Late in the game review: The Force Unleashed II

Game Title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Console: PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo DS, iOS
Developer: LucasArts
Release Date: October 26, 2010

Pregame:

It seems to be a fairly growing trend here at Deranged Gamer to review sequels, what with the market being flooded with them and all. This week's feature is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, sequel to, you guessed it, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The first Unleashed was something of a novelty, partially because LucasArts reportedly answered "what is the premise?" with "kicking someone's ass with the Force!" every day during development. Unleashed II seems to have fallen short of its predecessor, however.

Players pick up the lightsaber(s) of Darth Vader's apprentice, Starkiller (or his clone, whatever) once again and proceed to wreak havoc as one is wont to do with supped-up Force powers.

Play-by-play:
The canon ending of the first Unleashed had Starkiller actually dying, so to get away with making a second game, now players are playing Starkiller's clone, although some characters would have you believe that's a lie Vader tells you to mess with your head. Honestly, the story here leaves something to be desired here.

You know how most stories have an arc? A beginning, middle and an end? This game has half that, then it's over. It rises a teeny bit, then ends. The ending makes no sense, there's no feeling of accomplishment afterward, and there's barely a reason for anything to have happened in the first place. What's more, the game is only a handful of missions; it's so short, not even tiny tacked-on appearances of Yoda and Boba Fett could save this game. Half of it doesn't even make sense, even from a game-mechanics perspective.

The first Unleashed had a decent story arc. You're Vader's apprentice, you go kill Jedi for a while, decide what you're doing is wrong, rebel, attempt to kill the Emperor, die tragically. In Unleashed II, you rebel at the end of the damn training level. Eventually, the objective becomes saving Starkiller's girlfriend, but they weren't even that romantic in the first place. It hardly seems like motivation to drive the whole game.

At one point, the player must defend the tram they're riding on top of from a gunship. This comes immediately after a sequence in which the player must repeatedly use the Force to grab TIE fighters and throw them into each other. Naturally, a player would think, "oh, I can just grab this gunship, or kill it with Force powers somehow." Nope. Instead, the player must deflect missiles by blocking with lightsabers just at the right time (and this works, for some reason). No Force powers can touch the gunship, and the player is pigeon-holed into this deflection mode.

Need I remind you that the player is Starkiller (or his equally powerful clone, anyway), the man who ripped a Star Destroyer down from the sky and who could lightning Rancors to death, and you're telling me he can't hit a freaking plane? What's more, earlier in this same level, it's actually possible to Force Grip a bigger ship (Vader's TIE fighter), crush it into a compact ball and kill and Imperial Walker with it. But no, deflect.

Also, as with the first game, Unleashed II falls into the over-simplification trap of games with a morality system. That is, if you call having one tacked-on decision at the end a "system." The choices are literally "Light Side" and "Dark Side." It's like LucasArts thought their audience has the intelligence of a 4-year-old, despite the "T" rating.

Final Call:
With every review I've done here at Deranged Gamer, I've tried to look on the bright side of the issue. I look at what the game does well, and decide that, if that's what you're looking for in a game, this is the game for you. Bearing that in mind, I still cannot, in good conscience, recommend this game to anyone. I could possibly see this as a "getting to blow stuff up with the force" kind of game, but if you're looking for that, just play the first Unleashed. If you already have, play it again.