Ah, life’s simple pleasures. Exploring new worlds…chatting with your robot sidekick…hurling Stormtroopers hundreds of feet in the air. It’s good to be a Sith warrior, skilled in the ways of the Force.

The Force Unleashed offers one of gaming’s great setups. After a short prologue where you play as Darth Vader, you’re cast as the young boy he’s just discovered: the son of a dead Jedi, seething with Force power. Sensing opportunity, the Dark Lord takes you. Cut ahead 16 years, and you’ve become his apprentice and learned to tap into the power of the dark side. You’re sent to eliminate the last of the Jedi Knights, in service of the Republic…and the story moves onward from there.

Over the course of 10 missions — about a dozen hours of play on normal difficulty — you’ll visit famed Star Wars sites (the cloud city, Bespin; the Wookiee homeworld, Kashyyyk) and some lesser-known locations, like the fungal world of Felucia. As in LucasArts’ Jedi Knight games, the environments are often big and expansive — which, in this case, definitely caters to the Xbox 360’s graphical prowess. But where those games let you wield blasters and other weapons, you’re a real Jedi here, using just your lightsaber and your Force abilities. So the action’s a little more close-up and immediate — and that plays to the game’s strengths.

Force Unleashed’s finest moments are in the typical combat scenario: en route to your objective, you move through an area, you’re mobbed by a half-dozen (or more) grunts, and you have to nix their numerical advantage with sheer, overwhelming brutality. So you cut loose with your Force powers — using Force Grip to fling a canister at advancing soldiers, frying nemeses with Force Lightning, or using Force Repulse to repel nearby foes in all directions. Or maybe you just slash ’em with your lightsaber, using cool combo moves like Saber Slam (a Lightning-infused saber) or Saber Swing (“home runs” a guy into the distance) to put them down.

The game definitely cooks in these situations of you-against-many, where exercising your awesome powers and diverse abilities is a rush. These encounters are everywhere, so yes, they occasionally feel repetitive in that “go here, kill enemies; go there, kill enemies” way. But whether you’re plowing through Stormtroopers in a TIE-fighter factory — hey, Vader said “No witnesses!” — or obliterating droids on Raxus Prime, these scenarios offer a genuine sense of Jedi godhood. And the tactile feeling of using Force Grip to, say, pick up a Felucian Shaman and hurl him across the screen (using the right thumbstick) makes you feel that much more connected to the action.

Annoyingly, though, the boss battles are a very different experience. Most levels end with you fighting a Jedi or other “big bad”; you essentially have to whale away at him until you figure out what Force powers or combos work best and you see his health bar start to drop. Lower his bar enough, and you’ll trigger a quicktime event (QTE) where pressing the right face buttons defeats him. Now, we’re not against QTEs per se, but this whole boss-battle setup feels disempowering and anticlimactic — suddenly, you’re weak and ineffectual, and when you do win, the QTE steals the tactile feeling of victory. You finish off AT-STs, Rancors, and other mini-bosses with QTEs, too, and again, you feel oddly detached from combat.

Though it’s our main complaint, it’s one we kept coming back to — especially in the late-game, where, having milked our unlocked combo moves for much of their fun factor, we were eager to vanquish new bosses and mini-bosses using our leveled-up Force powers…not a few well-timed button-presses. On a smaller note, we had a nagging feeling that the game could’ve used a little more dev time to eliminate irritables like invisible walls and a lack of contextual clues in a few spots (so it was, say, clearer what machinery you needed to move so you could continue through a level).

Balancing that aggravation is the game’s story — a definite strong suit. Force Unleashed’s plot bridges Episodes III and IV, and the game wholeheartedly embraces its role in official Star Wars canon. To their credit, the exciting cutscenes and dramatic finale do the Original Trilogy justice, and while we didn’t buy the hokey love angle with pilot Juno Eclipse (even if we are talking about hokey religions and ancient weapons), we remained hooked by the overall tale.

The vehicle for that story — the game itself — proved less engaging. With its non-branching storyline and no multiplayer, Force Unleashed is certainly less ambitious than the classic Jedi Knight games — and ultimately, its design makes it feel more videogame-y and less of an all-engrossing Star Wars experience than Xbox entries like Jedi Knight II or Jedi Academy. But when the game’s on, it’s on, and Star Wars nuts will revel in those moments where you can be an unbridled, Force-fueled bully.

On Xbox 360

+ Demolishing enemies like a Jedi badass.

+ Entertaining <em>Star Wars</em> story.

- Boss battles and QTEs; less inspired and less polished than LucasArts' classic Jedi Knight games.

? Why is Force Push-ing enemies off cliffs so addictive?

7.5