Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Hands On

NZGamer was fortunate enough to attend Activate ’08 – a three day over-view of Activision / Blizzard’s gaming titles set for launch leading up to Xmas. This is what we saw...

On the second day of presentations, we were taken to Waiheke Island by LucasArts where they show-cased their up-coming games in a wine cellar. I’ll be honest, when the doors slammed shut behind us and we realized we were in a dark basement with ominous music playing the background - I started to fear for the worst. Luckily it wasn’t long before the lights came on so I picked myself up off the floor and tried to pretend I was doing up my shoelace.

Although far from a sci-fi setting, the vineyards still made a great backdrop for the Star Wars titles they had on show. Taking place after Episode III, the Force Unleashed is a third person action game that puts the player in the Sith booties of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. As the name implies, this is a Star Wars game as you have never witnessed before. The Force, the mystical powers of the Jedi and Sith, are now on steroids and you can now harness these powers with uber consequences. Fans may have seen footage of players picking up Tie-Fighters and hurtling them into enemies and the downloadable demo is proving popular (albeit a bit short lived). On top of your light-saber, you can chose to choke, throw and lightning bolt anyone you see - essentially making you a one man army.

Graphically on the next-gen consoles, the game is beautiful to watch. Throwing poor Wookies through trees results in splinters of wood flying through the air and the developer’s are very proud of their new Proprietary fx engine that displays different material properties from glass through to plant matter. Although the enemy AI looked a bit dense, every character in the game has incredibly life-like rag-doll physics and often when picking up enemies they try to grab hold of nearby objects. Sometimes this even means grabbing hold of a fellow solider who was unfortunate enough to be standing next to them.

LucasArts have also worked hard on creating a thrilling story that fits snuggly into the Star Wars tapestry and fans have been promised a great twist at some point in the plot. Essentially this is the game that many Star Wars gamers have been waiting for – the chance to be a full-powered Jedi (or Sith) and just run around doing mad-skills with the Force.

For more from Activate '08, visit our Activate '08: Full Coverage Feature.