Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo

Whoop de doo~

Alright, so the demo came out. Being the Star Wars fanboy I am, I obviously downloaded it seconds after it was put up on the Xbox Live Marketplace.


So, the demo is mostly how I had hoped it would be. It demonstrates the basics behind all the general gameplay elements (saber combat and force wielding) pretty well.
What they give you is basically a quite short (hence the "mostly") sandbox with a few varied environments (ranging from corridors and a hangar to an open space with bridges connecting platforms over a huge chasm) for experimenting with the game engine.

To begin with, there are several doors to Force Push (or bash, thanks to the wonders of Force Grip) open, serving as a showcase for DMM.
I tried experimenting a bit further with these doors, seeing as they are supposed to be bent open in dynamic ways.
Pushing from different angles does have a visible difference, as does pushing them while in the air.
An additional interesting tidbit is that two of Starkiller's attacks actually have him punch down on the floor, pushing everything around him UP.
Yes, doors do indeed get pushed up when you do this.
It takes time and you unfortunately can't walk beneath them (I can think of several reasons for that, but it's most likely that they just didn't expect players to try it), but the metal still bends just you'd expect.
DMM gets a stamp of approval for great simulation of material.

Furthermore, the TIE Hangar not only gives you a big open space to fight tons of enemies (both Imperials and Insurgents, meaning you run into the middle of their fight) but also the TIE fighters themselves.
I say they're begging you to drop them on the unsuspecting Stormtroopers below.
A neat detail I noticed it that one of the Stormtroopers I picked up with Force Grip (it's basically telekinesis) actually grabbed on to the floor beneath him, preventing me to move him freely unless I threw him.
The Force Grip controls are great. While lifting something or someone around the left stick controls movement left, down, away from you and towards you. Meanwhile, the right stick acts just like it normally would control the camera; moving objects left, right, up and down.
It definitely takes some getting used to, but it's perfect when you've gotten good at it.

Euphoria (Biomechanical AI for dynamically generating reflex-based animations such as grabbing on to other humans or objects when being lifted into the air) gets a stamp of approval for making lifting people around almost ridiculously entertaining. Nothing beats watching the Stormtrooper struggle to hang on to the ground before you release the right trigger and Starkiller effortlessly throws him high into the sky.

I may go into detail about the Saber combo system (well-designed implementation of force powers into a simple but deep regular attack combo system) later, but for now you'll have to make do with reading this:
The combo system is quite similar to that of Devil May Cry 4 in that it gives you a -somewhat- limited amount of moves (though the full game is supposed to give you over 20 different combos) and is all about effectively utilizing and combining these.
It's a completely different approach compared to the classic Tekken-style combos and it is way more accessible to people who do not wish to learn fifty different specific button-combinations while still being equally challenging.
Basically, it's a good combo system.

Am I satisfied? Nope, not the slighest bit. I'll have to play the (unfortunately) short demo at least fifteen more times before I will be satisfied. For today.