Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a game with notable flaws in the form of glitches, but it also provides a remarkable amount of fun and entertainment in spite of its technical hiccups.

After a fan-pleasing opening level, you're dropped into the shoes of Darth Vader's secret apprentice, sporting the slightly cheesy name of Starkiller. For those that played the demo, you'll feel a little under dressed power-wise when you get going, but it's alleviated quickly. You get upgrade points to spend as you level up, which is based on earning XP in the form of Force Points. Use fancier combos, kill enemies in quick succession and do so with a chip on your shoulder to earn more points and level-up faster. This is hardly a new system to those familiar with the Devil May Cry series, but TFU isn't as demanding about it.

Primary complaints I've heard about the gameplay involve the lightsaber not having enough oomph to it, the expedience of fading bodies and the lack of diced up Stormtroopers. LucasArts was clearly going for the T rating and while it would be nice to send arms and heads flying once you've depleted an enemies health bar, it's not a large enough minus to really impair the game.

The graphics are pleasing, though not particularly impressive, but they're very authentic to the source material. All the environments have a particularly star-warsy feel to them. The sound, background music excluded, is top notch. It would have been inexcusable for anything else, with LA having access to all that they do. The music needs to be considered separately. When the theme fired up for the opening crawl, I was four years old again and couldn't help but smile, but there really isn't any new music in the game. That would have been nice.



On the flipside, there are some graphical glitches with the lightsaber trails that don't break the game, but also don't do it any favors. In the 360 version I got some horrendous, flickering posterization in the pre-rendered cutscenes (which wasn't in the PS3 version), but in the PS3 version I hit areas of noticeable slowdown. While the framerate isn't flawless in either, the PS3 had a slightly harder time with it. Neither console, for installs or "faster" DVD drives, has very good loading times.

Euphoria and Digital Molecular Matter get their own paragraph. Euphoria handles AI, and initially it struck me as making everyone stupid. Later I realized that these Stormtroopers without cover have one hope to save their lives: shoot the jedi. If shooting the jedi doesn't work, they either run for it or shoot more. They were good at taking cover behind non-static objects that normal game AI might have ignored, grabbing them elicited different quips and it genuinely does keep their behavior more variable than other games. DMM makes slamming things into other things more enjoyable. Doors can be smashed open, glass breaks and walls dent when you pound some hapless peon against them, making doing all these things more satisfying. Neither technology is perfect, or capable of making a bad game good, but they make a decent game like TFU a little better. I'd like to see more games use these engines and see the engines improve over time.

If you like Star Wars and action games, TFU is something you'll enjoy. I suggest waiting for it to drop a little in price (and maybe have a patch as well).