before you click "reply", I know reviewing a demo out of all things is mildly retarded (a 360 review on a wii website? bwah?) but that game gave me so many opinions on it that I just had to share them.

the "star wars: the force unleashed" demo was released two days ago and I downloaded it today to try it out. these are my two cents on it (in no particular order):

the game menu's simple: you get an optional force grip tutorial and then you can start the game (or possibly remain unknowing of the modes existence since it's a completely different mode from "play demo".) whilst loading they show you the seemingly overcomplicated control scheme, but later I realized that it's probably the best way to map the buttons. you have the standard attack, jumping (a midair jump is possible, but seems impossible after you've reached the apex of your jump), force lightning, push, grip, dash, blocking (which I'll get back to in a moment) and a health and force bar in the top left corner of the screen (the usual in a star wars jedi game.)

the game opens with a cutscene which you can skip but I honestly have no idea how to. I pressed random buttons at first and when I hit A the SW:TFU symbol appeared in the lower right corner and the cutscene got some both visual and audio hiccups which later disappeared along with the symbol. after mashing A I somehow managed to skip the cutscene after about a minute into it. then you start out in an imperial starship hangar level. you're then treated to a corridor with some barrels and a few super small robots which don't do anything followed by a door that you're supposed to open by blowing it open with force push.

in the next room you enter combat on a bridge above some floor (wtf?). there are a few barrels nearby when you enter that you're supposed to try usnig force grip on and throwing 'em on the three stormtroopers in front of you. behind their corpses is a power-up that grants you infinite amounts of force powers to try 'em out on the approximately 30 stormtroopers in the hangar you've gotten to when you've gotten down from the bridge and this is where you'll get your very first disappointment. for a game which is completely centered around mixing force powers the ones in the demo are extremely tame. there is no way to combine any powers except for gripping someone and using lightning on them and for some reason there isn't even a lightsaber throw in the game. sure, the game's a demo, but how will this make someone buy the game on release?

the combat is extremely simple. all you really have to do is use force dash towards an opponent and slash him (and I played on the highest available difficulty), rinse and repeat. in fact using any force powers leaves you vulnerable to enemy fire (force lightning takes too much time to use for so little damage, you cannot move while using grip, push only damages if you're really close to them) and blocking leaves you invulnerable to everything but explosions and unable to move, then when every enemy except for one is dead you can play around with them using grip or other things.

about halfway through the game you get outdoors (I think) and then you can at least throw the enemies off the edge with grip and they'll fly away because of gravity or something (I honestly have no idea since they fly sideways.) then you get to a round elevator and this is where the AI shines (sarcasm.) when it's gotten all the way up you're attacked by some waiting enemies. most of them are pretty far away but I thought that I was gonna test it's IQ a little so what I did was I ran off the elevator towards some of the non-stormtrooper enemies who had little more close-ranged weapons and made them chase me back to the elevator and then I went back down. there were three enemies chasing me at first. they all stopped at the edge when I started going down (although they weren't completely there when I started so they kept running towards the elevator at first.) one fell down, one disappeared when I came back up and one of them was still standing there oblivious to my presence until I had moved.

now the part that completely destroyed it for me: the end. after that elevator room I got to an unnecessarily long bridge with some stormtroopers on it and at the other side of it was a big empty platform that looked like the end of the level and possibly a boss encounter. I threw some more barrels (yes, they are in fact everywhere there are enemies nearby and sometimes even when there aren't) at the ones blocking my way and when I had almost reached the platform an AT-ST (google it) came onto the platform (strangely enough I cannot remember how) along with 4 stormtroopers. the problem here wasn't the AT-ST, strangely enough. about 10% of the difficulty in this battle was because of the stormtroopers and the rest was because of the worst targeting system in the history of mankind (I saved the best for the end lol.)

you were supposed to use lightning on the AT-ST and then throw something onto it which was easier said than done. you see by pressing the right bumper you lock on to something in front of the camera and you can lock on to everything that you can grip or use any other force power on. now where's the problem in this? simple. when you've gripped something you don't get to see exactly what you've got your aim on and you cannot choose except by looking at something and by having a lot of luck. it can be thrown at anything you can use your force powers on as well (even junk that's only there to be thrown) which will lead to a lot of swears and unintentional barrels thrown at other barrels which then bounce off the edge. even though you're looking at a gigantic mech that's about six times your size you may accidentally throw you barrel at a barrel that you can't even see that's behind the AT-ST. you can stun the AT-ST with lightning and throw a barrel at it, but you'll get completely raped if those stormtroopers are alive and since the stun time from lightning is just enough to throw a barrel at it that wont keep it from shooting you with either its super laser machine gun which will deplete a ton of health or his two super shots which will stun you long enough for him to land another pair and the process repeats. now I know what you're thinking: "why not just zap him and use your lightsaber?" simple. he has a stomping attack that comes out when he walks at all where he lifts his foot up into the air slowly and then slowly takes it down to the floor and it has disgusting range. if you're standing under him and he puts his foot down to the left of you he'll hit you. if you run away when he's lifting it he'll hit you. if you're anywhere nearby he'll hit you. WHAT THE HELL?! and to top that off there's a glitch that kills you when you have the smallest amount of health possible after a few seconds (I have barely visible health, I try running away, no lasers or anything are shot at all, I die) which makes this boss battle harder than trying to shoot down a tank with a slingshot. after dying several times I tried another strategy: kill the stormtroopers as fast as possible then run off and throw barrels at the AT-ST outside his firing range. when you've run out of that range he won't chase you. in fact he won't move off the platform at all. when I did this I found a graphical flaw as well, the barrels I threw at him disappeared when they had been thrown a certain amount of range, but the hitbox from it was still there thus the AT-ST gets hit and takes damage. after that you have to run up to him and a quicktime event will occur and you get shown a trailer of what you can do in the full game.

now why did I post this? to tell you that this game might fail. hard. get your shit together, lucasarts.

Actually, I was thinking of putting up a section for non-Wii discussion and reviews... one for 360, another for PS3 (more like, for yoshi).

I'll run a poll.

kudos, but let us hope the game is better than the demo

hey bob? do u mind if i write my own review?

not at all, go ahead.