Star Wars The Force Unleashed - Review
The Wii U got very few Star Wars games, in fact outside of Star Wars Pinball, there were no other titled games from a galaxy far, far away on the platform. Switch on the other hand, has a so many Star Wars games, it is getting harder and harder to keep up and almost all of them are coming from Aspyr. The Force Unleashed is the latest game to get the Switch treatment, but is the force truly with this release?
The story here is interesting, because when the game was created, it was a canon tale, that Darth Vader had a secret apprentice and using them for his own goals, kick started the rebel alliance in order to seek out all those who would oppose the empire. As an over arching story it was one worth experiencing, because it filled in some of the gaps between Episodes 3 and 4, but then Disney bought Lucasfilm and decided it wasn’t the truth, even though George Lucas came up with the story, so in the end it is a more like a What if? scenario. Even with that little bit of drama, the story that is told is interesting, as Vader’s Secret Apprentice, who technically doesn’t get a name until the second game, the goal is simple, hunt down Jedi and take them out, along with everyone who gets in the way. Supporting your mission is the droid Proxy, who is equipped with devices that let him become anyone through projections and your new pilot, Juno Eclipse, who is replacing the last one that Vader killed. While the other console versions had more story beats, the game does manage to make sense, but there are times when it seems to just jump from point to point, which can make you feel like you are missing things, but you aren’t.
On the gameplay side of things, its part action game and Stormtrooper throwing simulator, when you are not doing the latter, the former is where you will spend most of your time. Apart from the opening mission, where you get to play as Darth Vader, you are always playing as his apprentice and while you can upgrade abilities, giving you some idea of control, most of the time, you can just mash the attack button. You can mix up using your lightsabre in a few ways, the first is by throwing it and of course, impaling enemies with it, or throw down some force lightening as the finisher to your combo. The game does allow you to lock onto enemies as well, which is great for when you just want to wale on them, because if you don’t and they move, you can easily find yourself attacking in a random direction for a few moments. As you progress through the game, you will unlock more combos that you can execute, just a few though, there isn’t 66 to execute. I mostly played the game with the Pro Controller, but I did detach some JoyCon to test out the motion and it works, swinging the right JoyCon has your character swing a lightsabre, just like you would expect. Throwing it, picking up items or enemies and such require a little more understanding when using motion controls, but it works fine, I just that like Skyward Sword HD, there was a version that combined both motion and regular controls, because swinging a controller for a lightsabre never gets old.
Lightsabres are fun, but it is the force powers that are where you can really let lose, while the Wii version and as such the Switch version, don’t have the same level of immersion that the Euphoria engine gave the other versions of the game, you can still do a lot. As I mentioned earlier, one of the best things to do is pick up enemies and throw them off ledges, this was a technique that I loved to make use of, when the game would present enemies that could block my lightsabre. The other method of picking things up is by picking things up, from containers to explosive barrels, droids and more, being able to lob them into groups of enemies never got old. What did get old was the games ability to identify the right thing to pick up, there were a lot of times when I would be looking at an object, the force glow would be around it, but then the game would pick up another nearby item instead, if it was a once or twice thing, it would be ok, but it happened a lot.
Random force selection wasn’t the only issue that I encountered with the game, the worst and more repeating issue was when enemies would spawn in at random. There are times, when you need to clear rooms of a set number of enemies, as indicated by the progress bar on the bottom of the screen, those are fine. The enemies appearing would be when I moved the camera away from a wall and then the enemy would spawn behind me, or there were times when it would be in front. This meant that I had to keep paying attention to my surroundings, in order to ensure I wasn’t jumped by some random enemy that the game popped in behind me. Instant enemy generation wasn’t the only issue that I encountered, there were a few times when the game would snap to a cutscene, which in turn made me think that the game was skipping parts of the level, it isn’t, but the cuts are so hard, that it is easy to see how I could think that.
On the presentation side of things, there is some good and some bad, but let’s get this out of the way first, yes this is an upgrade of a Wii game. While the Wii was not the most powerful of consoles, the folks at Krome Studios, did manage to create a visual style that evoked the other platforms, but made use of what the console could do. The Switch adaptation takes it a little further, enhancing things like proper widescreen support and elements like better reflections, but that is really all it does there. The issues that the Wii version had with elements like draw distance haven’t been fixed here at all, the LOD (level of detail) is the radius around your character where items are populated, in most cases it loads better looking textures when you get closer to things. Here it has a weird thing where outside of that radius, the game refuses to load any decorative items, like plants, boxes and such, but when they had to come in, they would grow out of the ground. When you visit places like Felucia or Kashyyyk, places abundant in plant life, it isn’t so bad, it had a natural look, but when you are running around imperial complexes or places like Cloud City, it looks so wrong.
The game honestly does look good though, you will notice issues with the backgrounds betting low in their detail, they set the scene, but anytime the camera gets to close, you will see the pixels. The same can be said for the characters, Proxy and Juno look the best, outside of the Apprentice, but Bail Organa, Leia, Mon Mothma and Vader all look good as well. The catch is anytime their faces change, well not so much with Vader, but when the faces change, there isn’t anything that connects one expression to the other, so it just jumps between them. There is one issue though, that needs to be address and that is the size of the HUD, it is massive and given that it is almost always on, that is a bit much. The menus are also large, though given you won’t spend a lot of time in those, it isn’t a big issue there. The HUD contains all the information you need, it just needs to be a little smaller.
On the sound side of things, the game sounds exactly like Star Wars, it has the epic music that makes Star Wars, but it also has the right sound effects to go along with it. Blasters still sound great, turbo lasers as well and in the final level, running around the Death Star sounds great as well. The voice work is great, Sam Witwer does a great job as the Apprentice, with his range of emotions growing as the character grows. Much like when the game jumps into cutscenes though, the game audio does also jump around at times, but the audio mix is so smooth, you will hardly notice it.
Star Wars The Force Unleashed for Switch is a solid port of a good game, those who have never played this version before, but have played the other console versions maybe let down by the lack of Euphoria, but beyond that it tells the same story and lets you throw Stormtroopers off ledges. The motion controls work fine and while not my preferred way of playing the game, will work should you choose to stick with them. The visuals are perhaps the area that fails this game the most, there is no denying it was a Wii game to begin with, but there appears to be very little done to make the game look better, beyond proper widescreen support. If you are looking for a good Star Wars adventure, I can highly recommend it, but if you have experience this tale before, the galaxy far, far away has other stories to enjoy.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Aspyr
The Pros
+A decent adventure that lets you wield the force in fun ways, more so with motion controls
+The story moves along at a brisk pace, ensuring that you don’t get bogged down…
The Cons
-… that fast pace though, does sometimes feel like you are missing parts of the story
-There is a lot of weird visual issues that are present throughout the game
