An embarassment compared to the previous two titles. Things start off well with interesting characters and a half decent story, but none of that matters when you realise 99% of the gameplay involves you driving to one place, killing a set amount of guys, then driving to another place, and killing a set of guys, ad nauseum. Add in the games severe problems on launch and it currently being the only game I have ever played that will cause anything i'm viewing on my second monitor to lag, as well several bugs and features still being a problem. As an example, The AI on hard find it a suitable tactic to either just sit behind cover and potshot you for eternity with 0 accuracy, or storm you with suicidal intent. That's not an example of 'hard' difficulty, that's overly simple and inexcusable for a publisher this big. What an utter dissapointment, a game worthy of stripping its name entirely to not disrespect its heritage further.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is an action-packed, over-the-top hack-and-slash game. If ever you wanted to slice right through an AT-AT with your lightsaber or fling Storm Troopers around with your force powers, then this might be the Star Wars game for you. Unfortunatley it does suffer many techincal problems, framerate issues, and does not play well with Radeon-based graphics cards. The game picks up where they first title left off. You play Starkiller, the apprentice of Darth Vader as he struggles with his own personal identity, and his place in aiding the Rebellion. There are multiple endings, but the game is short and at times frustrating, so the replay value is low. It only takes around five hours to play through the game and much of is taken up by repetitive boss battles that start off interesting, but become an exercise in frustration afrer repeating the same mechanic four or five times.
Star Wars - The Force Unleashed has you play the role of Vader's secret apprentice, hunting rebels and Jedi down throughout the galaxy. While it sounds amazing, and in parts it is, this game has a number of issues resulting from being a console port: 30 FPS cap, clunky control scheme, and notoriously poor optimisation at launch (thankfully, this last point is not relevant on modern hardware). While there are still some very questionable design choices in this game (the Star Destroyer level comes to mind, as well as the Jedi mind trick section in the Jedi Temple DLC), for the most part, the game does a good job at making you feel like a powerful badass, destroying everything in your wake. The biggest pity about the story is the fact that it is no longer canon - although how much this matters to the average player is open to debate. Recommended to Star Wars fans and those with some patience to get it working properly.
The final game changed my opinion about it so unbelievably quickly. It is (still) unbelievably broken, the A.I. always magically knows where you are at. It, can even see through walls. The hitboxes don't make any sense, and a lot of other problems. It is just ridiculous and expansive.
As an RPG, SF3 is a solid game with an interesting over-arching story, believable characters, a lot of lore and deep systems. As an RTS, it is a unique if at times frustrating tactical game focused on a clever use of limited number of resources and building a working infrastructure. While each one of its parts might not hold out against a “pure” game of respective genre, the mix makes the game something uniquely fulfilling.
