Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II 6.0


Gameplay



Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II wasn't the best Star Wars game to come out this year by far. It has it's up and downs but overall the game just isn't that good. The story line is pretty sorry and there is no real huge goal you're working towards. You spend most of the game wondering if your character, Starkiller, is a clone of the original Starkiller from the first game, or if he actually survived and you're just being brainwashed into thinking you're a clone. There's a good bit of unnecessary confusion on who you really are. Not everything in this game is bad though, there are some things that make this game somewhat worth playing, so let's get started!

(WARNING: Spoilers!)
The game opens up with a scene of Darth Vader arriving at Kamino. He comes into a holding area where you, Starkiller, are located. He informs you that you've been in isolation for a period of time which is meant to be part of your training as a deadly, Sith assassin for Vader. He also mentions you are a clone of the original Starkiller from the first game. It helps if you've played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed before playing the sequel, so for the sake of time, I will explain everything from here on out from the viewpoint of someone that has played the first game and assume that you, the reader, are familiar with the story so far. Vader explains your mission to execute General Kota who has been captured by Imperial Troops. He give you your lightsabers, (that's right, Lightsaber(s)!) and you begin a training exercise before you leave to complete your mission. The training exercise is basically there to familiarize you with how the controls work and basic combat. When you finish, you're off to do Vader's bidding... or so you might think. You turn on Vader pretty quickly and escape Kamino after fighting your way off the planet. From there on you spend the rest of the game looking for Juno Eclipse, the former Imperial pilot that flew your ship for you in the first game. Why are you looking for her? Because you love her, and you want to get to her before Vader does. Your mission in this game isn't to assassinate high profile targets for Vader or anything like that really. You do wind up in some difficult, sticky situations however. The boss battles are fun and most are challenging. Some get to be aggravating, such as the final boss battle with Darth Vader, where you do the exact same thing over and over again until you finally get his health low enough to move onto the next scene, then you start over again doing the same thing over and over again.



Since this is a review and not a walkthrough, I won't talk too much about what each mission entails, but more about the game as a whole. You have the ability to dual wield lightsabers in this game and you are able to customize each one individually. You must find color crystals which also grant special effects. For example, there's a green crystal you can find that allows you to have a green lightsaber, and also allows a few points of health regeneration. The color crystals are usually related to what special effects they allow. Green is usually health related, blue is force related mostly, yellow, red,and orange colors have more combat, physical related bonuses. You get the idea. There is also a rare black lightsaber crystal you can find as well as white and silver. Along with having lightsaber crystals to find, there are also Blue Bacta tanks which increase your maximum force points and green bacta tanks which increase your maximum health. You can also find jedi holocrons that allow a large amount of extra force points you can use to upgrade your force powers.



Having the ability to dual wield lightsabers changes the way you attack from the way you did in the first game. Lightsaber combat looks really nice and you start to get the hang of combinations after you've played enough. The problem however, with the lightsaber combination attacks, is the fact that there are a lot of them. You will most likely pick out your favorite three or four combo's and use mostly those throughout the game. You can also use force powers just as you could in the first game and combine them with your lightsaber to create special, high damage, large area attacks such as charging up your lighstaber with lightning, or force push, or both even. The uniqueness of the combinations of attacks is one of the better aspects of this game. There's also a helpful thing called force sense that allows you to find your way to your objective if you get lost.



Outfits are still in the game but there are far less to get since there are less levels in this game than there were in the first. The game is also lacking in epic jedi vs. jedi lightsaber battles. They're in the game, but most of boss fights are against creatures and not jedi. Mainly since you're not out to do Vader's wishes in this game, but to find Juno Eclipse.

Overall this game is good in terms of the melee combat, but the storyline just isn't there. Spending the entire game to "save" a girl that you don't know for sure is even alive, and throwing away the Rebel Alliance you created in the first game, just doesn't create a good story most people would want to follow. As I played this game, most of the fun I had was just killing storm troopers in as many different unique ways as I could. It felt similar to a Grand Theft Auto game after you've beaten it every way possible and now you just drive around blowing stuff up and killing people in funny ways. Minus the sandbox environment of course. There is a lack of different environments to play in as well. There aren't as many different planets with different climates and such to play through like there were in the first game. On the bright side, the environments you do play in look very nice. The graphics of this game were nicely done. It does feel like this game was rushed out to the market though, and not much time was put into it. I beat the game somewhere around 4-5 hours of gameplay, and I took my time. This game is beatable in 3 hours, maybe less if you're familiar with it and don't waste time finding jedi holocrons. I wouldn't suggest paying anymore than $30.00 for this game. I bought it a week after it came out and was disappointed to see how short the game was and how bad the story was. It wasn't worth my $60.00. Star Wars fans, if you don't want to buy this game, don't feel like you have to. Lucasarts could have taken more time with this and made it much better. I can't say I'd actually recommend this game to anyone. I'd say just stick with the first installment.

System	Genre	Moral Scale	Ages	Game Score	Hours Played	Players
PS3 (Also on: Xbox 360, PC, Wii, PSP)	Action	Good	13+ (Use Caution)	6.0	4-9 Hours	1 - 2 players (some game modes allow 2 player duels)