The highly anticipated sequel The Force Unleashed 2 finally made its way to stores last week on October 26th. I tried to get my hands on the game as fast as possible so I could get this review out for you guys. It took a couple of days but I did finally get it. As soon as I did I dove right into it. With so much hype and expectations based off how great the first one was it was hard not to hold The Force Unleashed 2 up to a certain standard.
Gameplay – 10 out of 10
First off the gameplay is virtually identical to the first, there are few new moves as well a couple that seem to have disappeared from the game, one being the lightning shield/ball you could place around yourself in the first. This appears to be gone from the game which I was not to upset about considering I felt it was a worthless move. Anyways they seem to have replaced it with Jedi Mind Trick which is very helpful especially when you are going against a rather large mob. If you spend the time and level up Jedi Mind Trick you can control up to three enemies, very helpful, especially in the final fight of the game. Along those same lines they have made it so if you level up your force grip you can also pick up three objects or three enemies at once, I know awesome. All in all if you liked the first one as far as controls and gameplay goes you’ll enjoy this one as well.
Graphics – 10 out of 10
Who is honestly surprised to find out they are absolutely beautiful. The entire look of the game is amazing; they really nailed it which again is nothing new for these new games that are coming out.
Story – 4 out of 10
This is where the game falls short the most in my honest opinion. The first one pulled you in and really gets you interested in the story. This one it is very one dimensional in the way that Starkillers only main focus in this entire game is to save Juno. While that’s all fine and dandy they miss a lot of other opportunities as well. For instance the rebellion and what has happened during the time Starkiller was away. They barely touch on this when they could go into greater detail. This ultimately draws on another flaw of the game which I will be talking about in more detail shortly. The story was just lacking, I almost didn’t care if Juno was to get killed or not. The entire focus was on her and only her. At least the ending I saw – I have only seen one so far I am working on my second playthrough as we speak – did not ruin anything as far as the movies are concerned. I do however plan to choose the other ending in this play through but I am keeping my hopes high they won’t hurt the movies in the least. As a huge Star Wars fan I was actually bored with the story and that is saying a lot coming from someone that actually enjoyed the prequels (it’s very true).
Acting – 6 out of 10
I’m not sure if I should loop this into the story or not but hey I’m trying a new format out for reviews so bare with me (which by the way I’d love to receive feed back for). Anyways, the acting in this one was close to on par with the first except a few more WHERE IS SHE!!!! and NOOO WE WILL NOT RETREAT!!! Kota could not have been more over the top with his acting. I still don’t get why they can’t have these actors really act and not just read a script and try and play along. I don’t think these actors are being paid with hopes and dreams so please developers/publishers whatever make them act.
Length – 4 out of 10
My other big hang up… While I know the first one wasn’t exactly the longest game in the world it still had enough length to really build the story, maybe that is why this one’s story was so lacking to me as well, the game was a whole 6 or 7 levels long and I’m already almost finished with my second playthrough yes… it is that short and easy. One of the levels I was most looking forward to which was Dagobah was the shortest of them all with you not even fighting any enemies… That may be a spoiler but guess what it’s true better learn it now then expect some epicness and get squat. I’d much rather them give us scaled down graphics if it meant the game would be longer and the story would be better.
Replayability – 8 out of 10
While the length is really short because of how fun the gameplay is I would say you could easily play the game a few times through and have fun every time. I’m currently on my second playthrough and it doesn’t change the fact that I still love throwing stormtroopers off the end of the building or using Jedi Mind Trick on them. They also added a little Challenge mode for people as well, I’ve only done a couple challenges but they are quite fun and you get to see where you rank on the scoreboards compared to your friends and other people over the PlayStation Network.
Difficulty – 8 out of 10
Now I played my first run through on Medium and it was relatively difficult but not overly difficult – I plan on doing a Unleashed playthrough soon – Upon beating it on medium I went back through and flipped it too easy so I could get a few clean up trophies and I must say the easy difficulty setting is beyond easy. Within two hours of play I had almost beat the game again without even thinking about it. I highly recommend playing the game on medium or higher if you like at least a little bit of a challenge. Based off how the medium difficulty played out I feel it is safe to say that the unleashed difficulty will be pretty great challenge for me and I can’t wait to give it a shot. I haven’t wanted to throw my controller in awhile so I might as well start now.
Overall – 7.1 out of 10
I had a lot of hopes for this game and while the gameplay, the looks and replayablity are all there, I just don’t see myself sitting through the story again. Meaning I will skip whenever I can just so I can get back into slicing stormtroopers up with my lightsabers and using my force powers on them. This might of all been avoided if they made the game just a little bit longer and really stretched the story out and/or just expanded on the story some more. The possibilities with the Star Wars universe are almost endless and they seemed to miss the beat just a little bit with this one. While I’ll say any Star Wars fan would truly enjoy this game I still feel they would be bored with the story aspect of it. With that being said I would highly suggest this game as a rental for anyone based off how short the game actually is. If you are a trophy collector I would still even suggest this as a GameFly rental as you could/should be able to platinum this game within two weeks of play.
