"You can't win Starkiller, your game is more buggy than you can possibly imagine..."
In Force Unleashed you play Darth Vaders secret apprentice Starkiller, and accompanied by your ever irritating droid and obvious love interest from the first few moments of the game Juno Eclipse must help purge the world of Jedi for your master. Not everything goes to plan mind and the story begins to throw twists and turns at you from an early stage. Unfortunately though the cast let down an otherwise reasonable plot by having all the appeal of a rotting sheeps carcass that happens to have been chosen as a home by a whole colony of maggots. The characters with a few minor exceptions (one being good ole Vader of course) really, really suck. I hated pretty much all of the major cast members and despite giving them a chance to increase in likeability they didnt manage to improve at all.
But the story and cast aren't my biggest gripe with this game, it's just the general unfinished bugginess that fully condemns it to gaming hell. Picture the scene, your deep in a mushroom filled jungle with all your enemies slain, suddenly from out of nowhere a Rancor burts into view growling with rage and thrashing it's claws around. You aim at the Rancor about to give it a viscious burst of force lightning, you press the button to do so, and all of a sudden you shoot a blast of lightning at a nearby non-threatening toadstool, or maybe a passing insect, or occasionally randomely into the sky, at the same time getting hammered across the map by the Rancor as you utterly missed this huge target for some obscure reason. The horrific targetting system is even more noticable in boss fights which often take place from a zoomed out perspective which on a SD-TV is retina destroyingly tricky to follow as it is, but when you attacking a pillar instead of the boss while he or she is swiftly inserting a lightsaber into your backside things get frustrating quickly. It's unfortunate as when force powers do connect (at least with lesser creatures) the results are impressive and you feel appropriately badass. Unfortunately when a boss is chucking you around an arena like a ragdoll as the camera has decided a chunk of metal is more threatening than the jedi master your battling you feel less so.
Jumping is also a major issue in Force Unleashed aswell as the "platformy" aspects in general. Leaping from platform to platform is all well and good put too often the platforms are fairly undefined and you find yourself falling once more, also the camera has a nasty habit of deciding to be in totally the wrong position for platforming most of the time, making things even more annoying. The games combination of platforms with no edges combined with monsters who often knock you back with their attacks is also a stupid design decision, at one point this drioid flicked me off a cliff repeatedly in about nine attempts at beating him and because your quite often rendered useless by knockback. Your character also staggers once youve been hit so you cant stop the onslaught before falling to your death.
Theres a plethora of other FU issues out there, I fell through the scenary on a few occasions, other times items I picked up randomly flew out of my grip and into the air. Perhaps the most annoying thing here is the game does have potential to be amazingly good fun but the bugginess ruins every last piece of it. The Force is pretty damn weak with this one.