VIDEO GAME: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed [Buy Now]

Lucasarts
$59.99

Lord Acton, the bearded Brit historian who probably would have bored us all to tears with his intellect, is the gent whom history credits with coming up with the famous “absolute power corrupts absolutely” bon mot we’ve all reached for at some point in our lives.

It took only a century for Ronald Reagan’s U.S. Naval Secretary to turn Acton’s quote into a dorky Tonight Show-level joke: “Power corrupts,” an unbearded, un-British John Lehman reportedly said. “Absolute power is kind of neat.”

Lehman had a point. We’ve always been obsessed with power. Republicans and Democrats have spent the last two weeks arguing in big sports arenas about who’s going to grab it in November, as residents in hurricane-plagued places like New Orleans and Chucktown have wondered whether it’ll still be on when they get home at night.

For gamers, the equation’s far less contentious. Playing with power is the most basic reason most of us park our asses in front of our consoles in the first place — the opportunity to end a day, a day in which the most powerful thing you may have done is to text an underling, with virtual superpowers and superweapons in order to shred the bejesus out of a big-ass mythical beast.

It’s vicarious. It’s visceral. And, like Lehman said, it’s kinda neat.

But it’s also calculated, and the ways in which games parse out power can tell you a lot about both the philosophies that went into making them and the people who are drawn to them. It can be a stark dichotomy: Are you granted power immediately, like all those government entitlements Republicans are so fond of dissing, or is it a delayed gratification thing, something you have to earn by hard work and the sweat of your thumbs?

If you’ve ever stepped into the shoes of the game-clichéd farmboy who gets swept into the Ultimate Conflict Between Good and Evil — see almost any RPG released in the last 15 years for an example — then you’ve probably experienced the former … and the frustration that accompanies it. Sure, the payoff at Level 52 is large, but it takes a late-career Marlon Brando-sized investment of hours to get there. And the risk is that you’ve surrendered to the Dark Side of Boredom well before you get there, thereby missing out on some of the game’s most powerful stuff.

Conversely, a title like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed treats power like the gaming equivalent of $57 million in pure Palinesque pork barrel — an unexpectedly generous switch for a developer like LucasArts, which has typically handled gamers’ access to Force powers the way that Yoda treats Luke Skywalker the first time they meet: Patience, young padawan. Now lift that damn X-Wing again and make me a turkey sandwich while you’re at it.

But not this time. There’s a reason why Haden Blackman, the game’s lead developer told Vanity Fair back in March that Force Unleashed was basically a game about “kicking someone’s ass with the Force.”

You’re an absolute beast from the get-go: The first mission sets you briefly into the black, nigh-unstoppable boots of the nastiest mouth-breathing Sith lord of them all — Darth Vader. Even after you’ve traded Vader’s saber for that of his budding dark apprentice, the power you’re tossing around borders on the ridiculous.

Dropping Tie Fighters on people’s unsuspecting heads. Bowling giant crates into crowds of enemies or flipping them into laser containment fields. Hurling lightning from your hands to turn everything into so much scorched toast. (It’s worth noting that you could also do some of this stuff as a Jedi in Lego Star Wars too, but the difference in vibe is the difference between a Saturday morning cartoon and a John Woo flick.).

Being a bad Jedi is addictive and liberating — or at least until you come up, impossibly, against other Jedi to discover that there’s always someone cooler — and more powerful — than you.

Apparently, while absolute power may be kinda neat, it’s never quite as absolute as you think.

GAME TRAILER