Well, The Force Unleashed II is now out, which means that The Critics are Unleashed Too. Here's a few:
Eurogamer: 5/10
Whatever went down behind the scenes, the result is a game that sometimes resembles a flavorless tech demo for The Force Unleashed – not a worthy successor. While there are certainly pleasures to be had in The Force Unleashed II, they come off as the dregs of a concept that has run its course. The series was bound to exhaust itself someday, but the fact that it happened this early is a brutal disappointment.
The story I found so captivating in The Force Unleashed, is dragged back into life for the sequel, undermining much of that epic tale's original take. The level design, while not broken, is something far worse: Bland. Even the voice acting, which I loved in the original game, started to grate on my nerves halfway through the surprisingly short jaunt.
GamesRadar: 8/10
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II takes nearly every complaint we had about the original and fixes it or gives us something better. We finally feel like a proper, force-wielding one-man army. It’s still short and doesn’t take us on a truly grand tour of the Star Wars universe, but the storytelling holds up in quality and fits right in to the existing mythology.
The main problems seem to be story, length and repetition. It's shorter than Force Unleashed (which was already pretty short, and neither have multiplayer), there are only a few environments and they're heavily confined (unlike TFU's huge areas), and the story is told without flair or imagination.
Considering the story and the wide open levels were the best things about TFU, it's really sad to see LucasArts drop the ball on these things.
Wouldn't put it past GameRadar to pocket some side money either. They probably have a big background ad for the game.
Screw the reviews...count me in!
:)