dchambliss

This game was hyped all to hell and back, that’s for sure. But the question is, did it deliver? Today we review the PSP version, and it’s lovely use of low resolution textures to adjust to a lower end platform.

There are many who will say, that this game did not live up to expectations, however I say that any game that can pull of these kinds of physics on the PSP deserves a medal, so let’s go over the things that it did right.

Graphics- While they could have been a lot better, they could also have been a lot worse, in fact, they were some of the best I’ve seen since Crisis Core, and considering it’s just a handheld system, this is pretty good. It was basically the ps2 version scaled down to be portable, and as any PSP gamer knows, we need more ps2 ports to the PSP to follow in the footsteps of Warriors Orochi.

Gameplay- Like it’s brothers and sisters from the Wii to the XBOX 360, you can do just about anything you want in this game, you can throw storm troopers, choke random people to death, throw bursts of force energy at AT-ST’s, and rip blaster turrets out of enemy hands to use for your own dark schemes. As far as matching the features of the other ports of the game, it did pretty damn good.

Physics- You can throw people around, tear the environment to shreds, and even grab tie-fighters to fling around like demented yo-yo’s. Nuff said.

Story- The story was excellent, you play as an apprentice of Darth Vader, a boy that he sort of commandeered at a young age, and you play through a twisted campaign of deceit  and betrayal that was really unexpected. I won’t spoil it for you, but I can tell you that it was certainly interesting.

Controls- The controls were perfect, it played just as well as it’s Playstation counterpart, and that’s saying a lot for a third person shooter on a handheld console.

Now for what they did wrong:

Length- The game on the PSP was way too short, averaging about seven hours if you know what you’re doing, and we all know that a story this epic needs to take it’s time and unravel slowly.

Game Type- I was slightly disappointed that the entirety of the game was spend walking through one easy to navigate map after another, each of them ending in an easy boss fight, and only one of them required a bit of thinking, that particular fight involved disabling some shield generators to take down a pimped out AT-ST.  I know the idea of a straight ’shoot em’ up’ game will excite many people, but not those who are seeking more substance.

Loading Times- There were times that the loading took forever, I had to wait five minutes or so for one area to load, and there were constant freeze-ups. I have  a newer PSP-2000 series, which is considerably (and debatably) better than the 1000 series, so in my opinion it should have been able to handle this just fine, however we can chalk it up to the amount of physics present in the game, and the system that was being used to render it all.  It may have been unavoidable, but without a one on one with the developers, we may never know all the details.

Overall, it was a very good game, one that has a lot of replayability, as you can play through again, with all the force powers you earned in a previous playthrough. You also have the Force Unleashed Mode where you can dual against different characters from the Star Wars Canon, and even use the force powers you obtained in single player mode. It even features a multiplayer mode, which is great for those who want to get their ‘Jedi’ on with their friends.  So basically, I say if you want a portable version of this game, or if you can’t get one of the other versions, then go for it, and may the force be with you.

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