Force Unleashed was a product that was refreshing to see excel over what we expected it to be. Krome could have easily phoned this one in, sloppily adding some waggle here, a quick IR aspect there, and calling it a day, but when ripping through the game's six hour single player campaign it was obvious that the team wanted this to be a truly entertaining Star Wars game, and if it wasn't for a few random bugs and flaws within the execution, we would have rated it even higher, as Force Unleashed delivers a level of satisfaction that we don't find often on Wii.

Where Force Unleashed for Wii really drops the ball though, is in the overall lack of polish found throughout the game. The camera is extremely touchy, the lock-on mode often creates more problems than it's worth, the AI can be extremely buggy, running in place or getting hung up on collision, and some of the boss battles are downright broken, being so unbalanced that you're dying and respawning over and over to complete them, rather than finding a weakness and exploiting it in typical boss fashion. Most of the Jedi battles end up being the highest points of the game, as they can be extremely cinematic and immersive. At the same time, you'll often be battling camera problems and the seldom lock-on issue as you try to use parts of the world to your advantage, or dodge and block incoming force attacks from your enemies.

Controlling the Apprentice is performed done with the Wii remote and Nunchuk. For instance, Force Push is done by pushing forward with the Nunchuk. To execute lightsaber swings, you move the remote in multiple directions. There's also a more effective lock-on system, which you activate by pressing down on the d-pad. For the most part, these controls work reasonably well, although your wrists may ache after an hour or two of play. We're just wondering why developer Krome Studios included a first-person view option. It's mostly useless, because you're able to take damage without getting a good look around.

For the boss battles, you twist around the Wii remote and then push it upward. It's all right at first but becomes tiring after the third or fourth time, as some motions don't read correctly. As a result, the boss removes a chunk of your energy. It should also be noted that the conclusion of boss fights are diluted, made up of button presses and quick jerks of the Nunchuk and Wii remote..

At least there are some "guilty pleasure" moments. You're able to play as Darth Vader in the beginning of the game, ripping through Wookies like they were nothing. There's also something immensely satisfying in taking out a field of Stormtroopers with one big Repulse attack, followed by a little Lightning deep fry. Using the Force powers does use up your energy. Fortunately, each kill replenishes your health.

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.

This time around, the story takes place in the timeframe between Episodes III and IV (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.

Despite the solid controls, there's one annoying feature to the combat system. There's no denying that TFU feels inspired by Sony's God of War series. That's all fine and good, but it unfortunately picked up one of GoW's more annoying aspects: quick timer events. You know, those obnoxious "interactive cinemas" where the game developers came up with a very cool sequence but couldn't figure how to implement it into the gameplay proper. Their clever solution is to simply play the canned sequence while forcing you to press random buttons on the controller (or perform specific waggles here). This sort of thing was just super in Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, but it isn't 1984 anymore.