Wielding a nuke in a knife fight
A diminishing gauge should curtail the use of Force Powers. But their almost ever-present availability is guaranteed by its quick refill and expansive areas that provide frequent respite from combat. Worse still, the inclusion of Force Fury - temporary invulnerability and limitless Force Power - further simplifies, and is best ignored in order to retain a modicum of challenge.
Caught red handed
In fact, to ensure any real challenge, it's best to ignore Force Unleashed II's levelling system as well. Your character, Starkiller, retains most of his powers from the original, and upgrading his abilities reduces difficulty to the point where it feels like you're wielding a nuke in a knife fight.
Force Unleashed II rarely bothers to break up the monotony of combat during its six-hour-long campaign. Short, perfunctory platforming sections do little to liven things up, as does remedial puzzling, which, although disguised somewhat by Force Powers, never deviates from simple 'find switch, open door' mechanics.
This hardware is buggy
The only real compulsion to plod through Force Unleashed II's drudgery comes through its often impressive graphics and mildly entertaining storyline. But, no matter how beautiful the grand tour of Star Wars sets - which bridge the Flash Gordon grandeur of episodes I to III and the darker palette of episodes IV to VI - and no matter how much you want to conclude Starkiller's story, both the levels and narrative are too sparsely populated. Force Unleashed II always feels like a galactic show home, one beautifully presented and perfectly pristine, but ultimately sterile and lifeless.
Verdict
Like so many other Star Wars games before it, Force Unleashed II can only be recommended as a weekend rental for the most avid of fans. The improvements to graphics and controls give it the edge over the original, and the story just about retains interest. But for anyone else, Force Unleashed II's tired and simple gameplay is best avoided altogether. ®
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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
COMMENTS
remake tie fighter for fucks sake
started playing tie fighter again on the pc. the grpahics are really dated , but by christ is the gameplay fantastic. even 15 years later it still feels like actually being a tiefighter pilot, and the sense of satisfaction from killing the rebel scum is still there. i can only dream of the way it would look if it was remade. id even take a graphic overhall, and release as a psn/xbl title.
that or remake almost any of the dark forces series.
Actually...
.... I quite liked Return of the Jedi... Just saying like :)
PC games vs Console
another fact is that us pc gamers have had amazing titles in the past that were designed by gamers, but now they are all being dumb downed for the kids console market and they have to meet their shareholders expectations so titles are rushed, thus depth & story suffers, its a sad decade for gamers as corporations now churn out their cruddy titles by the bucket load.
Aww.
I spent so much time looking forward to this...but once again game developers/producers have succumbed to the ever-extending trend towards 'the sequel should be, like, more of the same, but, like, y'know, more ACCESSIBLE'.
Unfortunately 'accessible' is just a code-word for shorter, prettier, dumber, less story and repetitive MMO-tedium gameplay.
I was bitterly disappointed with the game, expecting that by the end of my first session I'd be finishing Chapter 1 or 2 of an awesome story, and that what I had played was just the warmup and practice for an in-depth action mystery....then the game ended.
5 hours.....5 MEASELY tedious hours fighting the same sets of enemies in different configurations and numbers. Where was the VARIETY...where was ANYTHING? The characters are just weak, Starkiller just spends all his time sounding p*ssed off and Koda is just a windy tossbag with an attitude problem.
Weirdly enough, I think I'd like to see the return of X-Wing and Tie Fighter, but with proper missions and some real story.
Monkeys and typewriters
Oh, how I hate those predicable games.
