Tom Chick wrote:

Instead, The Force Unleashed relies mostly on Force powers, unlocked by a desultory and superficial role-playing game system.

But these Force powers are almost single-handedly scuttled by the lack of a functional way to target them. Picture Vader in the conference room in "Star Wars," raising his hand to choke the guy and then delivering the line, "I find your lack of faith disturbing." Now imagine if he raised his hand and instead accidentally crushed the speakerphone in the center of the conference table. Awkward. Would he pretend he meant to do that? Or would he fumble around and try again, destroying more appliances and furniture in the process before eventually choking the faithless guy? Because that's what would happen in The Force Unleashed. It's inexcusable that you're given these awesome powers to use in a mostly good physics engine, but you're left to fumble around and hope the right thing gets targeted when you want to Force Lift it, Force Push it, Force Grasp it, Force Lightning it, Force Throw Your Lightsaber at it, or Force Rush it. As it is, it's all a lot of Force Suck.

It begins promisingly enough, with an intoxicating sense of power. Things break obligingly and nothing can stand in your way for very long. You get a glorious sense of how great the Dark Side of the Force is for just breaking stuff. But as the game progresses, the designers grasp awkwardly for ways to curtail your abilities. It's the standard power progression of a videogame, but inverted. Instead of getting more powerful, you get less powerful. You're facing Stormtroopers with glowing "can't grab me!" shields, Felucian Warriors with lightsaber-blocking cutlasses, or quasi-impossible bosses immune to your best tricks. In fact, the boss fights are humbling experiences in having no idea what works and what doesn't. You die and try again, waiting until you manage to hit on something the impervious bosses don't feel like shrugging off. As the game world shuts down your back of tricks, you feel weaker and weaker.