- Online multiplayer Gaming
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Experience the best in gaming and entertainment with Xbox LIVE Gold. Raise the curtain on your own instant movie night with thousands of HD movies and TV episodes streamed instantly from Netflix. (Netflix membership sold separately). Invite friends all over the world to connect, cheer and play online multiplayer games. And as a Gold member, you’ll enjoy exclusive Deals of the Week that save you money and special sneak-peak game demos that give you early access to the newest and latest
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Price: $ 32.99
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- Confront and associate with familiar faces from the Star Wars films, including Darth Vader in addition to new adversaries such as fugitive Jedi and Force-sensitive Felucians
- Unleash and upgrade the Secret Apprentice’s four core Force powers – Force push, grip, repulse and lightning – throughout the course of the game, and combine them for ultra-destructive, never-before-seen combos.
- Examples of unleashing the Force in ways never thought possible: Secret Apprentice won’t just Force push enemies into walls – he’ll Force push enemies through walls, and will Force grip them in midair, zap them with lightning, then drop them to the ground
- Visit locations such as Episode III’s Wookiee homeworld Kashyyyk and the floral Felucia, the junk planet Raxus Prime, plus an Imperial TIE fighter construction facility
- Decisions made by players throughout the game will determine the path of the story, including multiple endings that will rock Star Wars continuity as they know it.
The next chapter in the Star Wars saga, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, tells the story of Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, a mysterious figure trained by the menacing Sith Lord, to hunt down the last of the Jedi. Set in the dark times between Episodes III and IV, the story is both a continuation of the prequel trilogy — exploring the aftermath of Order 66, which called for the immediate execution of all Jedi, and focusing on the continued rise of Darth Vader — and a direct bridge to the Orig
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List Price: $ 19.99
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Review by J. Gable for Xbox 360 12 Month Live Gold Card
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To start off, I’d like to say that XBox Live is amazing and worth every penny. Online gaming is incredibly fun and a quite good way to pass time.
That aside, there are downsides to XBox Live that can be avoided through prepaid cards. Number one, you always run the risk that unwarranted transactions will be made if your credit card information is stored on your XBox 360 system. It may not happen all that often, but it’s best to avoid it all together.
The biggest reason to buy prepaid Xbox Live card is the renewal process that happens when you don’t use one. If you order XBox Live through your system, it’ll renew everytime your subscription runs out. This wouldn’t be a problem except that it’s not that easy to cancel. Instead of cancelling through your system, you have to go through the hassle of actually calling XBox Live support. Even then, depending on the representative you get, you may be hassled to keep your subscription because they really don’t want you to cancel it. I’m guessing that’s part of their job to convince you to keep it, but it still is frustrating to the person that is trying to cancel it.
You’ll have to go through this process everytime you want to cancel if you don’t use a prepaid card. Is that hassle really worth it? I don’t think so. Therefore, avoid all of the problems by simply buying a prepaid card. You won’t be sorry.
UPDATE (7/7/2010): This review was written in 2006 and back then you had to call customer service to stop the auto-renewal. As users in the comment of this review have pointed out, since then you can simply go to the main website and disable it, but you have to do this every single time you buy a new subscription.
The prepaid card is still the ultimate way to go. You don’t have to worry about forgetting to stop the renewal, plus the prices are just simply better during much of the year. Sometimes Microsoft will have special trials (such as three months for half off), but for the rest of the time, the ease of Amazon’s new digital service to send you the code or the savings of having the actual card shipped to you is just too good to pass up. If you’re buying it for a gift, that special gamer in your life will definitely love you for getting it for them!
Review by S. Taylor for Xbox 360 12 Month Live Gold Card
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From what I can find this is the cheapest cost per month option available for a live gold subscription. Depending on the current price, it ranges from $2.9158 to $3.3325 per month. What I don’t get is why this credit card sized subscription card comes in such wasteful packaging. It comes in a rather large plastic packaging, which requires it to be shipped in a box. You get free shipping, but how wasteful. Why doesn’t amazon just offer the code online and not eat the cost of shipping and at the same time be a little greener?
Review by Nathaniel Nicklas for Xbox 360 12 Month Live Gold Card
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This is the BEST deal I have ever found on the Xbox Live 12 Month Subscription.
I looked 6-10 different places for a deal on this and only found 1 close to this and that was wal-fart but I dislike shopping there so Amazon was the place to go.
This should be a guaranteed buy and you CAN’T beat the Price!!!
Review by Mark Zeller for Xbox 360 12 Month Live Gold Card
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Find the card on sale every so often each year. Don’t pay the full price. The Xbox Live Gold is stellar and I love it, but I don’t see how they charge $50 or more a year and you don’t get any freebies…other than advanced demo downloads. They need to throw a bone for a free song or discounted DLC or a free rental every so often. I have spent well over $1000 in my 3 years with the Xbox 360 on peripherals, games and downloads. 2% of my money spent as a gift would have paid for 1600 points of DLC…that would be a nice thank you from Xbox 360 for keeping their community alive and well.
Review by Heather for Xbox 360 12 Month Live Gold Card
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My fiancee was under the $6 a month plan – this is a much better deal. We bought this card for $40, which is better than the $72 we WERE paying.
Xbox Live really contributes to the gaming experience. The connection to Netflix is almost enough to get it RIGHT there. It helps us to maximize use of our Netflix subscription AND any games we buy (expansion releases).
Review by Michael D. Cooper for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
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First of all, you should know that this game is kind of short. I received it yesterday and it took roughly 10 hours on standard difficulty to complete.
Yet the fact that I didn’t move the entire 10 hours is testament to this game’s ability to be loads of fun to play, regardless of game-length.
THE GOOD:
The opening level places you in command of Darth Vader, giving you a preview of the absolute power of the force… that you realize you can’t match at first with the apprentice. As the developers have stated, this is to give you a chance to realize what you can become.
The absolute awesomeness of this level really sets the tone for the game. Marching down and eliminating Wookies while ATAT’s walk down below from the cliff and Star Destroyers, troop transports, and TIE Fighters fly all around left me feeling like this was really Star Wars.
The leveling in the game gives you a chance for character customization once you take control of the apprentice. Want your force-grip to be able to grab two enemies instead of one? Spend your force points in upgrading force-grip. Also – you can wear various costumes, make your lightsaber one of nearly 20 colors with various special effects, and really make your character your own.
The gameplay is solid, with a few questionable level designs toward the end of the game.
THE BAD:
The story is ‘good’ but as I gave the writer of the novel a hard time for not delving deep enough – I have to say that the cutscenes were chopped down to the point where you really can’t grasp the full impact of the story which was more clear in the novel.
The Romance:
The love dialog/romance is worse than George Lucas if that gives you any indication. These characters develop feelings for one another despite Juno Eclipse being little more than a ‘professional imperial’ who forgot to button the top 5 buttons on her uniform and having no dialog really outside of a few sentences in the cut scenes.
Then again – if I saw a woman dressing like that I suppose it wouldn’t take much romance for me to develop feelings for her either.
Multiple Endings? There is a dark side ending and a light side ending, but this isn’t Knights of the Old Republic. 99% of the game is the same regardless of what you choose to be/wear/do. The final ‘choice’ is made 30 seconds before the final boss fight. Regardless of how you play the game – it comes down to what you do 30 seconds before you fight the final boss. I was hoping for a variety of missions or at least a change in objectives.
Frustrating objectives:
Sometimes your objective is very vague. I spent more than one level wandering in circles and jumping off cliffs trying to figure out what to do because the mission objective was something like “Pick out the hydrospanner from the flexoregulator” which is probably something you would know if you were an uber-geek who knew what either was. Guesswork and trial and error. Also – in the second Raxis Prime level the force controls at the end LIE to make you die quicker.
Bugs:
Few and far between, but I had some ATST decide to despawn (which was good for me) and a few hiccups. For the most part the game was solid.
OVERALL:
Despite the flaws, I sat through the entire 10 hours and couldn’t stop because it was extremely addictive. The game is simple – but it works and is fun. You can tell a lot of love went into this, but you can also tell that the cutscenes feel disconnected from the rest of the story in terms of dialog because of spotty editing which leaves you wanting more.
This is better than anything else LucasArts has had in a while, and you really feel like this is Star Wars.
Bottom line: A step in the right direction. A+ Gameplay, C- Story.
Review by J. C. Amos for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
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It took me no time at all to become a fan of The Force Unleashed. The game starts you as Darth Vader himself, fighting your way through the Wookie planet to eliminate a rogue Jedi in hiding that the empire has discovered. Vader lets you experience what some of your force abilities will be throughout the game as you later play his apprentice. And while is was very entertaining, I found something a little disturbing about killing dozens of wookies. They howl at you as they die and everything…
Soon you are playing Vader’s apprentice, trained by Vader himself in the Sith arts. Your abilities are much more limited from what Vader himself had; I’m guessing to leave Vader as a benchmark to what you can aspire to become. Still, TFU doesn’t waste any time and throws you right into the action. The force abilities you are given are incredibly fun to use against your enemies: foring pushing them into walls, picking them up and chukcing them like dolls, picking them up and chucking them like dolls into TIE Fighters, lightning, force repulse and the good old fashioned hack and slash with your lgihtsaber. You think that killing dozens of rebel and storm troopers alike might get old, but it really doesn’t. The more of them you kill, the more force points and combo points you build up and you get all new ways to eliminate them. And even though you seem to be an unsoppable killing machine, the game is still challenging in spots, and I’m only playing it on the medium difficulty. Battling other force users is one point where the game can get challenging and also more fun. Matching wits and strengths jedi to jedi is a very fun gaming experience. Upgrades also add a nice element to the game, collecting points for new force combos, upgrading your abilities and upgrading your character’s stats. This adds an extra addictive element to the game in a mild RPG fashion.
And then there’s are the visuals. They are amazing. The character designs, the lighting, the action; they are all flawless. The backround settings and environments are also gorgeious and have an almost painted look, like a mural. This might sound out of place but it actually looks really amazing. You might see what I mean when you first arrive on the junk planet. My only complaint here is that some of the close up textures look a little bland, mostly on the fungal world that I’ve noticed.
Audio is great too. Much of the score is old John William’s classic, so there’s no complaint there. A lot of the affects seem to be taken right from the movies, which is also fine. Sound affects for explosions and force sounds seem about as good as I could expect. And I especially like how the troopers plead for their lives as you pick them up with the force and wave them around.
The story itself is also very well done. It bridges some of the gap between episodes 3 and 4 and actually explains some of the continuity. It also manages to do this without recycling old Star Wars stories and themes which is nice.
So I enjoy this game a lot. One complaint I’ve read in reviews that I only partially agree with is slightly clumsy controls. There is some room for improvement there (when using force grip, throwing an object and getting it where you want it to go can be difficult.) But every game for me has something about the controls or gameplay that I don’t like, and I usually look past it. Another complaint of mine is lack of multiplayer. This could be an awesome game multiplayer.
To reiterate:
Pros: Mostly great graphics, fun and addictive gameplay, awesome force abilities, good story
Cons: Some clumsy controls, graphics could use work in some areas, no multiplayer
The Force Unleashed is a great game for the Star Wars fan or otherwise and I recommend it.
Review by D. Tortora for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
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Game was way over hyped but isn’t every semi-major title these days? I had a lot of fun with the game but once I finished the SHORT story mode I was left with a feeling that I should have waited to rent the game from Hollywood Video. Granted there are things to find, achievments to get all that good stuff on mutiple play throughs, but I could not bring myself to play through more than once. I will be selling the game once I find the time. PLEASE RENT, you won’t be dissapointed. It’s a fun game but with no multiplayer there is little left after you complete the game.
Review by K. M. Cook for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
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Besides the few glitches this game is solid, solid waste of money! While the gameplay is easy enough and the graphics were above average, what kills Star Wars: Unleashed is value for your dollar! Seriously, what you are paying for is the graphics and the easier playing action system, if you were paying for the playing value it would be less then a $20.00 game. The story was good, but short and the re-play ability is less then most. I have played KOTOR, KOTOR II and other Lucas Arts games over and over, this really does not have that re-play value, maybe you might play it again in a year. Their is not really too many choices for gamers, making this more of a button smash action game and a short one at that.
I saw someone beat the game in 10 hours, I beat it on difficult in less then eight and I am truly dissapointed. This is a renter game, not worth the $60.00 price tag…I would rather re-play KOTOR or KOTOR II!
Review by Chip L for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
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I really can’t believe some of the high marks some people have given this game. It glitches out so many times; at least two or three times I had to manually turn off my x-box and restart because of a glitch. Many other times I got stuck on some invisible wall. The AI is horrible and does not live up to the hype.
It’s not all bad – it’s always fun to kill storm troopers with a lightsaber. The cutscenes look pretty, and the voice acting and music are good.
This game tries to follow the God of War formula and apply it to Star Wars: slash and hack and level up with new combos. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s so poorly executed, you’ll wish you were playing the old wire-frame x-wing game.