Kill good guys, bad guys, serve under Darth Vader

I feel sorry for Storm Troopers in "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed." They're just foot soldiers born in an empire of imperialist leaders who want to sour the universe. At best, they're patriots of the Dark Side. And here I am, killing them at whim with a light saber. Mass funerals must be held off-screen.

Actually, I kill not only Storm Troopers but everyone who crosses my path, because I'm portraying mean old Darth Vader's inexperienced running mate. The old bat tells me it's my "destiny" to execute Storm Troopers and rebels, because they get in my way of murdering the good Jedis in the universe.

Whew. That's a lot of negative campaigning. But then comes a twist: Darth sort of claims he isn't keen on the emperor's doctrine of preventive war on Jedis. So, perhaps, I'm slaying everyone in a quest to replace the head honcho of the Empire. Maybe. Although replacing evil with evil doesn't sound like real change.

This is a creepy campaign, set in the period between "Star Wars" episodes III and IV, when Luke Skywalker is just a tot. "The Force Unleashed" is menacing from the first scenes onward. Darth kills my father in front of me when I'm a kid, then he whisks me off to train.

Flash forward to my young adulthood, and suddenly I'm an apprentice named Galen, aka "Starkiller." This darkness is a natural extension of today's game world of anti-heroes. But serving under the tutelage of nasty old Darth Vader ranks right up there on the sinister-o-meter.

"Now your hatred has become your strength," Darth tells me early on. "At last, the Dark Side is your ally. Rise, my apprentice."

This is a fun campaign to watch and wage, mostly, and the game play is intuitive. You easily learn to swing a light saber and unleash magical "force" powers. As the game proceeds, you acquire new forces and fight moves. The occasional cinematic scenes are conventional, but pretty and effective.

Yet in its heart, this is a standard sword-type action-adventure. You work your way through spaceship corridors and planet jungles, slicing and dicing good guys, bad guys and indigenous creatures on weirdo planets. Victims, victims, everywhere.

In a typical hour, you will be told to "find a way to cross the junk chasm." Or, you run through a forest cutting down dozens of baddies, while pushing away others using a windy telekinesis-style force (which kills them), or electrifying big bosses with lightning-strike power surges.

The only serious problem is you can't challenge other gamers in any multiplayer level online or offline, on the PS 3 and Xbox 360. The Wii will let you play multiplayer offline; the PSP and DS, online. That limits the shelf life of the game in my house to 20 hours or so, instead of hundreds of hours online.

Oh, well. At least it's an entertaining fancy, and I finally learned to pity Storm Troopers, who can't possibly understand how cruel their leaders really are, spouting bitter rhetoric to achieve a joyless vision of an imperial empire.

("Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" retails for $60 for PS 3 and Xbox 360; $50 for Wii; $40 for PSP and PS 2; $30 for DS -- Plays entertaining, though lacks multiplayer. Looks great. Moderately challenging to very challenging, depending on settings you choose. Rated "T" for violence. Three and one-half stars out of four.)

Contact Doug Elfman at 702-383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.