Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Review

Carrying on from the rather marmite previous entry in the series, The Force Unleashed 2 brings us once again into the shoes of Starkiller; Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. The story see’s the young Starkiller on a more personal journey than the first game, with him on a mission to rescue former love interest Juno Eclipse, and find out if he is indeed a clone, as Vader would have him believe.

The game begins on the rather spectacular looking Kamino system, as seen in Star Wars: Episode Two. Here Starkiller makes his escape and his first step towards finding his identity. The action unfolds in much the same manner as the first game, with Starkiller utilising the Force in unimaginable ways. Unfortunately, it suffers from most of the original titles problems, as well as some of its own.

As before, the mouse buttons and the buttons surrounding WASD control a different Force power, ranging from Force Push, to the newly added Mind Trick. These are marvelous to look at and the destruction you bring will likely bring a few smiles.  The problem is, it’s just as tricky to perform them as before, with the targeting system - though it has been improved - still proving more of a menace than the Stormtroopers you’ll be going up against.
The Euphoria engine is present here, showing your Force wielding destruction in all its glory, with less ‘canned’ damage than appeared in the original title. It also means the Stormtroopers are still going to be grabbing on for dear life as you push them off ledges. This is where The Force Unleashed’s biggest fun factor lies - experimenting on the hordes of standard Stormtroopers with different combinations of powers.

The lightsaber also is more effective than previously, with it slicing limbs off all over the place, and looking less like a glow in the dark baseball bat. Starkiller rocks his two lightsabers with style, and glides all over lopping limbs off and tossing them at distant foes.

As I was playing on PC, I intended on playing with a gamepad, but unfortunately, my (now defunct) 360 controller was a no-go. As I was left to use mouse and keyboard, I was expecting the platforming sections to be a pain, but it turns out the mouse was a sharper method of camera control than an analogue stick, an odd occurrence with a platform action game.
Being on the PC, it also looks better than its console counterparts, with higher resolution textures and smoother framerates (should your PC be able to handle it). It runs better than the orignal game did on the PC and is less of a resource hog. The original had some bad slowdown moments for us, but this one ran silky smooth from start to finish.

During your travels you’ll be visiting Kamino, Cato Neimoidia, a brief trip to Dagohba, a fight through an increasingly dull spaceship interior, and back to Kamino. While this keeps things short and sweet, which is nice and doesn’t force return visits to all planets as the original did, it does keep things to roughly six hours on a hard playthrough.

Short playthrough or not, the time we had with Force Unleashed 2 wasn’t without problems. There were constant bouts of being stuck on scenery and falling to death because the camera was locked on a wall, and not the gap we were trying to jump across.

The fabled ‘Star Destroyer sequence’ should have been the original games masterclass moment, but it fell massively short and was met with much criticism. The sequel has moments like this, but they aren’t frustrating at all, they’re actually too easy; so while they look spectacular, you feel no sense of power, no sense of being the all-powerful Starkiller.
Problems and short length aside, we’re a little bit Star Wars mad here at GameOn, and if you’re the same as us, you’ll likely find the beautifully realised worlds, the set-pieces and the voince acting/story acceptable. It’s at times better than the new trilogy. The only problem with the story, is there’s no real resolution. The questions that are asked to the midway point are never answered, and you’re left wanting more. Unfortunately, with staff leaving the development team recently, there are doubts about the future of the series.

With no real resolution to the story in place, and the series’ future unknown, it’s hard to recommend it to newcomers to Star Wars, but fans will likely eat it up and fill in the blanks themselves. While this isn’t ideal, there’s not much else to be done with the series’ future in doubt.

With that in mind, I will recommend TFUII to anyone who enjoyed the first, and Star Wars fans in general. There’s something here to like, whether it’s the story, the action, the hidden lightsaber upgrades or the simple fact you want to raise some hell with the Force, there’s something in there for you.