Should you unleash this force game?

Let me begin this review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Force Unleashed) PS3 review by stating that while I do like the Star Wars movies I am not someone who knows everything about the Star Wars universe. As such, this review will be about the game as a stand-alone piece of entertainment.

First and foremost I will say this is the second most fun game I've played for the PS3 (the most fun being Uncharted: Drake's Fortune). I really enjoyed just playing the game and I've played it two times through so far trying to collect all the extras. With that said, let's dispence with the pleasantries as the Emperor is most displeased with my lack of progress on this review...ahem.

So the first thing that grabs me about games is the graphics. The graphics need to be better than those for last gen gaming consoles. There needs to be fluid animation with the characters and environment. The Force Unleashed certainly met my expectations. While certainly not as good as Drake's Fortune, the graphics are very good and are really only lacking during the cinematics in my opinion. Visually this game is very appealing.

I also enjoyed the limited but fun interaction between Starkiller (you) and the environment. I felt it was pretty decently realistic and helped envelop me into the game. For instance, you can use a "force push" to slam things which can move some things in the environment that don't have a huge impact on the game, such as foliage like trees. You can also "force grab" lots of things and throw them at enemies, especially in structures. You'll be amazed what you can rip out of the wall and throw. Pipes, monitors, chairs, hunks of computer stuff. It's a lot of fun.

The sounds of a game are also important although not as much as graphics in my opinion. I won't spend much time on sounds except to say the music is typical star wars and the light saber sounds are really cool. 'nuff said.

Gameplay is next on my list. If the controls are clunky then the game won't be much fun. I think Starkiller pretty much moves and does what I tell him to when I tell him to do it. The combos you can learn are nice, although there are way too many of them (we'll touch on that later), and overall there's good environmental interaction. The jumps aren't too hard and I don't remember ever really being frustrated at not being able to tell where I was jumping. Maybe a few times but certainly nothing to complain about.

There are tons of upgrades you can get for yourself and your light saber. From what I can tell and what I've read, the lightsaber upgrades are pretty much visual which is disappointing. I've heard the black lightsaber is stronger but I haven't found that one yet.

You can find upgrade points throughout your game which you can use to increase your maximum health, force power, reduce the damage you take, reduce how much force power you use when executing combos, reduce the amount of time it takes to charge your combos and replenish your force power, and you can also just learn attack combos. Personally, I pretty much only used a few combos over and over as there's no way I could remember all of them. This is good because you can use what you like.

The Force Unleashed is also the most unpolished game I've ever played. I've never played a PS3 game, or almost any game since the days of slow-down and flicker, that has been as glitchy as this game. I've been stuck in walls. I've had a boss disappear so I couldn't fight him or be killed and had to restart. It's weird. I've also heard others complain about this. To that respect it's obvious that the developers were forced to release this game unfinished. There's no way these things could have been missed especially since everyone else who has this game has complained about this.

With that said I think this game is worth the $60 price tag because it is just fun to play if not a little short.