It's amazing that 30 years on we're still celebrating Star Wars for the fantastic film it was. 6 films, several action figures and a variety of games later and Lucas Arts pump some serious cash into bringing us Star Wars: Force Unleashed. Watching the tech vids alone showed some serious promise for the title, with destructible environments and survivalist AI, not to mention being a Jedi once more.

The game takes place between the 3rd and 4th film where the Jedi are practically extinct and Darth Vader, heading up the Empire, chases down the last of the Jedi to finally wipe them from the face of the universe. Upon killing a Jedi, Vader finds and takes his child as an apprentice after sensing the force being particularly strong within him. This child becomes “Starkiller”, the character you play throughout the course of Force Unleashed.

Raised as Darth Vader's apprentice you start off being a firm follower of the Dark Side and his first assignment is to track down a Jedi and eliminate any witnesses. For those of you who played the demo, it's the same level except with changes towards the end to continue how the level should be played out. You'll also start without any power-ups, unlike the demo and can pick and choose what you want to upgrade as you progress through the game.

SW:FU (a funny acronym) is a 3rd-person hack-n-slash style game set in various locations you'll know from the films as you carry out missions set by Vader. The game features many of the Force Powers you've come to know from previous titles, including Force Lightning, what with being an apprentice of the Dark Side and all, each of these skills can be levelled up as you do in turn, or by finding cubes scattered throughout the levels that will provide additional spending points. Certainly the skill that stole the show for me was being able to lift objects using the Force. This allows you to pick up and hurl objects or fling troops all over the place - which never gets old! It's here where the survivability factor comes into play as troops try and hold onto objects, railings or each other in an attempt to thwart your Jedi Flinging Tricks. You can also test out the environment at this point by throwing one of them through a window in different fashions to see how beautifully it shatters!

While force powers are perhaps the most fun element to the game, you can always go around slicing up your foes with an underpowered lightsaber. Yes, unfortunately it's a 12, so no decapitating, limb removal, or at it's very core – blood. Shame, but then I guess it's easier to sell to a wider audience. The lightsaber has collectables associated with it to change it's colour or add additional power-ups, and the combos can be bought in the same way as Force Powers can – through the upgrade menu. Not that this really means much when it comes down to it as most of the time you'll be having too much fun with your Force Powers or just simply tapping buttons in a convoluted way.

Still, there's plenty of passive skills which you can spend some points in to at least increase your ability to thwack things royally, it just never quite feels like you're doing some serious damage unless throwing your enemy at a wall however.

Due to making your powers so damn addictive, it has somewhat marred the sword-slinging gameplay. They've also gone down the route of showing us that StarKiller's incredibly powerful. So much so that he can haul down a Star Destroyer (you've no doubt seen the footage) and throw Tie-Fighters around like they're made of cheese. Which leaves you with a certain delusion of grandeur and thus your hopes are dashed when it comes to doing the same to some enemies – they just won't budge. And yes, I don't care that they're special troops, if they've got suits that are that special they should make the bloody Star Destroyers out of the same stuff, just in case some Jedi nut decides he's going to try and pull one out the sky! I would've loved to have seen Luke try and crush the Death Star with the power of his mind before, much to the disappointment of his friends and colleagues, he proceeds to suffer from an overwhelming aneurysm.

Anyway, you're there looking somewhat similar to Altaïr from Assasins Creed (has a new day job apparently) in your Sith / Jedi garb slinging crates about the place and wondering how all the controls and camera angles are going to work together. Well, the controls aren't too bad perhaps other than locking on to objects and how they decide to auto-lock on to your targets. The real strain is probably the camera angles and a lack of a “snap to front” button which has you more often than not running large circles around the environment when trying to avoid enemy fire. Sure, that's not so much of an issue if you've got some of your passive skills up which help you repel rifle fire from Storm Troopers, but it certainly does nothing for incoming missiles or those bloody jet pack troops that hover around out of view and constantly shoot your arse off.

Still at least you can admire the impressive visuals while you're doing all of this, which looking really stunning on a Hi-Def set up. Unfortunately, that didn't really detract from the hideous challenges that were presented as part of the “normal” difficulty setting. If you want to play this game as you'd expect to play it I'd probably suggest going for the “easy” option. Playing this game through on normal difficulty means facing a multitude of enemies in some instances which will make you want to weep violently. Not to mention the boss battles which are strangely complicated to win as you're never really sure how best to beat them. Oh, and they counter most of the things you throw at them. So perhaps combining the camera angles with painful difficulty spikes is what lead me to want to eat the controller, run off shouting down the office several uncomprehendable obscenities, showering a spittle of broken 360 parts over colleagues, rushing out the door sobbing uncontrollably to buy 4 bottles of vodka, drinking myself into oblivion, booking the first flight out to Azerbaijan where I'd live as a hermit crying myself to sleep at night, never to play a game again.

Luckily I can't afford the plane ticket, so somehow I'll soldier on.

At the end of the day, it's a great game that's been marred by only allowing the current monkey-like QA staff to play the game rather than a bunch of sane “I've never played a game before” types to have a go and realise that they were getting their butt crevice handed to them and tone stuff up a little. Give it a go, but remain calm; keep your focus – “tow'tal concentration”. [I have no idea what he's on about either, folks. Time for his afternoon nap perhaps – Matt].