Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

01 Oct 2008 at 13:24:39 by Paul Younger
Systems used to review this title: (DS)

The Force Unleashed is quite a sizable release by all accounts and we’ve been bashing our way through the various versions of the game over the past week. Today we see how The Force Unleashed fares on the humble Nintendo DS  - can it compete with the next-gen versions?

The DS Force Unleashed follows the same storyline as the other ports, you start the game as Darth Vader and then move onto playing his apprentice who’s more than willing to follow the wishes of his ‘master’ by eliminating the other Jedi.

So what makes this game different? Being the DS you’d expect some zany use of the touchscreen   and that’s exactly what the developers have done. The top screen is the main gameplay screen while the bottom touchscreen is where Force powers are activated. All sounds well and good doesn’t it? The problem is that using the D-pad to move and the stylus to use Force powers feels clumsy at the best of times and whacking the touchscreen continually just isn’t as much fun as developer n-Space hoped it would be. 

As you progress more combos are opened up to the player which means more prodding and poking at the screen in an attempt to pull them off. In our opinion the implementation is not the best we’ve seen on the DS; perhaps using the bottom screen as a map (or simple stats read-out) would have made the game a little easier to play. It feels like the developer was determined to use the touchscreen, no matter how it affected the gameplay .

The touchscreen does come into play in a series of what can best be described as ‘mini-games’. During the boss battles,  which involve waving your lightsaber around a lot, the lightsabers can become locked in a stand-off scenario. The touchscreen then changes and there’s some sub-Lucas dialogue along the lines  of “you will never beat me blah blah”. Following the idle Jedi banter,  the two lightsabers appear in the touchscreen and you have to rotate your lightsaber and keep it at a 90 degree angle with the enemy’s . Keep it there long enough and you break the lock. While it works well, it is a distraction from the main boss battle combat.

As with the other versions of the game , your Force powers are used to move objects around, everything from a box to a whole spaceship. When some super force powers are needed to move large objects, the touchscreen then jumps into another mini-game where you have to pull these moving orbs into what can best be described as a Force vortex. Move them into the vortex slowly and the power diminishes which makes the vortex shrink. You need to be quick with the stylus and drag the orbs into the vortex but it’s all too easy and there is no real challenge.  These sections do nothing but interrupt the more playable sections of the game, notably the lightsaber combat.

The scripted finishing moves are also present on the DS version and this is another area where the Force Unleashed falls down. Button bashing is not fun at the best of times and it’s a shame you’re not free to just go for it and finish the foe of in your own style with some cunning combo moves.
Being the DS, the visuals are not great, the screen is actually too small for this game and the camera angle can get confusing, especially around corners. Frustration usually ensues at these points.  There is just not enough fire under the DS bonnet  to give this game the presentation it deserves.  This is to be expected though and, considering what the DS can achieve, it could be a lot worse than it is.

The central hub of the game is your ship where players can change their Jedi outfit as more become unlocked following the defeat of a boss. There’s also the opportunity to bring up further information on your missions through dialogue screens and this is the main link between missions. It’s all very basic but it does help tie things together.

Don’t expect any real surprises with the Force Unleashed, the game is as linear as the Channel Tunnel, it’s also incredibly easy to hack your way through the levels. The size of the actual gameplay areas and the camera angles mean that the only time you’ll take any real damage is if the enemy is off-screen somewhere taking pot-shots.

For Star Wars fans looking for something to bash their way through quickly on the DS then this game could be for you.  Otherwise look for your action fix elsewhere.

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