In “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II,” you play as a Jedi warrior who can fire torrents of lightning from his fingertips, grab spaceships out of the sky and telekinetically hurl them at his enemies, and use the power of his mind to influence his weak-willed foes to attack one another.

In “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II,” you play as a Jedi warrior who can fire torrents of lightning from his fingertips, grab spaceships out of the sky and telekinetically hurl them at his enemies, and use the power of his mind to influence his weak-willed foes to attack one another.
Been there, done that.
Sure, with such mayhem at your fingertips, the latest Star Wars game from LucasArts is fun enough to play, but the problem with “The Force Unleashed II” is that it doesn’t do enough to build on its successful predecessor. If you’ve played the first “Force Unleashed,” you’ve seen all the exact same gimmicks before, making these fabulous force powers seem sadly familiar.
And while the “Force Unleashed II” is a technically superior game — the graphics are pretty and the abysmal targeting system from the first game has been improved — it falls well short of the excellent storytelling that the original was praised for.
The somewhat thin story picks up where the original game’s narrative left off. You play as an apparent clone of the Jedi Knight Starkiller, the protagonist of the first game who seemed to be pretty convincingly killed off at the end.
With no memories of what transpired in the first game, Starkiller is once again under the control of Darth Vader. The Sith lord is keen to use his pupil’s power to put an end to the pesky Rebellion.
Suddenly some of Starkiller’s old memories start resurfacing, and he escapes from Vader and starts on a journey to better understand who he is and to find Juno Eclipse, his love interest from the first game. Along the way he visits a few locations familiar Star Wars fans, such as the cloning facility on Kamino and Yoda’s home planet of Dagobah, as well as some brand new sports.
Along the way, Starkiller will have to deal with legions of Imperial stormtroopers, force wielding Sith apprentices and walking tanks that fire deadly missiles.
Starkiller has various ways of dispatching his foes. He can simply hack at them with his two lightsabres, zap them with force lightning, pick them up and throw them around telekinetically or use his Jedi mind powers to get them to jump off a bridge or turn on their comrades. The controls are sensible and intuitive, so using Starkiller’s various powers is a breeze, and being in control of an extremely powerful Jedi can be an enjoyable stress-reliever.
Also, the current enemy or object Starkiller is targeting will be highlighted, making it easy to see what you are about to use your force powers on, which especially handy if you want to use your force grab to lift or throw something. This is a big improvement over the first game, where you just pressed the button and hoped for the best.
With these technical improvements, it’s a shame “force Unleashed II” is otherwise a lateral or backwards step from its predecessor. Starkiller has essentially the same powers he had in the first instalment, and any cool thing he can do with his arsenal this time around has already been done.
This game needed new powers, deeper game play, ridiculously over-the-top boss monsters, or anything that would raise the stakes from the original “Force Unleashed.” This is something the “God of War” series does so well. Each game is bigger and deeper in scope than the last even though you are essentially doing the same thing — killing heaps of baddies with crazy weapons.
Additionally, the story here doesn’t approach the rich tale that helped make the original a hit. The original “Force Unleashed” chronicled Starkiller’s transformation from Sith puppet to inspiration for the Rebellion, and did so in believable increments with reasonable motivations for the hero.
In “Force Unleashed II,” Starkiller’s character is largely established, so the sense of personal growth from the first game is gone. While the voice acting is still good and the music top-notch, you feel like your going through the motions during the linear campaign without really caring what happens next.
On top of that, a good player can finish the game in well under eight hours, which a bit light for a game with a retail price of around $60. There are combat challenges you can do to unlock new uniforms and concept art, but as nice of an extra as that is a deeper game would have been preferable.
“Force Unleashed II” is technically not a bad game, but it is a disappointing one. While it’s fun for a while to command the potent powers of a Jedi Knight, a bland story and too many similarities to the original make this sequel more “Attack of the Clones” than “Empire Strikes Back.”
“Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II” is rated T for Teen for PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.