I think it’s safe to say I’m pretty much over the Wii; it was a nice experiment when the first batches of Nintendo games were still fresh and the sales were utterly crushing the competition beneath its sandaled feet. It towered overhead in a turgid position of power and manliness. But now the honeymoon is over and what once stood boldly upright has become all limp and floppy. Whenever it is brought out cruel, mocking laughs of onlookers savage the little self-esteem left and it’s starting to leak this weird brownish liquid but he’s too embarrassed to see the doctor…

Sorry, what was I talking about? Well, anyway: The Force Unleashed. The game has come out for anything possessing a screen; PS3, 360, Wii, PSP, Iphone, DS, Microwave oven but my thinking was that since the first thing most people do with a Wii-controller is swing it about making lightsaber noises, it would be remised to play an actual official lightsaber game on anything else. A slight graphical downgrade is a relatively minor setback for a game that actually feels like being a legendary, unstoppable warrior-magician rather than just piloting one via controller.

Sadly, the legendary, unstoppable warrior-magician has a Zimmer-frame, suffers from Parkinson’s disease and a slight graphical downgrade became ‘it looks like it was left in a Swamp Monsters’ trouser pocket on laundry day’. Just to take another bladder evacuation into my horrified eyes and nostrils, I later caught a glimpse of the PS3 version being played and not only were the graphics better but the level design was drastically different i.e. actually good! And the physics seemed to amount more than just swotting things made of cardboard around empty rooms. On the whole, it seemed like a game that I would much prefer playing but I made my stupid, stupid mistake so I’m stuck with this watery knock-off. It just goes to prove one of my life-long philosophies: Freewill is over rated.

The story concerns Darth Vader who thankfully has gotten over puberty and expands his evil portfolio with a dalliance of stealing other people’s children. His nurturing instincts then kick in and he raises the sprog as a secret apprentice to help overthrow the Emperor, and why not? Everything works out so well whenever he tries to pull that off. Apparently the plot is supposed to tie the Star Wars prequel trilogy to the original series which raises the question ‘why would we want to do this terrible thing?’ It’s like tying your breakfast to a plague rat. The grubby fingerprints of George Lucas are all over the story and none of the characters are in the slightest bit relatable. That, however, could be because the Wii’s graphic limitations make them look like stroke victims attached to puppet strings. Your female sidekick in particular has something eerie about her; she never blinks for one thing. Her eyes just sort of wobble every now and again as though they are about to fall out.

But let’s move onto the festering bone marrow of the matter. The Wii-motes controls consist of sweeping it left and right for horizontal slashingor up and down if you’re feeling sassy. Put into practice however and most lightsaber fights end up with you running up to the enemy waving your wrist around as though there is a tarantula crawling up your sleeve. The trouble with the Wii-motion sensor is that it’s so temperamental; it’s like playing any other consol but where the buttons randomly re-assign themselves every few seconds.

Since it is the Wii’s unique feature I should probably mention the Duel Mode in which you and a friend see who can fight off carpal tunnel syndrome the longest. A friend and I decided to opt for Anakin Skywalker vs Darth Vader just to create a time paradox but when we figured out that both of us were using the fighting technique of ‘random-shakey-foo’, we both just backed up and blasted Force Lightning at each other to see who died first.

Back in Single Player town, I ended up spending all my upgrades in the Force because, as stated, the lightsaber fighting is like trying to follow an aerobics routine with your arms tied to different windmills. Once you figure out that Force Lightning can down an entire roomful of enemies you wonder why you still carry that glowing Jedi extension. I mean, Christ, Luke was supposed to be some Force prodigy and the most he could do was move a lightsaber by grimacing at it for an hour, and here’s this guy clearing an entire hallway with a cough!

Force Unleashed for the Wii did not endear itself to me, but I don’t blame the developers. I blame the Wii for being tight-fisted with its hardware upgrades, I blame myself for failing to research the different versions, I blame GAME for quite a few unrelated things but most of all I blame George Lucas- that chinless git whose pummelling his own franchise with such ham-handedness you could put pieces of bread around it and call it a BLT. When are Lucas Arts going to drop this shallow pretence that the trilogy wasn’t seven to eight hours of concentrated agony drilled into the forebrain, declare the whole lot of it non-cannon and move on. They keep trying to make us accept it, like how our parents made us invite the hunchbacked kid who smelled to our birthday party.

Personally, I would slap George’s hands away from the editing desk, give him a colouring book and then re-make the prequel trilogy so that Darth Vader uses the Force to win break dancing competitions.