Description:
If you head into space, you want to take the right kit with you. For Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, that kit turned out to be middleware. It's hard not to have fun when you've got the likes of DMM and Euphoria under the hood - the first being a materials simulation system capable of turning out all sorts, from ice that both melts and cracks to convincing broccoli, while the second is a hilariously believable character animation programme responsible, among other things, for Red Dead Redemption's gloriously unsettling horsey deaths.
Together with Havok, they ensured that LucasArts' first Force-powered adventure was as much a treat for physics fans as it was for the kind of people who name their first child Rankor, and while the game wasn't perfect, I certainly remember the day I first mind-gripped a passing TIE Fighter and flung it through a window.
As the best-selling Star Wars game ever made, a sequel was pretty much inevitable, but that didn't mean it was going to be easy. Star Wars fans like their stories even more than they like their plastic Wookiees, and Force Unleashed concluded pretty, like, conclusively, with - spoiler - the death of the player character. That's if you took the righteous path, anyhow, which the team now considers the canonical ending.
