Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Review

  **Be sure to check out the video review!** 

So today I'm reviewing... a Star Wars game? Oh crap. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope...of not filling this review with terrible Star Wars references.

The game in question is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a little ditty that came out a few years back, and is a fun foray into another side of the Star Wars universe.

Is there anything more enjoyable than slaughtering countless Wookiees? Well, maybe Ewoks, but these other hairy guys will just have to do instead.

You take up the role of Starkiller, a secret apprentice to Darth Vader. Vader found you when you were a child, and has been raising you all these years in the hope that one day the two of you would be able to defeat the emperor. To train you towards this purpose, you are sent out to hunt Jedi, which shouldn't be too hard, considering how easy they went down in episode 3.

To help you in your tasks you have two companions: a training droid who is programmed to kill you, while also fulfilling the requisite role of comedic relief; and the lovely Juno Eclipse, your pilot, who fulfills the other requisite role in the Star Wars universe of the love connection that causes a crisis of faith. Juno is the Padme to your Anakin, with a pull stronger than that the Death Star excerts on the Millennium Falcon, and an intensity hotter than the suns of Tatooine. You know what, I think I took that one a little too far.

Additional characters assist you as the game progresses, and the focus of your mission shifts from hunting Jedi to founding a rebellion.

I'd let her be my pilot any day of the week.

 Now make no mistake about it, Unleashed is purely a console game. You'll notice it first in the graphics options, which consist of a high detail check box and no more when starting up the game, and then much more when actually playing. I made it through the first couple of hours using a mouse and keyboard, but never felt I had quite the precision that the game should offer. After switching to a 360 controller, things went much smoother, particularly when using the force to grab and throw objects. The developers should have done more to make a mouse and WASD offer the control that two joysticks do, because it plays really well with the right controls, and poorly without. For example, there comes a point in the game where you have to pull a star destroyer out of the sky, and I'm uncertain you can even complete it without a controller, as you need to be able to hold down on both sticks, or presumably S and pull the mouse constantly back. And yes, I did say pull a star destroyer out of the sky. On that part, the game does not fail to deliver.

Ah, and Luke can't even lift his X-Wing out of a swamp.

Your raw ability set is pretty narrow, since you're limited to the keys on a controller. Besides a dash, lightsaber attack, and jump, you've basically lighting, force push, lightsaber throw, and the aforementioned force grip, though upgraded abilties, as well as the combination of these, grant you access to more inventive ways of killing everything you come across. Its really the combination of various attacks that make the base combat interesting. For example, you can grip an enemy, shoot him with lighting to electrify him, and fling him into one of his buddies, causing the first to explode and the second to take plenty of damage. Pulling of more difficult combos - such as my example, which produces a lighting grenade, a kill or two, and probably a crush bonus - results in greater experience points, allowing you to level up faster.

 

The force is strong with this one.

As you level up or find special objects scattered throughout the various levels, you'll gain points that you can spend to upgrade stats like health or damage resistance, unlock new combo attacks, or increase the raw strength of your abilities. Your choices of what skills you've unlocked, and how you allocate your stats, will play a role in how well you can handle the game as it progresses, and you face more difficult enemies.

The missions themselves all follow the same formula - hack and slash your way to the end, past the mini boss, collect any bonus power ups or complete bonus objectives if you want, until you finally arrive at the end of the level, where you engage in some boss battle. However, when you're playing the actual game, the monotony that my description would seem to convey disappears. Suddenly you are Starkiller, apprentice to Vader, a person so secret that none may know of your existence, and so any that happen to see you, be they imperial or otherwise, must fall to your will. No obstacle is too great for you to overcome, be it that AT-ST you just sliced in half or the giant rancor you stabbed in the eye with your lightsaber, and then electrocuted to death. After a time, you feel that you could take on Alderaan all by yourself, no Death Star required.

There's nothing I can say here that could make that cooler.

The environments are pretty cool. You visit some memorable locations, such as Kashyyyk, Cloud City, and the Death Star, as well as others that aren't part of the movies. Each has its unique style and enemies, and even the few that you do revisit later in the game, are almost completely changed. Even stormtroppers, which appear in almost every level, come in a variety of flavors, helping to mix things up a bit.

When you're not hacking your way through a planet's population, there is a story to follow. Now I'm not such a Star Wars nerd that I could spot the error of using an AT-ST with the incorrect weapon configuration, so I can't tell you how canon this game is, but for the casual fan it does tie in very well with the movies, but is also a great story by itself.

**Warning, this next paragraph contains some spoilers, so if you don't want to risk it, skip down some.**

Later in the game you are offered a choice, with one resulting in the creation of an alternate timeline where Vader is gone and you have replaced him. If that appeals to you, you should get the Ultimate Sith Edition, which adds three additional missions to the game, and is what was available through Steam when I purchased it. In two of those additional missions, you are given the opportunity to explore this timeline through an altered version of Episodes 4 and 5, starting by hunting down droids in a level that includes parts of Episode 6, to fighting Obi-Wan as his party tries to flee Tatooine, to engaging the rebels on Hoth. It makes for a good time and an interesting thought experiment rolled into one.

**Alright, its safe.**

I had picked up this game almost two years ago for $15, which was a good deal at the time. However, more recently I picked up the sequel for $5, during a holiday sale in which the entire franchise was 75% off. You're not like to see that price again for while, but if its been there once, it will be again. Still, the game is worth at least $10-$15 for what you get, so anything less than that is a bonus, but do make sure to get the Ultimate Sith Edition. For my investment, I ended up with a play time around 12 hours, and a pretty good experience. Still, because of the heavy consoleness of it, I'm going to dock it a point off of what it could be, and say its only a 7 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 7/10

Suggested Price: $10-$15, has been lower

Singularity Video Review

The video review for Singularity is now available.

Singularity Review

 **Be sure to check out the video review!**  

So today I'm reviewing a shooter from Activision that isn't something from the Call of Duty series. I know what you're thinking, but apparently they do publish something else. Go figure.

This particular title is known as Singularity - actually developed by Raven Software, and only published by Activision. So there is at least the possibility that it won't suck harder than those pleasant individuals working the street corner exactly 2.7 miles from my house, that I've, um, never visited with before. Right, moving on.

Singularity is set on Kortoga-12, an island that functioned as a top secret Soviet research facility with a goal akin to the Manhattan Project, but has long since been abandoned. You are Capt. Renko, a member of the U.S. military, and are headed to Kortoga-12 as part of a team with the goal of investigating some of the stranger happenings on the island. Of course, during the opening scene, your helicopter goes down during a massive explosion, and you are immediately separated from your team.

Cue generic shooter intro.

Disoriented, hurt, and unarmed, you stumble into one of the buildings on this doomsday island. Notes and recordings, which scatter the island and are a useful tool for additional information, indicate that an accident occurred, and from that point on, Kortoga-12 began dieing. Which is all well and good, considering the goal of the place.

Unfortunately, unless of course you want to actually have a game to play, you manage to change things, when you come across the first of many time skips in the game, one that sends you back to 1955. Apparently you've walked into said accident, and you save the one person you should, because you can't leave well enough alone. Upon returning to 2010, all the notes/recordings speak of a stranger saving one Nikolai Demichev, and how things have been on the up for the island since then. Also the statue in the room you return to switches from Stalin to Demichev, so I guess he ends up being a big deal.

What did your mother tell you about going back in time and changing people's fate?

Quickly you learn just how bad you've screwed things up. See, after he survived, Demichev helped destroy the U.S., with a single E-99 bomb, crafted from material found on the island. Now he is the supreme ruler of the world, and he thinks you have the only item that could challenge him, the Time Manipulation Device, or TMD for people who hate to type/speak several unnecessary words.

The TMD plays a key role in the game, and is part of what gives it such a unique feel. It's got, to be completely honest, a certain Bioshock feel to it, in that you can alternate between a traditional weapon, or the special powers of the TMD. Those special powers include: allowing you to travel between 2010 and 1955 at certain point in the game; changing the age of a large amount objects, which is the key way puzzles are addressed in the game; aging enemies to dust; converting soldiers into particularly nasty mutants that will go after other soldiers; creating a dome that nearly freezes time inside it; grabbing/manipulating objects; changing the phase of certain enemies or pulling objects from other times into the current one; and replacing your standard issue knife with a powerful area attack.

Suck on that, Indiana Jones!

While the TMD is the tool that you use to advance through the game, the way you'll deal with most everything else is by shooting it, probably repeatedly. The standard weapons are all there - pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, minigun, sniper, railgun, grenade launcher, and rocket launcher - but some have particular twists. The sniper rifle, for example, which has a special function when you zoom in that allows you to dilate time, causing everything to slow down - you can actually see some bullets zoom by your face - and line up that perfect shot. It's got a limited duration, but its still a nice feature that differentiates it from the standard "hold breath." Or you could try this game's grenade launcher, where the secondary function fires a grenade you can control, rolling it around, jumping it up over ledges, and generally tearing around like some kind of RC car, until you can set up just the right explosion.

However, the coolest weapon in the game is something quite different. Called the seeker, when zoomed in it fires a single bullet you can steer, as time is slowed down. Yeah, you can fire this baby from around a corner, make a right turn through a door, scout out a room, and then turn around and get that pesky guy hiding behind a crate, all in about the time it takes the enemy to get off a half dozen shots. Awesome. Unfortunately, this isn't a weapon you can haul around the whole game. Instead it only appears in certain spots, and as soon as you switch weapons, such as when you are out of ammo, you drop it back on the ground. Not awesome.

As if it wasn't awesome enough, bullets explode on impact.

Your main weapons, those you can actually keep on you, are stored in a weapons locker, which allows you to switch out with anything you've previously acquired when you chance upon one. Additionally, you can also upgrade weapons, if you find a kit, in one of three categories - damage, reload, and clip size. This is actually an area where Raven failed to capitalize on a great idea. Each gun could have used unique upgrades, a la Bioshock, such as increased explosive radius on the grenade launcher, or increased knockback on the shotgun, and so forth. Luckily they did better on some of the other things you can upgrade about your character, such as a permanent increase to the number of health packs you can carry, or augmentations that make it so you regain TMD power upon killing an enemy. These options are gained by finding blueprints or formulae hidden in the game, and are purchased with E-99, a fictional currency you'll be picking up while you're out hunting ammo, health kits, and TMD energy packs.

What good are all these tools if you don't have a reason to put them to use? Well, you find motivation in that the world has gone to hell, and it is all your fault. So you set out on a quest, traveling between times as necessary, to try and set things straight. You're helped out by an organization that claims to know the truth about the way the world is supposed to be, and one doctor Barisov, the creator of the TMD you've got there.

Did anyone ever stop to ask why a Brit is lurking around a super secret Soviet facility?

Along your way, you'll encounter a variety of enemies. In 1955 you'll face Soviet soldiers, but when you're in 2010, those will be the least of your worries. Apparently the island's inhabitants, both human and non human, have been mutated as a result of some of the other experiments at the island. From your typical creepy crawly, to enemies that can phase in and out of our plane and thus teleport all over, to small critters that attack in swarms and explode, revealing that size doesn't always matter, you can easily bite off more than you can chew. Throw in some bosses, and the mix of techniques required to take down the dozen or so different baddies you'll encounter keeps this game from feeling like you're just killing generic terrorist #2048.

Talk about a face(s?) only a mother could love.

Overall, Singularity is a generally very good game, and while I can honestly believe the creators where fans of Bioshock and Half-Life 2, that in no way detracts from the enjoyment. There are downsides, because nothing is ever perfect, such as some of the games interface choices when interacting with weapons lockers (you have to use the arrow keys), or the limitation to carrying no more than 2 weapons at a time, and not being able to take the most awesome gun in the game with you at all, they really aren't too bad. Unfortunately, the game only took me 7 hours or so to complete on normally, and while size isn't everything, the same can't be said for duration. Multiplayer is there if you truly want more, but that's beyond the scope of what I normally review.

I rate this game a solid 8 - a very ambitious game, and with some pretty cool features and weapons, it makes for an enjoyable experience, albeit not the longest. I believe I picked this up off of Steam in June 2011 for approximately $10, and I wouldn't recommend spending too much more than that, but if you do see it in the neighborhood, and you're a fan of shooters, don't hesitate to pick it up, you won't be disappointed.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 8/10

Suggested Price: $10