed II follows the Light Side Ending, which seemed in and of itself, pretty well tied up story wise. I'll talk a little bit about game play and level design before I jump into the story, which will be spoilerized.


The first game had visually stunning, but ofttimes FRUSTRATING level design when it came to the PS3 and 360 versions of the game (oddly enough, I found the Wii version to have far better level design and more content than it's "bigger brothers"), and I'm glad to say the level design part, at least, is fixed. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of visitable levels.

In the Force Unleashed II, we get only 4 places to "play in" - the Clone World of Kamino, a "floating" city on the world of Cato Nemodia, Dagobah, and the Alliance Starcruiser Salvation. A mere four worlds - admittedly they look stunning (for the most part), but still, very few worlds, very few levels. Thankfully, level DESIGN improved a huge amount here. The camera is far better in these levels, you aren't blocked by stray debris, etc etc. Each level is pretty visually beautiful - even Dagobah.

The issue with Dagobah though? You get 5mins on the planet, and it's mostly just a place to go around collecting power-up Holocrons and see a rendered cut scene prediction. You get to see Yoda...and he gets maybe 30 secs worth of talking, before he becomes non-interactive. At least we get to see into his hut....woohoo.

And the Salvation? Ok, if this is how ship design is done in the Star Wars Universe? I'll take Trek ship builds anyday. Seriously, massive amounts of wasted space, engine components that exsist only to be in the way or blown up, no guardrails.....seriously. Give me a Galaxy Class anyday god damn it. At least then I have real hallways and not gaping massive chasms in the ship. And why the hell do the guns have to be manually fired? This is the future! You've had Turbolaser tech for 20,000 years at least! PLEASE give me a way to fire the guns remotely, instead of having guncrews be slaughtered by the evil Imperials. I mean, if you don't have a remote firing option, and you're gundeck gets taken, or depopulated, suddenly you can't fire anymore. This makes zero sense.


Gameplay is more or less unchanged in basic form from the first - except you get two lightsabers to ginsu through the various Imperial Lackies with, and a few new Force Powers to toy with. Mind Trick is great for evening up the odds by making your foes attack each other, or making that last pesky Trooper jump through some Partical Shields or off a ledge to his demise...

Enemies though! Now we get into some changes...

Of course we have the standard Imperial Stormtroopers (pick them up and throw them around, or fry them with electricity), Jumptroopers (they avoid force blast, lighting them) Scout Troopers (sniping bastards), and Riot Troopers (block lightsabers, you fry them), a assortment of Mechs (Carbonite and Flamer Wardroids) and Walkers (AT-AT and AT-MT) and THEN we get some new ones....

First off: the Sith Acolye. dressed in modified Imperial Guard red outfits, they wield Force powers, and are basically immune to force attacks until you juggle them a little bit. Also, they can teleport. But they only seem to
make use of this little trick to get in or away from combat with you. Then there is the Saber Guard, dressed similar to the Sith Acolyte, they have no force powers, but use twin Lightsabers. There's a plotpoint which tells why the hell they have these two bastages around later.

Then there comes the immortal Pain in my Ass - the Terror Troopers. They have no force powers (save one), and they have no ranged attacks, but what they DO have is a fucking teleporting and phasing ability which pisses me all the way off. You can't hit them with the Lightsaber because they'll teleport away, you can blast them with Force powers, because they are simply NOT THERE until they are about to hit you - the only way to beat them is catch them in the maybe 2 seconds where they appear to cut you in the back, and fry them with Force Lightning to stun them, before going ginsu on them. Annoying little bastards.

Also, when the hell did Sith and Force Users get the ability to fucking teleport? This has never been shown ever in the history of Star Wars, and suddenly Lucas Arts pops up two Sith-aligned badguys who can teleport around all willy nilly. I can BS. They weren't even interesting uses of the power, the first was simply to appear and run like a bitch, the other was to be a cheap and annoying throw away baddie.




Ok..now Story... Since this is a spoilery section, It's in SPOILERS! Highlight to read.

[spoilers]
TFU2 picks up about a year or two post TFU's Light Side ending. You start off in Kamino, where you find out you're a the latest in a long line of clones of the original Starkiller from the first game, and that you're pretty much a failed experiment, because you have emotional attachments due to stuff and things and the Force. Vader order's your death, you punk Vader, and escape. You fly to find General Rhom Kota, rescue his ass, and he starts saying "You're Alive! you're the real Starkiller! you can't clone Jedi! I know it!" and Starkiller goes "no, he told me I'm a clone, my angst! MY ANGST! I must find Juno! because I love her!"


Yeaaaahhhhh. After a fallout with Koda, you goto Dagobah, meet Yoda, find the Cave of Evil, get a visually impressive but boring Cut Scene and then you go off to the Salvation, where Juno gets kidnapped, and taken as bait to bring your dumbass to Kamino for Vader.

Here, is where the story REALLY falls apart. You get to Kamino, get to the planet after a long drawn out bit, and fight you're way to find Juno, only to find the Starkiller cloning Facility (queue annoying platform part) - find Vader, and discover the truth about the Sith Acolytes and Saber Guard - their all abberant clones of Starkiller who are mentally stable somehow.

And you get to kill a bunch of them!

Fun!

So we end up in a long boring fight against Vader, horrible lines given from Starkiller, and eventually we beat Vader - after he apparently kills Juno (the love interest).

Queue up the decision....Light Side or Dark Side. Kill Vader, or take him to a secret Rebel base somewhere to be put on trial and then killed infront of the whole Galaxy.

I unfortunatly, chose lightside - and this is the option the game is meant to take, and it ENTIRELY breaks the story. I mean, shit, really. You spare Vader's life, and it's decided that you'll take him to the secret Rebel base on Dantooine (remember the timeframe for this is about a year before Episode IV A New Hope), where he will be put on Trial, and killed.

Leia gives the good luck to Koda, Juno and Starkiller, who take off in the Rogue Shadow, to deliver Vader (who is just restrained in a bunch of metal bands in the Rogue Shadow's hold...really nothing which suppossedly neutralized Vader's Force abilities are present), Starkiller says "I'm free of you", and we cut out to see the Rogue Shadow jumping to lightspeed, with a few other similar sized ships booming off on their own.

Meanwhile, The Slave-1 breaks off the wreckage of a ISD that was in orbit of Kamino, and follows the Rogue Shadow...
[/spoilers]



So, basically, If you like over the top powers, and action games, It's a rental. Seriously, you can finish this game in a day, no kidding. If you want to play this for the deeply riveting story....go play a different game. Deeply riveting or well through out, this story ain't.

My score? 3.5 out of 5

[LadyTevar]

Yeah... Story Sucks.

[frigidmagi]

I dislike the character starkiller honestly. Here's a super Jedi who single handedly created the rebellion and fought Vader and the Emperor to a draw! That despite having a majority of the rebel leaders owe their lives to him is never mentioned again.

Gaggghhh, the Mary Sue and revisionism it chokes me.

It would have been more interesting if he had been a run away Youngling and not the founder of the rebellion as much as a guy who helped along the way. Vader should have been someone he ran from not fought and beat down.

[Dark Silver]

I would also help if this story didn't take place just a year before Episode IV - would ALSO have helped if this game wasn't intentionally left open for a Third (so a Trilogy of games) and have the third game CANCELED before this one even came out!

So we're stuck with a dead end duology, no third part to tie up the story, and a crappy open cliffhanger ending!

[LadyTevar]

Personally I'm glad it's not going to be completed. As it is, you might as well throw the storyline into "Alt-History", because what happened just in the first one is gross revisionism at best, and general stupidity at worst.