It’s been 14 years since Star Wars fans got to meet Starkiller. Now,Star Wars: The Force Unleashedis coming to the Nintendo Switch, well, the Wii Version is. Developed by the Australian-based Krome Studios and authored by Aspyr,The Force Unleasedimmerses the gamer into the dark side as Starkiller, Darth Vader's secret apprentice, that has been trained to hunt down and destroy the Jedi.
For people who haven’t literally game before, it occurs betweenStar Wars Episode III: Revenge from the SithandStar Wars Episode IV: A New Hope –though continuity doesn’t matter because it did upon its original release since it has been struck from canon through the Mouse. Having said that, bringing the Wii version ofThe Force Unleashedstands introducing new fans to Sam Witwer because the moody and extremely powerful son of the Jedi turned Sith apprentice.
It ought to be noted that nothing has been changed in the game beyond mapping the gameplay to Switch Joy-cons and their motion controls. That said, the good thing of this port remains the story and also the voice acting, even if 2008 hits you hard hard if you play on a sizable television screen. Even then though, the motion controls from the Wii seem to be in full force and it’s not great.
To be truthful, playing the original release on Xbox, it’s challenging myself into having fun with motion controls. Not only does it keep you from just vibing on the couch, but having the lightsaber attacks which are usually fun combos to execute reduced to flailing my right-hand feels wrong. The gameplay in The Force Unleasedis hack-and-slash fun for sure, but there's something so completely missed by reduction of it to a flick of the wrist.
Add within the uneven balancing of fight mechanics if you have the motion controls on versus if you have them off, with no appear mode I chose, I simply couldn’t get into the flow I remember from playing the initial. Now, this isn’t Krome Studios’ fault, especially because much of this was noted using the Wii discharge of the game.
That said, it stands up even worse now. While the force push motion is okay since it’s more limited being used than your main attack, while using Force leads to really uneven gameplay. At times it’s fun and also at others, the smart lock system will target something behind you or the TIE Fighter parts and not the soldier you’re attempting to target.
While the motion controls find it difficult to stay on target and also the camera isn’t your best friend, you are able to disable them. Although this is great for players with mobility issues, disabling the controls has an odd impact on the gameplay. First, you’ll need to learn new buttons for the similar actions you’ve been doing which aren’t intuitive like the Force Push being moved to the “x” button, however, many powers I couldn’t even learn how to use after i switched.
Namely, while “x” Force pushes your adversaries, ZL doesn’t grab them and the lightning you once controlled with “L” is nowhere to be found. The odd choice of removing those from the existing button configuration you'd as the motion controls were enabled makes playing the sport harder somewhat that ultimately resulted in me changing back to motion controls, wrist pain be damned.
In accessory for the campaign, you may also play local multiplayer within the game’s Duel mode. To create playing couch multiplayer better you can unlock 27 characters to play as with the mode. Though most of time was allocated to the campaign over the local multiplayer, the motion controls make for some fun friend competition because even the jankiest of controls are wonderful to play with someone else.
Starkiller kind of means a lot to me. The Force Unleashed series were a number of my first 100% games, Starkiller was my first dive into non-canon material, and man was he attractive. That is to say that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed has a large place in me whether or not the most devastated I’ve felt getting an achievement was for killing a lotof Wookies on Kashyyk. So, I had been beyond excited when I heard my favorite Star Wars video game (fight me) was visiting Switch. But to tell the truth, though, this port is uneven at best, and not exactly what the series deserves.
The Force Unleashedis fine enough. The sport does what it says it’s likely to do: bring the Wii version to the Switch. It will that, so it’s hard to knock it for delivering on its promise, even when it doesn’t seem like it’s enough. Having said that, should you literally game on every other console, the Wii version of the sport ported towards the Switch isn’t the way to go when Xbox Game Pass has got the game on the Series X|S. While the story still hits, the gameplay is beyond dated and eventually the motion elements remove any feeling of combos and replace all of them with constant wrist flicks and frantic waving.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashedis available now on the Nintendo Switch.
