14 DAY TRIAL // Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition was released in the US today. It contains everything the original Force Unleashed did, plus three new levels, one of which is completely exclusive to the Ultimate Sith Edition. The game also includes all previous DLC, new costumes, character skins and data banks. The news is that, with this edition, it finally came on the PC. The title was ported over from the consoles by Aspyr, and is, in itself, a confusing one.
First of all, it looks absolutely amazing. The level of detail, especially as far as the in-game cinematics are concerned, is jaw-dropping. We dare even say that the quality is past that of the Hollywood-blockbuster CGI. The game itself looks just as sharp and clear, at a somewhat high cost. It's not exactly the performance issue you might think of, even though that is, of course, also part of the deal. What the game takes away from the players is freedom. The only control you have over the graphics is the screen resolution, and there's no way to alter anything in the lines of texture or model detail, shaders, antialiasing or anisotropic filtering.
The other ridiculous port issue is the controls. Again, expectations are not met and the game likes to surprise. It makes use of just few buttons and combat is accessible and fluid. Keys can be reassigned to match your preference, with a small glitch. Just as the menu warns you, even though you remap your keys, the flashing quick-time event indicator will still show the default controls.
So, if Force Lighting is assigned by default to “Q” and you change it to, let's say “E,” because you want to keep the controls you're used to and set for yourself in Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, the quick-time event is going to become very confusing and frustrating. The game shouts press “Q” but you have to press “E” or whatever key you assigned to your FL to complete the event. The entire thing could have been simply avoided by displaying not the key you have to press, but the Force Power you have to use instead.
Other than that, the block function is very sluggish in responding to your input and the target-lock has a habit of going on the fritz. When looking at an enemy and dashing towards them, every now and then, the game decides to spin you around 180 degrees, back towards what you were facing, and deliver the attack into thin air. Still, the combat is trivial once you realize you can just Force Lighting anyone and anything and make a “flawless victory” out of pretty much anyone, even the bosses.
With all these problems, the game is still great fun, which only makes one wonder what it could have been if only ported properly. And yes, the blame here goes to Aspyr. You can lift all sorts of objects and hurl them at enemies, you Force Push locked doors and Force Grip enemies and toss them into oblivion. Also, the game carries that badass feeling of being a Dark Jedi Assassin. It's definitely a worthy game, even if the install takes up 25GB of the hard-drive space.