Game Review: Star Wars the Force Unleashed II by Justin

Finally Star Wars the Force Unleashed 2 is out. Or Star Wars F U 2 as I call it. The wait is over!!! The first game came out with such a bang that it's pretty hard to top what it did. The revelations of the Star Wars mythos that the game brought forth were pretty epic. There will be some spoilers for the first game in this particular review due to the fact that this game pics up not to far after the events after F U one.

Starkiller is back as the Jedi without a cause. Off on an adventure to get revenge on Darth Vader for destroying his life. He's on a journey to get back the love of his life, Juno Eclipse. You start off in the beginning a slave to lord Vader. One thing worth mentioning is that you are not the same Starkiller from FU one. Starkiller met his demise, sacrificing himself to start the rebel alliance at the end of the first game. You are in fact a clone. Vader has been on a mission to create the perfect secret apprentice. You become self aware and learn that every other clone has been killed by Vader, because they went insane caused by haunting memories from the original Starkiller.

You flee the cloning labs on Kamino. You may remember this waterlogged planet from Episode II. You head off to find your Jedi mentor Rahm Kota, he's been captured and is being forced to battle in a gladiator like execution.
Once reunited you head off to find Juno. On the way to finding Juno, you do some soul searching by ways of the Tree of Evil on the planet Dagobah. Jedi master Yoda, now in exile guards the tree and invites you to find what answers you seek. This is very much like Luke's training session in Empire Strikes Back, where he goes into the very same tree. The vision leads Starkiller to a massive rebel alliance space station, where he finds Juno, just in time to be kidnapped by the merciless bounty hunter Boba Fett. Fett has been hired by Vader to lure you back to him. You go on another journey to rescue Juno and in the process cross lightsabers with none other than Darth Vader himself. I won't spoil what happens next.

The story in this game if very compelling. It's not quite as long as the first game. I finished it in about 5 hours or so. The acting is as amazing as it was in the first game. Sam Witwer is brilliant as Starkiller. His performance is very real and compelling. Not to mention his likeness is amazing. The character model is fucking gorgeous. It probably has the best hair I've seen in a game.

The gameplay has been enhanced. Many more combo's to play with this time around. The addition of a second lightsaber really makes the fighting a visual treat. There are new abilities such as the mind trick, which can be used to trick enemies to kill themselves or turn on there friends. It comes in handy. The ability to add force push into saber combo's is pretty nice too. New grapple moves have been added. They are pretty cool to watch, and are extremely effective to perform... too effective. I tried to limit using them to keep the game more challenging.

The game's menu is streamlined and much easier to navigate. There are still 2 menu's to choose from. One with the Select button, the other with the Start. This time around there are no annoying load times to hinder you though.

There are unlockable challenge levels for you to try out. Each has a bronze to platinum ranking, and your score is compared to those of everyone on the Playstation network. Some challenges are pretty difficult though. I threw my controller against the wall out of anger and rage and, the R1 button popped out. It popped back in and works fine, but now i have a stupid crack in my controller to remind me to throw a shoe or something instead!!

Like the original there are a plethora of costumes and outfits you can unlock. 2 of which are ported over from your save file from the first game if you have one. That is a feature I was specifically crossing my fingers for. Speaking of porting over. I played the demo a few times and I guess my stats carried over. There were a few trophies I was awarded for killing enemies certain ways 10 times each. I only did them 3 or 4 times in the actual game and I got the trophy. I thought that was neat.

I have high hopes for future downloadable content for this gem. The original had new levels and costumes. I'm sure this will as well. The trophies for FU 2 are all in game. Unlike it's predecessor, which had multiple mandatory trophies from download only levels. If you've been reading other reviews of mine, you would know I absolutely hate that. It is fucking dogshit. There are people in the world that do not have the internet, or do not want to purchase additional content. There should not be mandatory trophies for online only content. Unless the entire game is online... that's of course okay lol.

This game's graphics are stellar. Starkiller looks amazing, I can't say that enough. The level design is pretty grand. The level selection is kind of small though. Compared to the first game where you traveled to several locales, from the Wookie homeworld to the Death Star. This time around most of the story takes place on 3 stages. Kamino, Cato Nemoidia, The Salvation (the space station where Juno is), and back to Kamino.

There is not a whole lot of variety in terms of enemies. You mostly kill Stormtroopers of varying types and giant Robots. Unlike the variety of the robot fights in the first game, where you had to do context sensitive finishers, there is only 1 each. There are new "Terror" types, which consist of dudes in armor and battle droids. One thing I noticed is that all there helmets/heads are similar to General Grievous. It's nothing major, just something I thought was particularly cool.

If I was to review the first F U, which I still may do, because I still play it fairly often. I would rate it an 9. The only real problems I had with 1 are load times. Also enemies are kind of bland. There were plenty of them and they were fun to fight. Perhaps bland was the wrong word to use. Each stage had it's own light, medium and, heavy hitters, which were pretty much all the same style of warrior just with different character models. I just find it lazy on the developers end. Marvel Ultimate Alliance had this same issue.

I'm going to give F U 2 an seven out of ten. The shortness of the game and lack of enemy selection and levels hinders it more than I'd like to admit. I love this game, I will be playing it often as well. I just really really hope that the DLC includes new levels. The game feels like it was cut off kind of early.

Something I noticed after I finished the game as well, is that everything from the trailers is not in the game at all. There are similarities, such as the arena where you fight a monster that eats Rankor's. But the set up for that is not like the preview at all. The second big trailer, looked like it was going to be the opening to the game. Again, it's similar but at the same time, not even close. I will post the videos as a reminder. So that when you finish the game you can look back and compare for yourself. Personally I think the game had some semi last minute re-writes to make a deadline or something. That would explain the lacking of levels and enemies. Oh well. The third one will be the best one in the series, if and when it arrives.

I don't want to sound like I'm ragging on this game though. It is extremely fun to play, and well worth it to play if you are a fan of the first game.

Star Wars the Force Unleashed II gets a 7/10

-Justin


This is the first trailer that was released...



This is the trailer I mentioned that seemed like it would open the game...



This isn't in the game either, it's just a tv spot, but still pretty fucking cool to watch...



This is another tv spot, that is fucking badass!




And last but not least, this is the latest trailer for the final version of the game!