A wise puppet once said, "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack." Next to the whole "no dating" rule, that had to be the worst part about being a Jedi. While you're sitting around meditating and levitating rocks at the Jedi Temple, the bad kids at the Sith School across town are tossing dudes off ledges, choking punks from the other side of the room, and shooting lighting from their fingernails. Maybe it's not so hard to see why Anakin made the switch to the dark side.

Seeing as how the vast majority of "Star Wars" games have us playing as some goody-goody hero character, it's not too often that we get to bust some heads with the cool Force powers. That's a problem that The Force Unleashed sets out to fix. In a similar setup to the Nintendo 64 game, Shadows of the Empire, TFU is a new multimedia "Star Wars" event that features a host of new products (like toys, comics, books, etc.) centered around a new videogame chapter in George Lucas' beloved universe.


This time around, the story takes place in the timeframe between Episodes three and four (i.e. the new movies and the old ones). The main character is Galen Marek, a young man who goes by the name Starkiller. The son of two Jedi, Starkiller was kidnapped/adopted by Darth Vader after the dark lord cut down the boy's father during the Jedi purge. Vader intends to train his secret apprentice in the ways of the Sith in the hopes of destroying Emperor Palpatine and taking over control of the galaxy. This setup allows Starkiller to treat both the "good guys" and the "bad guys" as enemies, allowing you to dish out unfiltered destruction.

And dish you will. In addition to the standard-issue lightsaber, Starkiller has a host of upgradable Force powers at his disposal. These powers are, of course, the game's main selling point. TFU wastes no time in getting you used to being a badass dealer of Sith-style justice. The intro level allows you to control Darth Vader himself as he storms the Wookiee homework of Kashyyyk to hunt down Starkiller's father. The mighty Wookiees become little more than overgrown Ewoks as you use the Force to effortlessly lift them off the ground and chuck them over the side of their treetop city.