Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Publisher/Developer: LucasArts
Release Date: September 16, 2008

The Star Wars videogame series is carried on in its newest expansion, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. In the past, LucasArts has had gamers play as an X-Wing fighter pilot, a Jedi knight, and even a bounty hunter, but this time around LucasArts has answered many fans of the series prayers as the player becomes Darth Vader’s personal apprentice.

Like other Star Wars games, Unleashed uses the Force as one of its main highlights. In Unleashed you start out with only two Force powers, “Force Grip” and “Force Push.” To unlock new force powers and level up your current ones you simply need to collect “Force points.” These points are earned by completing missions and secondary objectives, performing combos, and finding randomly placed groups of them. Other powers such as Dashing Blast (a running Force Push), Saber Sling, and Force Lightning will be earned later in the game using Force points.

The game uses two relatively new systems which make for a great destructible environment. Using Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) technology, objects and your environment have realistic qualities such as weight and textures. Using the games A.I. system called Euphoria (also used in Grand Theft Auto IV), the A.I. characters respond to events in their surroundings rather than scripts. For example, if you use your “Force Grip” power on a person, he will try to immediately grab onto anything around him, including other enemies which will make for hours of enjoyment.

From what LucasArts has shown us so far, the game looks to be a promising glimpse into the future of A.I and environments in videogames.

Credits: KoG Openfire