Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Sith Edition

“Do or Do Not. There is no try” – Master Yoda.

If only developer Aspyr Media understood these words, we wouldn’t have been so disappointed. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (SW:TFU) came out nearly two years ago for the PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii, DS and ngage (phew), but completely avoided the PC. This didn’t go down too well with PC gamers especially after the game was hailed as the best Star Wars game ever. Being the vocal community that they are, the PC community made their distaste apparent publicly and so after nearly two years Lucas Arts decided to port the game to the PC. Sadly this is nothing but a half hearted attempt at pleasing PC gamers.

When TFU hit the Xbox360 and the PS3 it received mixed reviews. The game looked pretty good and offered players some insanely liberating Force Powers that were brought to life by not one but three physics engines - Havok, Natural motion and Euphoria. Plus you wielded a Lightsaber throughout the game. Could it get any better that that?

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But what made TFU a must have for any self respecting Star Wars fan was its story. Don’t worry; I’m going to keep this review spoiler free but just to give you a gist of things here’s what the game’s premise was. You play as Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Starkiller, (Trivia: Starkiller was the original name for Luke Skywalker) who has been trained to destroy the Emperor. The plot also had some really cool twists and turns along the way capable of pleasing any Star Wars fan.

The game starts off with a bang. You get to play as Darth Vader in the first stage and soon after you step into the boots of the protagonist. Since Starkiller is only an apprentice, it’s obvious you don’t start with all the Sith talents and powers. As the game progresses you get points with which you can level up your Force powers, Force combos and Force talents. The game does get repetitive after a few stages, but as a hardcore Star Wars fan, I loved the boss fights specially the ones where you take on other Jedis.

Now coming to the PC version, TFU is one of the WORST ports in the history of ported games and there’s no easy way of saying that. Since the game looked brilliant on consoles, the PC version could have looked so much better but sadly all you can do is tweak the resolution and brightness in the visual settings. You can’t enjoy more anti-aliasing or even better textures. In fact the game’s so ugly there were times I felt like I was playing a 4 year old game. If that wasn’t bad enough it’s plagued by sudden FPS drops making the experience all the more infuriating and not to mention frustrating.

One thing that shocked me (in a good way of course) were the controls, which were surprisingly good. Sadly the boss fights can get very tricky with a keyboard and mouse but overall they were responsive enough.

Sith edition boasts three stand alone missions – Hoth, Jedi Temple and Tatooine. These stages are difficult but enjoyable as make full use of you force upgrades. Also other loads of Downloadable Content (DLC) are included, like lightsaber colors and outfits, etc.

In conclusion having the potential to be one of the best movie to game adaptation of all time and one of the best games of all times, Force Unleashed didn’t live up to it on consoles. But what makes it worse is the abysmal port for the PC. Easily, Force Unleashed is the worse console to PC port we have ever come across.

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