The Force Unleashed 2

I'm still going through some of the older Star Wars games I got in a bundle.

Story

The story isn't bad. Good voice acting, great cinematics. There isn't a lot of meat there and it relies on knowing the previous game to really feel it. The events are a little too important to the Star Wars universe for my taste. Darth Vader is an obvious villain and this lets us live out our fantasies of confronting him. I prefer plots that are more subdued.

Gameplay

The gameplay bothered me enough that I set the difficulty on Easy so I could just zip though the story. 

Encounters

Most of the encounters were really fun. There were a variety of threats that required different tactics to beat. Many of the environments were really interesting and added a lot. Sadly, for me by the end of the game I would just do "mind trick, stab" over and over. At least the mechanical mini-bosses were immune and I never found a good trick for beating them.

One complaint is that many of the encounters felt rehashed. Like, "wasn't that a fun encounter? Now do it again!"

Boss Fights

While the boss fights had great cinematic quality, I didn't find them fun. I felt like I was mostly getting knocked down and standing up while trying to figure out how to hurt the boss. There was also a lot of "hold E and left click" which is fine for a while but here it was overdone.

Platforms

I really hate platform jumping puzzles. This game had plenty and with the quirky controls (see below) it was just annoying. I don't mind having to do this sort of thing as part of a larger encounter but jumping platforms by itself isn't fun.

Odds and Ends

The Force Unleashed 2 forces you to do a lot of minor things to keep you engaged while the story is being told. I appreciate that sort of thing, like in Telltale Games. Here it felt a little clunky but not overly annoying. I hope I never have to put another power cell in another door.

Controls

Ugh. The game loses at least half a star for the controls. I'm a PC snob and want the controls for my game to be right for the PC. This game had that clunky console-port feel. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. Maybe equivalent to Assassin's Creed. Not as good as Fallout 4.

Overall

As a Star Wars fanboy, this was well worth the 7 or 8 hours I put into it on easy mode.