THE FORCE UNLEASHED 2
5 out of 10

For anyone who knows me out there, you know I’m a huge fan of Star Wars. I collected the figures when I was younger and wasted much of my life watching the movies. When the first Force Unleashed came out and I played it, I knew it was going to be something special. The Storyline was interesting, the game play was amazing and it FELT like an original Star Wars movie. For the first time in a LONG time, the Star Wars universe had new life and my expectations and hopes skyrocketed for a video game franchise that would long be remembered as one of the greats. When Force Unleashed 2 was announced, my excitement immediately went through the roof. After I finished it, I asked myself the same question I did after viewing the prequel trilogy. “What the hell happened?”

The Force Unleashed timeline takes place between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy of movies, to answer some of the questions, “Well…what happened in the 17/18 some odd years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope?” This game had a chance to be the “Empire Strikes Back” of its own series, but falls way short of offering anything new to the storyline. In fact, this is the weakest story of any Star Wars incarnation I’ve seen…and I watched the pathetic Christmas Special back in the day. In short, you wake up in the care of Darth Vader, potentially a clone, but are having visions of Juno, your lost love from the first game. You set out to find her…end of story. Really? Find my girlfriend is the BEST storyline the people over at Lucas Arts could come with? As you may have guessed already – it’s difficult to flesh out a long version of the “Find My Girlfriend” storyline, So FU2 (as I’ve nicknamed it) is only about 6 hours worth of gameplay. When the credits rolled after I finished playing, I was in shock. I couldn’t believe that was it. Any other game franchise, you can expect a little letdown. I mistakenly figured, after how deep and rich the first game was, that they wouldn’t cut corners on this game. However, what we got was what I like to call – the most expensive downloadable expansion pack on the market.

Now, is FU2 a complete waste of a game? No, what didn’t work in Force Unleashed, now works in Force Unleashed 2. The mechanics seem smoother, the controls a little easier, the graphics…for game play, better – for cut scenes, still kind of bleh. The Force Unleashed franchise needs to look at franchises like Uncharted, Fable and Mass Effect. You take what you had in the first game and expand upon it, go more in depth and pull out every last possible stop. Despite the gaming failure that is FU2, the success of Force Unleashed 1 will almost warrant a third. My advice to Lucas Arts is take your time and flesh out a halfway decent storyline. Give me at least 10 hours of CHALLENGING game play. Look at Force Unleashed 1 and figure out how to make THAT game better, because to be honest – you missed this time out. Rent it…don’t buy it – it’s not worth the cash. Purchase Force Unleashed 1 and get all downloads for it. Let FU2 rot in gaming hell…

5 out of 10