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Star
Wars: The Force Unleashed II
By Jay Williams
The Star Wars Saga continues with the beautifully
crafted Star Wars: The Force Unleased II.
The game sees players assume the role of Darth
Vaders, now fugitive apprentice Starkiller who is on a journey to
discover his own identity and reunite with his one true love, Juno
Eclipse.
Once again you are the pawn of Darth Vader – but
instead of training his protégée as a ruthless assassin, the dark lord
is attempting to clone his former apprentice in an attempt to create
the ultimate Sith warrior.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II features the
same exaggerated Force abilities with the exception of a few new
abilities.
This time around Starkiller can use his Jedi Mind
Tricks to turn enemies against one another and even make then jump to
their death. There is also the addition of Force Fury, which gives you
more powerful strikes with the lightsaber and increased Force powers.
LucasArts have done a great job in improving
precision and controls of your Force powers. The improved targeting
system makes using your Force powers a bit easier and a whole lot of
fun.
However, the fun does become a bit repetitive, you
find yourself slashing and Force pushing your way through wave after
wave of Stormtroopers, which is fun for the first hour but it kind of
drags after that and there isn't much outside of the combat. The
puzzles and platform elements of the game could have been better and a
lot more challenging.
Aside from that Force powers look amazing, using
your Force push to throw groups of enemies off ledges or use your Force
lighting to fry a group of Stormtroopers is great and the inclusion of
dismemberment and decapitation is pretty cool also.
Another new inclusion to the game is the ability
to wield duel lightsabers which allows you to use a whole new set of
combos to punish your enemies with, you can also customise your
lightsaber with power-enhancing crystals that you find throughout the
numerous levels.
These crystals give you anything from extra Force
points for destroying your environment to extra health points received
for killing your enemies.
The levels in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
are beautiful to look at and give a great illusion of space and scale.
But after awhile you realise there is a bit of smoke and mirrors going
on, with repeated buildings and environmental portions that pretty much
look the same.
Another thing that was a bit of a shame was the
length of game play, the story took around six hours to complete on
normal.
Also, character leveling didn't feel as rewarding
as it did in the previous game. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
starts with you being pretty powerful from the get go and from there
you just become way to powerful in such a short time making the game a
little bit too easy and taking away from the character leveling in the
process.
Overall, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is a
great game visually and the combat is fun for the most part but there
could have been more variation. The story wasn't the greatest and could
have been a bit more beefy in terms of content. Also, I think the game
could have done a better job in pacing out your Force powers so that
you weren't so strong so early in the game.
Let's just hope the next installment is better
than this one.
Game: Star Wars: The Force
Unleashed II
System: Xbox 360
Developer: LucasArts
Distributor: Activision
Rating: 65%
(Ratings Key/Explanation)
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