LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

Story 4/10

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea what the basis was for this game which, in terms of the Star Wars timeline, takes place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, so I had to look it up and found that there is currently an animated TV series. As I had never watched the series, I found it hard to relate to any storyline that was taking place in the background in between the LEGO related fun which caused me to switch off. I thought the cut scenes were a lot less engaging and humorous at the ones in the game’s predecessor.

That said, I did enjoy the clone/droid battle that takes place on the opening screen. It is quite amusing.

Picture 8/10

This one has to go up from Pirates of the Caribbean because the graphics have been given an overhaul. The look of the game is a lot smoother and they’ve made a lot more out of the destructible objects element. When you destroy objects, instead of the LEGO bricks disappearing almost instantly, they hang around for a bit and very often get in your way which is much more realistic, although I’m not sure fans of the series play the games for the realism aspect... but more on that later.

Sound 8/10

Not really a lot to say here, it sticks to the Star Wars tradition with a little up-tempo version of the all-familiar soundtrack and it is very fitting to the game.

Gameplay 4/10

Things can get a little samey in the LEGO world, especially when you are on number three in a series relating to the same franchise. I’ve got a lot of respect for the fact that LEGO Star Wars III tries to mix things up.

There are now two elements to the main game. You have the standard normal levels where you battle through various LEGO environments to fight bosses and save people. However, now you also have these ground battle environments where you have to fight across a load of enemy bases and have to destroy certain buildings or targets.

In short these new additions are really... boring. These levels add an unnecessary exploration element to the game which slows it down. On top of this, if you strive for the 100% completion, you have to do these types of battles twice for both the good and evil sides which I found to be a royal pain in the ass, unnecessarily repetitive and soul destroying.

There are also space missions on each planet which are another repetitive ball-ache where you have to fly around in space destroying various bits and pieces.

Picking up from where I left off earlier, the new destructive blocks that constantly get in your way may be an improvement in some areas but they also hinder the player’s ability to sensibly navigate through levels.

Also, they seemed to have changed the functionality of how the force is used. When using the force you can now move things around freely... in a constricted kind of way. Getting these objects to where you want them to go can be frustrating but it is also quite forgiving in places. However, there is one level where you have to build a stairway out of four LEGO blocks and the user-friendliness of the force was so bad that I could not select the blocks I wanted to move despite trying to stand in about four-hundred different positions. This produced a lot more than the usual expletives to come pouring out of my mouth.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 48 achievements

The biggest problem I have with LEGO Star Wars III is that it is similar to Soul Calibur in that I was done with new stuff about 5 hours before I got to 100%. The last bits were grinding out the stupid space missions and ground battles which was a bit boring to say the least.

The achievements themselves, bar the last two, are quite varied and force you to try most aspects of the game in order to get them all.

I want to take a moment to talk about codes, those useful little things which can aid gamers to get to full completion without having to work too hard.

In LEGO games, you can collect Red Bricks which give you special abilities such as invincibility or stud mulltipliers. I don’t consider using these bricks as cheating if they are unlocked through gameplay, especially as they remove a lot of the monotonous aspects, such as having to replay ground assaults because you constantly die and run out of time. However, I do consider it cheating to use codes to unlock the bricks and I was quite surprised to see that using the codes does not disable the achievements like they do in lots of other Xbox360 games.

The amount of studs you need to unlock all the red bricks is really high and it takes a while to do even using the stud multipliers as they become available. So I don’t really like that my hard work and effort can be mimicked by someone typing a few codes off the internet. Oh yeah, and there is an achievement for unlocking all the red bricks which is incidentally called ‘Cheat!’

Downloadable Content – N/A

Summary

It’s not as good as LEGO Star Wars II but it is another alright game to pass the time, especially if you don’t want to think too much about what you’re doing. This will probably be it for me on the LEGO front for at least another year and unless the next LEGO game I play is remarkably different, I doubt I will post a... a long review about it.

Soul Calibur IV

Story 8/10

What I like about the Soul Calibur series is that they make a lot of effort developing their characters with background and history. Each character has their own back story and alignment depending on whether their intentions are good or evil.

Completing story mode with each character unlocks additional character biographies. What I like even more about this is that the game makes it completely optional as to whether or not you chose to read these additional stories or not.

Picture 7/10

Soul Calibur also wins points for how pretty everything looks. The character designs are great and they have even gone into exceptional detail with the extra weapons and equipment you can buy, each of which are beautifully designed.

The lever designs are also brilliant and some have destructible elements as well.

Sound 7/10

Now, I know what I said about Japanese companies and music in my Pro Evolution review, however the music in Soul Calibur is very fitting to the game. It didn’t come across as repetitive at any point despite the many hours I put into achieving 100% and I wasn’t driven to brain-suicide as before.

I think the main reasons for this are that it has a soundtrack with different music each time you play and the fact that you are actually playing the game while the music plays. The menu music is the same but instead of having the horrible J-Pop sound, it actually feels like you are building up to an epic battle.

Gameplay 8/10

I’m not really a massive player of fighting games however, I have liked the fluid combat in the Soul Calibur series since the days of Soul Calibur II. It feels a lot less clunky than a lot of other beat-em-up games and they always have a few varied game modes to keep you entertained.

Story Mode was a bit of a letdown though. Each character has five rounds to get through and even though they try to frame it around the individual character’s stories, it feels very thin in places; probably because there are 33 individual characters. Also it feels like more effort was put in to some of the more central figures from the series. For example, Kilik has a fight with someone called Xianglian and it’s kind of a big deal because he calls her by name before the fight. This doesn’t happen with any of the other characters.

The Tower of Souls is a little different and, in my opinion, the main challenge in the game. You have to fight your way up 60 stories of the Tower with variable challenges along the way. You get extra items for meeting specific criteria and it was very good at avoiding the easy trap of having a repetitive fighting game.

The online play it as expected, you have to fight other people in best of five matches. It does what it says on the tin and doesn’t try to be overly complicated, so as far as gameplay goes, it’s a tick in the box from me.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 50 Achievements

There are 50 achievements and it terms of variation, they have definitely gone all out. It almost feels like they have used the achievements to draw out the gameplay and this is something I do not have a problem with... to a certain extent.

There are two issues I had with these 50 achievements:

Issue number one; online achievements. I’m working on catch up so I played the online stuff after Soul Cailbur V was released. This meant that I was finding it very difficult to get matches. After about 3 weeks of trying unsuccessfully, I got a boosting partner to help me. However, for some bizarre reason as soon as we started boosting, every other person still playing Soul Calibur IV decided to show up, which of course led to more abusive messages coming into my inbox – voice messages this time too!

Issue number two; the Transcend History and the World achievement. As I said earlier, I don’t really go in for fighting games, probably because I’m not that good at them. However this achievement requires you to buy every item of equipment and all the weapons in the game. As I'm not very good, this meant it took me a lot longer with a lot more playing time than other people who were better than me, which means I would have naturally accumulated more gold than I would have if I had done everything first time. Despite this, I managed to get the other 49 achievements but still had to play the same stuff over and over again to get the required money to purchase the rest of the weapons. I think it was about 5 hours of grinding that was not that enjoyable.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I stand by the fact that Soul Calibur is one of the best fighting games series out there, but from an achievements point of view, it’s not an easy work through and the last achievement makes it feel like more of a slog than a reward. That said it is definitely doable and well worth cracking out again with friends on a rainy day.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth

This is one of the most hard to get games I’ve looked for when trying to rent and buy on Ebay. The reason is that it is acclaimed as the easiest 1,000 points on Xbox360 – a reputation it definitely lives up to. So much so that as a 1,000 point review, there isn’t really that much to say.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 5 Achievements – Quick and Easy

All you have to do is get a hit counter of 50. This is not a combo but simply getting 50 hits without being hit yourself. This can be done in about 4 to 5 minutes of gameplay which makes the rest of the game, from an achievement point of view, completely redundant.

This is only my opinion but I didn’t see the point in playing the rest of the game once I had earned all the achievements and it didn’t look like I would have enjoyed the rest of the game based on the small amount of it I played.

Summary

It is definitely worth it for the achievements and the quickness but it definitely goes on the ‘to rent’ list. People are definitely keen to get these achievements though. It took me months of bidding on Ebay as I wasn’t willing to pay more than £10.00 for a game I wasn’t going to play for more than 10 minutes!

Pro Evolution Soccer 6

Story – N/A

It is football. The only real story is taking a team to the pinnacle of winning their respective domestic league – no Europe just the league and cup. There is also their own Pro Evolution Soccer league and cup competition but it’s so fictional, you can really draw any comparison to real life football.

Picture 7/10

It would be harsh to judge the first Pro Evolution by the modern standards and there is only so much to it you can look at. I think the likenesses are very good and accurate which is what I believe most people would use to rate the game in terms of graphics.

Sound 2/10

Pro Evolution is made by Konami which is a Japanese developer. As such, the theme music consists of the most annoying noises you can ever listen to. You don’t want to be hanging around in the menus when the ‘music’ is playing and this is made even more frustrating as the options you have to set up your team can take a few minutes to customise, which pushed my brain all the more closer to suicide.

The commentary is the best and worst thing about the game. It is brilliant for about the first five games however, from game six onwards the commentators run out of new things to say and then it becomes just as soul destroying as the music. ‘Header too!’

Gameplay 7/10

This is where the majority of football games pick up their points as you would expect. The obvious comparison to make here is to FIFA and, in my opinion, the football is a lot more fluid is Pro Evolution.

Also from time to time, when the players actually do what you want them to, you can play some pretty good football. The only trouble is that Pro Evolution seems to insinuate that the majority of professional football players make seven out of ten bad passes and, when through on goal, one on one with the goal keeper, will shot high or wide without any pressure.

There are also issues with how the other players you are passing to react to the ball. When your pass isn’t quite good enough, the player you are passing to will occasionally make absolutely no effort to get the ball and lose it to the opposition. If a ball is going out of play and you try to keep it in, your player will do one of two things; casually run after it and let it go out anyway, or chase it down only to get there and direct it out of play!

The other area when the game lets itself down is with the game modes. There is no European Football in the standard league and their own Master League is so unofficial it really took away the enjoyment for me.

However, it is one of the best games to play socially with friends and this is where it wins the points. There is nothing more satisfying that watching a friend scream, ‘COMON PASS!’ at the top of their lungs and it is even more satisfying when controllers suffer horrible deaths.

While local multiplayer is fun, the online element shits all over itself, but I can hardly blame the game for other people’s issues. I didn’t play the game online until recently and only to collect the online achievements. I met one person playing the game who was actually decent (in a sportsmanship kind of way).

I faced one guy who beat me once and then kept sending me messages saying he wasn’t going to play me again after his one win in a game where the conditions of match play can differ greatly from one game to the next. A couple of other people sent abusive messages after losing narrow games and others quit out after they started losing by a wide margin. The last one I don’t have a problem with, but there was one twat who took it to the next level. If you score an own goal you get to control the replay which doesn’t time out if you don’t do anything... so he scored an own goal and then walked away from his computer leaving me with two choices – out wait the guy or quit out. Massively frustrating and a hole in the online play – there should be a time limit on replays or better yet; stop players from watching them during the game altogether!

I decided the boost the last 50 wins as I couldn’t be bothered to wade through another 50 games (minimum) of shitty people. And for my trouble, I got another shitty message calling me a twat!

Achievements – 1,000 points – 23 Achievements

Online achievements are pointless - This is something you will see repeated across many of my reviews. If people want to show each other how good they are at a game (or how bigger twats they can be) they can do it in their own time in their own online environment. The online achievements for Pro Evolutions Soccer 6 were pretty straight forward though so it wasn’t too bad.

It does win further points over FIFA though by actually letting me get the online achievements – many FIFA games have closed servers making 100% achievement now impossible.

In terms of the offline achievements all you have to do is win all the leagues which is nothing short of time consuming and not that enjoyable.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

In terms of getting achievements I would list it as a definite no for purchase. It’s too time consuming, not enjoyable and if you like football games, one of the more recent instalments is much more value for enjoyment. I consider anything I have to boost as not worth it, but my OCD got me through this one.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Story 6/10- SPOILERS

The premise for Condemned is really good. You are a policeman who is disgraced and framed by a serial killer and so you have to go on a revenge mission to stop him and clear your name. It’s kind of hard to describe this story for the things that pissed me off without spoiling it for others, hence my warning but here it is.

I’m down with the whole realism and gritty underworld full of drug addicts and violent criminals where a serial killer may take refuge. But once you reach a certain point, they add an additional sub plot and you are no longer just hunting a serial killer. It turns out that the whole thing is to do with some crazy evil demon which many online reviews and plot synopses refer to as 'The Hate.' I get the whole 'physical manifestation of evil, mainly because it is completely contrived and clichéd to be polite. It caused me to lose any vested interest I had in the story thus far.

I don’t understand why games and movies do this. They come up with a really good premise for scary real-life situations and then remove any kind of tension by introducing demons, poltergeists and other supernatural shit that is not generally scary to people other the age of 18; incidentally, the certificate rating for the game.

Even if it the basis for the serial killer was that he was being controlled by a demon, I wouldn’t mind if the game was trying to be fantasy based... but it’s not. It is caked in realism which works really well before being shat all over with the whole, ‘we can’t write a decent explanation so let’s have a demon. And a cult.’

Picture 5/10

It’s not very pretty. The graphics are more that of the Xbox/PS2 generation and the characters are very blocky and linear in the way they move.

The one good thing I will say is that the interactive weapons blend well with the environment. For example you can use two-by-fours and pipes as weapons which blend in with the scenery. That said, when Agent Thomas does pick up these weapons, they disappear from the environment and appear in his hand; a bit strange when you are interacting with a pipe attached to the wall.

Sound 8/10

The sound effects are easily the best thing about the game. They compliment the dark atmosphere and actions well, especially when an enemy jumps out at you when you least expect it. There is a point where enemies are climbing a wire fence and the clanking sound is scarily accurate. The only disappointment in that when you strike an enemy with a weapon repeatedly, the sound generated is more suited to a Batman comic.

Gameplay 4/10

I will start by saying that the combat is a pile of garbage. This is a little bit of a snag when your two gameplay elements are hitting someone in the face with a stick and investigating crime scenes using the ‘X’ button; and when you add in that eighty percent of these elements is weighted towards combat, that make the entire gameplay a pile of garbage.

On top of the basic principle of this 'combat', I found it ridiculously irritating that all you can do is swing at an enemy once when they can unleash flurries of three hits at the same. My irritation is enhanced by the fact that you are fighting crazed drug addicts and you are an FBI agent who must have had some kind of combat training.

I also took the liberty of looking at the critical reception. Quite a few people made a big deal about the game so I thought I would sample some of it. Gamespot said of the game, ‘it captures hand-to-hand combat with intense, lifelike brutality like no other game before it.’ There are several things in this sentence that make me believe that the reviewer didn’t actually play the game. The combat is broken and bitty. Unless you have managed to master the blocking, which I didn’t despite playing through the game twice, and even when you do block, it’s not as seamless as this sentence makes out. Also saying that it has 'lifelike brutality like no other game before it' doesn’t take Manhunt into account, a game that allowed you to choke a man to death with a plastic bag or hack of a man’s head with a machete. The only reason they are comparable is because they are both prohibited by German law.

Achievements – 970 Points – 50 Achievements

Now, I know it’s called the 1,000 point review but for some bizarre reason, Condemned: Criminal Origins only has 970 points and no downloadable content to make it up.

It’s not too stressful to get all the achievements here although there isn’t much variance. There are no real pain-in-the-ass achievements, but there are a lot of collection related ones which are all listed as secret for some bizarre reason.

The other cardinal sin for achievements is making you play the game through twice because of a moral choice ending. and while I’m ruining shit for everyone, this 'moral choice' makes no difference to the outcome of the story so it’s only there to make you play through the game twice, which makes the monotonous gameplay all the more unforgivable.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

Summary

I would definitely put this game into the easy and not too time consuming category however it is not the most fun you will have earning almost 1,000 points. I’ve also heard rumours that some of the collection achievements are glitched if you chose to replay chapters out of order but I never did that so never experienced it. If you are an achievement hunter and don’t mind being bored on a second play through, stick this one on the ‘to rent’ list. It is definitely not worth a GameSpot 8.0 rating but that’s just my opinion.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game

Story 4/10

The point is that it’s Pirates of the Caribbean... in LEGO. There have been several instalments in the LEGO series, including Star Wars, Batman, Indiana Jones and now we get to play as our favourite Pirates of the Caribbean characters.

The premise is that it follows the story of the films but does so in LEGO form which is great. However it differs from the story of the actual movies as the LEGO, and probably the age certificate, mean that the scenes can’t play out as they do in the movies. They are much less gruesome with no LEGO blood, however there are several LEGO decapitations which is always good for a laugh.

Plus the main problem with basing a game on a film is that everyone already knows the outcome so ‘finding out what happens’ isn’t a reason to get to the end.

Picture 7/10

It would be unfair to mark the game down for picture as the whole thing is LEGO. There are areas that could be improved though. Sometime the background and interactive objects get in each other’s way and sometimes you can’t work out if you can go through a gap to the left or right of the screen because you can’t see it.

Sound 8/10

For any movie based game (I now realise two out of three o my reviews are movie based...) Having the original music is a big win for me. So it gets a thumbs up. However, after a while it started to grate on me which, if you are looking for a direct comparison, means that the Star Wars music is far more epic that Pirates.

Gameplay 7/10

LEGO games, at the heart, are just simple fun for all the family. I bought the game for three reasons:

1. It’s a game to play with the kids.

2. Easy Achievements.

3. I was a tad hungover and my friend ‘insisted’ we pay a visit to Game.

The gameplay is relatively straightforward and is user friendly for kids and adults alike. The kids can play through the main story easily enough with minimal supervision and for the adults (bigger kids) there is the extra challenge of reaching 100%, which requires some out of the box thinking.

However reaching 100% can be a massive frustration and not because of difficulty. NPCs can go fuck themselves in this game, especially when they are required to help you progress through the levels. There are several instances where you need both characters, you and the NPC, to flip double switches.

Certain characters have different skills which allow you to progress. A good example is that Captain Jack Sparrow can use rope to ascend to higher levels. In free play mode where you can change to any character at a whim, so I can switch to Jack and use a rope to ascend to a different level. However,  the NPC will not do this and will wait at the beginning of the section while you go on ahead, meaning that you then have to switch to the NPC and navigate them through the level for a second time.

This is problematic enough but is made worse when you make the switch back to the beginning, the fucktarded NPC you leave where you want to get to will start backtracking to your current location. Which means that level navigating is totally fucking stupid when trying to collect all minikits and compass items.

I also experienced a few crashes and a lot of lag in the hub once I had unlocked all the other characters but I think this could be a problem with my disc more than the game itself.

Oh, and then there is the issue of Blackbeard. Blackbeard appears in a set location in the hub for unlocking and he is required to get to some of the optional areas. He doesn’t always appear there which means I had to wait until the game decided to place him there before I could proceed with my minikit collecting. On top of this, when he did appear, I didn’t have enough coins to buy him so I had to do it again.

Achievements – 1,000 points - 40 Achievements

In terms of achievements the game ticks all the right boxes; No online, no secrets and all can be obtained through player skill as opposed to luck. Granted, they aren’t that tricky and because the in game extras don’t disable achievements (in fact, there is even an achievement for having them all active at the same time) the ones that would be normally very time consuming (Get 88,888,888 coins) can be done relatively quickly.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

Summary

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean is a great family game. It probably isn’t challenging enough for serious gamers and can be repetitive for those who want to think about what they’re doing, but it was great for me to play when I was ill and it’s also a straight forward 1,000 points.

Deadly Premonition

Story – 9/10

In terms of storyline, Deadly Premonition is one of the best I’ve ever seen in video games but not for the usual reasons. The storyline focuses on the main protagonist, York, who is an unorthodox FBI agent investigating a serial killer in a small town. 

A big highlight for me is that the game refuses to take itself seriously where the characters act accordingly based on your gameplay decisions. For example there are various points where you have to travel with other characters but you can also choose not to. Not doing so can cause some hilarious dialogue mainly aimed at York being an unaware lunatic - something that York continually disregards.

I really like that the gameplay interlinks with the story but the main highlight is comic value portrayed throughout, even during moments of seriousness.

Picture – 4/10

The visual quality of the game is very poor for Xbox360 standard. It’s very blocky and even during cut scenes, the characters appear rigid and if they are being forced to act. They also make strange gestures during conversations which leads me down the poor development path as opposed to being done on purpose for comedy.

Sound – 7/10

Going in line with the comedy elements described under the story, the accompanying music adds to the comic element. Some reviews have criticised this approach but I think it is genius, especially when playing light-hearted Jazz music during tense situations.

Gameplay – 2/10

This is where the game falls on its comic-horror ass. ‘Glitchy as fuck’ is a generous description of the gameplay which is a shame as all the good points above are undone by the game failing to do what it is created to do – be PLAYABLE.

On two occasions I have found myself completely stuck because the game has glitched and prevented me from progressing. One of these times was towards the end of a long and arduous section where one of the zombies wouldn’t load and it wouldn’t let me continue until I had killed every zombie in the room. I lost roughly half an hour of my life for no reason due to poor development.

Other situations involve the game not allowing me to progress even though I’ve done the required prerequisite activity. Sometimes the cut scenes won’t load and other times the game freezes completely.

However the one that nearly resulted in the death of my controller was when I was replaying a chapter to finish the trading card collection. It is important to note that you cannot save the game during a chapter replay I had collected about 5 cards which has taken about an hour. I went to the location of the next card and fell through a hole in the graphics, dying and losing all my progress. This is just unacceptable in terms of developer short cuts.

These are my massive gameplay issues. However, I also found the areas of driving and shooting to be sadly lacking, which is shit when you take into account that driving and shooting take up about 90% of the active gameplay.

The driving controls are awful. If you go down a hill, without any modifications to your car, as soon as your vehicle reaches 60mph, you can no longer control it and it veers off to the side of the road and smashes into the invisible barrier, if you happen to be driving next to a grassy embankment.

The combat aspects of the game are just as bad, if not worse. I lost count of the amount of times I’ve shot armed zombies (what is that about?!) with a shotgun from point blank range for them to then shoot me as if i did nothing. And then York falls on the floor holding his face in loads of pain... hmm. Really? Also it is unreasonable, on any level of difficulty, for a zombie to take 16+ headshots AND STILL NOT DIE. Why not just make it harder to shoot the zombies in the head? That would have at least made the combat scenarios more bearable.

That doesn’t leave much else of the game that isn’t poorly developed except for what I’ve already mentioned, making my score of 2 actually quite generous.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 12 Achievements

I’m all for secret achievements under one premise – that they are story linked and are unmissable. Deadly Premonition fails to meet these criteria in that there are achievements for completing the game on each difficulty level and another for completing an in game collection and they are all listed as secret.

Failure number two on the achievement front is having non stackable achievements. To earn 1,000 point you have to play through on all three difficulties. This is really irritating especially when it is mainly a story driven game and there is not that much difference in the challenge level between difficulties. This makes for the most frustrating aspect of these achievements in having to replay a story driven game three times to earn the 1,000 points.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

Summary

Deadly Premonition is definitely worth playing from a story point of view, but if you fancy a 100% game I would avoid it. Having to play a game three times when it is exactly the same in each of these occasions is a definite miss for me.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Story – 8/10

First off, like any typical Star Wars game, there are two endings, one for the light side and one for the dark side. What I really liked was that a specific ending is designed to fit in with the franchise storyline. I’m sure there are some errors with this, as would always be the case with a prequel in the middle of the series, however, it really worked for me, especially as a fan of the franchise.

Picture – 5/10

The graphics are not that great, even though the game was released in 2008. There are a lot of background stuff that kind of gets in the way a lot of the time and it’s not very neat and often takes away from the gameplay.

Sound – 9/10

Like any endorsed Star Wars game, it uses the familiar soundtrack which never fails to be epic. Darth Vader and the emperor are almost carbon copies of the movies despite being voiced by different people. Having checked this on IMDb, I also found it very strange that Starkiller's appearance is modelled on the actor that voices him!

Gameplay – 2/10

This is where the game can suck my dick. Getting the above right should always come secondary to making a decent game. However, at some points the game is unplayable. The best example of this is the fight with Kazdan Paratus at the end of level two. There is no pattern or consistency to his attacks. If you use one ability, it will work, if you use it again, it won’t. There is no rhyme or reason for this – it just seems to depend on how the game is feeling that day.

Also the camera controls leave a lot to be desired. Walking close to a wall will upset the camera and often cause it to point directly at wall. This would normally happen when I was fighting purge troopers which means you only have 2 seconds to live on Sith Master and I really resent dying because the camera didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to look at the guy that’s attacking me.

Which links nicely with my next point – the lock on system is a pile of garbage. It is automatic apparently but there is no way for it to differentiate between say... an angry Felucian Warrior and... a rock. So when I’m fighting three bad guys at once and try to do force lightening on them and end up shocking the nearest rock you can imagine the difficulty in not launching the controller at the wall.

Achievements – 1,345 points – 59 Achievements

So in order for a game to be reviewable, I have to obtain all the achievements, which I managed over the course of a month. The main difficulty with this is the Sith Master achievement for completing the game on the hardest difficultly level. This would have been easier if the controls were good, however, this difficulty leaves it more down to luck than skill.

Downloadable Content – Value for money?

The short answer is no. There are two DLCs that feature achievements and they are both overpriced, especially considering the game was released in 2008 and has a sequel. They are also painfully short for what they are.

Summary

Was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed worth playing the whole way through? Probably not. The story drives it and the game play elements feel like interference; something a game should be ashamed of.