The one question I have after playing the final, retail release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is the following: what the hell happened? We enjoyed the demo; the things LucasArts showed us before the game's release all looked promising, but the final version is buggy, messy, and stretches the patience of even the most hardcore Star Wars fan.

This is even more galling because the story of Darth Vader's secret apprentice is a strong one, the comic book is wonderful, and, while the novelization isn't a great piece of literature, it's a very readable adventure. I devoured it in two nights and have no problem recommending it to anyone who wants a light splash of Star Wars in their day. The story fits snugly between episodes three and four, and adds some very nifty things to canon; I was left looking forward to actually playing the climactic scenes from the book.

The problem is that the game never feels solid, or even finished. It can be unclear where you can and can't explore, the camera gets in your way more often that not, and the cuts from game play to cinemas happen suddenly and in a very herky-jerky way. If I were given this game as a demo I would say things look great, and I can't wait to see where they are in four to six months. As a retail release though, the lack of polish is a deal-breaker. Mike Thompson even encountered a game-ending bug during a boss battle, although for the sake of spoilers I can't describe it in much detail.

To finish off the bosses you have to participate in quick-time events, and while I was assured that if you failed one of these you could just kill the boss and not get to see the cool cinema, that wise bit of design was cut; failures now force you to retry the combination of button presses again and again.

With some enemies it's hard to tell if you're hitting them at all, which is hard to explain considering you're carrying a fracking lightsaber. The places to use your force powers are also insultingly obvious, which huge chunks of the levels growing blue to show you have to interact with certain places. Major scenes that have been hinted at and barely shown leading up to the game end up being broken or anticlimactic. Don't get me started on the menus, which are also annoyingly slow and take way too long to load. When you find leveling your character painful, something tragic happened during development.

There are some joys to be squeezed from the game, including an opening scene with a rampaging Darth Vader and some interesting art here and there, but overall this is a large disappointment. I know you may tell yourself it can't be that bad, or that you want to play just for the story... I implore you to at least rent it first. Or buy the comic, or even the book. You'll be much happier.