By Mike Fahey

The Force Unleashed II: Attack Of The Other Clones

The Force Unleashed II opens with Lord Vader informing Starkiller that he's a failed clone. When will LucasArts stop ripping off the Spider-Man clone saga?

I am being facetious, of course. No one would consciously rip off the Clone Saga. It just sounds a little similar.

Spoiler alert, which is more than we got!

At the end of The Force Unleashed, Vader's apprentice sacrificed himself to save something from something. I'm a little unclear on the particulars, but it still counts as a spoiler.

So how is he alive now?

The Force Unleashed II opens on the rainy planet of Kamino, proud manufacturers of the original clone army. Vader informs his apprentice that he's done his job well, but he is no longer needed. He leaves the room after ordering eight Stormtroopers to kill him.

You may have seen the trailer. It's completely silly. One could argue Vader meant for him to escape. One could also argue that Starkiller should have figured that out, being an intelligent young force of nature.

Our demo opens with that trailer, showing just how much of a badass Galen (Starkiller's real name) can be, before turning it over to the player to try and live up.

We quickly shifted to a new sort of gameplay for the series: the controlled free fall, seen above. Galen leaps out of a window and plummets down the side of a tower, smashing through platforms, avoiding Tie Fighters, taking out Stormtroopers, and generally moving in a downward direction, very fast.

Until he smashes through a window and lands, of course.

He winds up in glass corridor, water coursing down the glass in spectacular fashion, at least until a fighter ship start shooting through it. Galen charges down the corridor, avoiding gunfire, while Stormtroopers die in droves, as they should.

Once through the corridor he faces the ship out in the open, crumpling it like a tin can with the power of his mind.

As he wanders out into the pouring rain, his outfit gets soaked. I love little touches like that. Like the first game, The Force Unleashed 2 is filled with amazing physics. Cloth gets wet, glass shatters naturally, and Stormtroopers die as one would expect.

Then comes a new enemy, the Imperial Riot Trooper, filling the role of annoying enemy that always blocks. Starkiller must use force powers to get past their defenses, weaving them together with blows from his new dual lightsaber setup. The combat has been revamped completely to suit the new weapons. Interesting.

More Stormtroopers show up to die, and Galen makes use of the new Force Power, Mind Trick. At low power, it'll make enemies turn on each other, or leap into environmental hazards. At higher levels, it'll explode their minds.

"These are not the droids you are loo...oops."

Force powers are also used to solve environmental puzzles. Grabbing a passing Tie Fighter (the new targeting system looks extremely easy), Galen crumples it into a ball and tosses it at a nearby tower. The tower falls, opening up a new path. convenient!

The last big battle in the demo is against a large Carbonite War Droid, which comes equipped with a carbonite freeze cannon and a large shield. Kiting it about the stage results in a mass of frozen Stormtroopers. Galen force pulls the shield away, beats the living hell out of the droid, and then finishes it by slicing off the nozzle of its weapon, freezing it solid.

Spotting Vader's Tie Fighter Advanced, Galen has finally too many Stormtroopers. A button activates force rage, enhancing the power of his abilities a great amount for a short period of time. Now his force push tosses enemies off the platforms, and his saber swings take off heads and arms.

Echoing the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Vader watches the Millennium Falcon leave Hoth, Vader watches his own ship leave Kamino. Turning, looking back thoughtfully, and moving on.

It's a fitting beginning to The Force Unleashed's version of Empire.

Let's just hope Ben Riley doesn't show up.

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