Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3) Review

 Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3) 7.5/10

Hello everyone. Today, I’ll be reviewing The Force Unleashed. TFU was released on September 16, 2008 for the PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, and Switch, with the game being developed and published by LucasArts. Fun fact: This was one of the first PS3 games I have ever played. I have played this game a couple of times in the past and I’ve been meaning to revisit it for years now. I love this game and I consider it to be one of my favorite titles on the PS3. I love the story, the gameplay, and the main theme. It does have some problems though. Let’s jump into it.

Our story follows Galen Marek aka Starkiller during the events between Episodes III and IV. Let’s rewind a bit to the game’s prologue. The game starts off on an Imperial Invasion of Kashyyyk with the player playing as Darth Vader. As you rampage through the Wookie defenses, you come across your target: a Jedi in hiding. After killing the Jedi, Vader finds a young child that is Force sensitive and makes him his apprentice. This child is Starkiller. After his training is complete, Vader then sends him off to kill rogue Jedi. This is the story of how Starkiller creates the Rebel Alliance and he turns from evil Sith assassin to redeemed Jedi.

I love this story. Now, I have not seen Star Wars: Rebels, so to me, this is how the Rebel Alliance got created. I love Starkiller’s journey as he slowly sees that his actions have consequences. I like the cast of characters, with Starkiller being an excellent protagonist. Juno, PROXY, and General Kota are great side characters as well. Vader and The Emperor are absolute beasts in this and the game treats them with a lot of respect. Because this game is over 12 years old now and is considered “non-canon”, I’m going to go over spoilers now. If you don’t want to be spoiled, skip over to the next section.

Okay so the game has two endings: Jedi and Sith. The Jedi ending is considered the true ending to the game. Starkiller is given a decision: Finish his fight with Vader and kill him (Sith ending) or rescue Kota and fight The Emperor (Jedi ending). The Sith ending is very depressing and fucked up. After you kill Vader, you become severely damaged by Palpatine and forced into a similar suit that Vader had. You then become a slave to Palpatine, with him straight up saying “Once your usefulness runs out, I’ll dispose of you”. With the Jedi ending, You fight off against The Emperor in a lightning duel as the Rebel leaders make their escape. The duel ends in a very explosive way, killing Starkiller. The Rebel Leaders resume their initial meeting and formally create the Rebel Alliance in the name of Galen Marek. Honestly I fuck with both endings. They’re great for their respective paths.

Graphically, the game still holds up to modern day. Surprising, right? It’s not as highly detailed as modern games and I can see people already bitching about the game not being in 4K Ultra HD, but whatever. Visually, the game does still hold up. Now if the game were to get a graphic overhaul (remaster), I’d be all over that. I do like the game’s art direction. Taking that already great Star Wars charm and putting a nice twist on it makes it feel like it belongs in the Star Wars universe. I love Starkiller’s designs. His normal training outfit goes hard and his Jedi and Sith Assassin outfits also look fantastic. I love the design for his personal ship, the Rogue Shadow as well as all the different locations that Starkiller will visit. I always have a special soft spot for the junk planet and I’ve always felt Bespin was underutilized.

The animation for the game's cinematics can be touched upon though, but all PS3 games looked like this (InFamous and Assassin’s Creed 2 for examples). Again, this game can definitely benefit from a proper remaster.

The game’s music is great. I do wish there was more original music instead of the main theme and key moments here and there. Obviously I’m not hating on what John WIlliams did for the franchise, but it does get kind of tiring hearing “Jango’s Theme”, “Battle of Yavin”, and other themes on repeat throughout the game. Again, I do wish they were more original music to go with the game as I feel like it would help make the game more unique. Mark Gresky did an excellent job for the new songs though. I do love how when PROXY turned into Darth Maul that “Duel of Fates” started playing.

The voice acting is top notch amazing too. The amazing Sam Whitwer voices both Starkiller and The Emperor (who voices Darth Maul in everything), Matt Sloan voices Vader, and Nathalie Cox voices Juno. Overall great voice cast. Also Cully Fredricksen (General Kota) saying “Now rip that Star Destroyer out of the sky!” just got me pumped up for that moment. Quick shout out to Sam Whitwer for his performance. I remember seeing an interview with him and his mindset for Galen and how he went about portraying the character made me respect him even more. He put more thought into this role than needed, but that’s exactly why I consider him to be the GOAT. He’s excellent in everything he’s in, and this game is no exception.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is an action/hack n slash similar to Dante’s Inferno and God of War. As you progress through each level, you’ll be slashing enemies with your lightsaber and utilizing your Force abilities (Push, Grip, Lightning, Repulse, Saber Throw, and Lightning Shield) to complete the level. You can find Jedi Holocrons (the game’s main collectable) scattered throughout the levels. To earn EXP, you’ll need to kill enemies, perform combos, complete the side mission objectives, and collect holocrons. As you level up, you’ll gain special spheres that you’ll use to spend within skill trees. It is imperative that you increase your stats as fast as you can as the later half of the game gets fucking brutal.

There’s a large variety of enemies here, so you’ll never get bored. Stormtroopers (and many different classes), Scrap Guardians, Felucian natives, AT-STs, Senate Guards, etc. Special shout out to the worst enemy in the game: The Purge Trooper. Fuck these guys. These massive, hulking sets of armor are not to be fucked with. They can tank your lightsaber attacks and they don’t give a fuck if you are down. They keep attacking you until you are dead. Dealing with one of these is bad enough, but on the last level, you’re going to have to fight 4 of these at once as well as AT-KTs, AT-STs, EVO Troopers, Snipers, Jet Troopers with rocket launchers, and a shit ton of basic Stormtroopers. Yeah this part was a nightmare.

Level design is actually not bad here. Last time I played this, I seem to remember having minor trouble maneuvering through a couple of the levels (Raxus Prime 1 and Felucia 1 to be specific). Each level is linear like Uncharted, so I don't know why I was having issues before lol.

So the bosses for each level are amazing. Let’s go over boss number 2: Kazdan Paratus. This little fucker was an awesome time to fight. He’s basically Yoda but with robot spider legs. The fight takes place at a junk Jedi Temple council chamber as you’re blasting each other all over the place with epic saber play. Midway through the fight, he’ll retreat to the background and summon a Junk Golem for you to fight. Once you get Paratus to low enough health, a quick time event can be triggered. All of the boss fights end with a quick time event and this is honestly one of the game’s downsides. Like yeah it’s cool to see the interactive cutscene play out, but I feel like the boss fights would be better if the player can finish them off themselves and then you can play out the final fight sequence without the quick time events. I do like how these quick time events are used against bigger enemies (AT-ATs, Rancors, and Sith Rogues) as these are just a pain in the ass to fight, but these should not be used for the main bosses.

Unfortunately the game does have technical issues. Unresponsive controls, glitches and bugs, and the worst one where the frame rate dropped so low that I had to restart the mission because I couldn’t play properly. Or the other glitch that I got where I was fighting the Bull Rancor on Felucia 2 and I was T posing on a bone and I couldn’t move. I had to get hit to get free, but then I died 5 seconds later. There was also clipping on Raxus Prime 1 and 2 and I almost died there. Yeah the game has a lot of issues.

Overall, I had a blast revisiting this game. The story is awesome, action is amazing, bosses are intense, and the music is great. If you’re a Star Wars fan or a fan of the hyper action genre like this, I highly recommend it. I can’t wait to get into the second game, hopefully soon, as I am curious about how this story can continue. [Spoiler Alert: I still have not touched teh second game, even after all these years lmao].

Anyway, thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.