Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy

The Good
Graphics-despite the apparent age of the Quake3 engine, they managed to pull it off again with JA. A new game engine would have smoothed all the rough edges out and improved the look of the game.

The game is not very difficult. There are no real puzzles to solve, just use your force powers and good sense and you'll beat most of the levels in a flash. It was very satisfying to see various Star Wars worlds like Tatooine (and Chewbacca) and Hoth with emphasis on action and adventure instead of boring puzzles and infinite mazes or labyrinths. I liked the action emphasis of the game because levels which are too difficult because of strange puzzles are so discouraging and detract from gameplay. Lighting for the levels was really good so I could always see the immense environments I was playing in. The single player was too short but it was very gratifying to breeze through this action-adventure that is full of jedi action from start to finish. Killing stormtroopers (stormies) has never been so much fun.

Riding those swoop bikes made me feel like I was part of the Star Wars adventure and that one level with the bike featured the best use of Star Wars music I have ever seen in a computer game. The tauntaun was also a lot of fun as I'd just ram into those stormies.

The game really has an emphasis on lightsaber battles whether you're playing single or multi-player. Those dual and saber staff weapons are truly a marvel as you can just slice through multiple enemies at once.

Creating my own character and seeing him through all this action made it more of a personal experience but with bad single player it dosen't measure up to JK or TIE Fighter.

The Bad
Single player mode was badly done in overall. You don't get to fight alongside Luke or play as Kyle, which would have been so fitting. Level design in the last few levels is atrocious, the momentum of the earlier levels is completely ruined by the last confusing levels. The music for the last levels is even more disappointing as they add no dimension to the last levels (or climax as some would refer to them as) unlike the levels in Jedi Knight or TIE Fighter. The last duel features music that really dosen't fit with the level.

The bad guys are so repetitive in this game. Dark jedi are used to such an extent that they cease to be a threat. Every corner you pass it feels like you'll fight yet another new reborn. The reborn say silly things like "you are weak" even when you slaughter tons of them. It's funny to see them say things like "now I, am the master" when you die because its really short-lived. They get easier to kill as you progress and even with force powers are no match for the power of the light side. The female dark jedi say really stupid things like "are you afraid?" and spoil the mood of the levels. Tavion is a pathetic boss and dosen't pose a threat in the final duel.

When you play as a dark jedi it's discouraging because unlike JK you don't get any dark force powers. You go to the dark side so late in the game that it makes almost no difference until the final duel. You're stuck with your light side force powers and forced to fight with that great guy Kyle Katarn. Unlike Tavion he's impossible to kill as he just slices right through your defenses as if he's more powerful than Darth Vader.

You don't get to go to all the places like Dagobah and there are so few levels with Kyle Katarn that you're all alone in your distant corner of the galaxy away from all the real action, so it seems.

The level with the mutant Rancor is so out of place that it has really no positive bearing on the level progress.

The Bottom Line
I'd buy Battlefront instead of this unless you really want to play as a jedi. The jedi combat is the prime element of the game and no other element of Star Wars is featured.

Buy at your own risk.

The Good
It’s been ten years since the defeat of the Empire above Endor’s sanctuary moon. While the New Republic continues to battle the Imperial Remnant, Luke Skywalker’s newly trained Jedi are fulfilling their historical role—that of guardian and peacekeeper. This may not be a dark time for the Republic, but it is a tenuous time for the Jedi, especially with the Cult of Ragnos threatening to resurrect the ancient Sith lord.

The Cult reveals itself during the opening cutscene, firing on a transport carrying would-be students. This is revealed to be a diversionary tactic, with the Cult’s real motive involving hacking into the Academy’s computers. If the Cult can locate areas strong with the Force then they can siphon the Force energy for their Master. At this point in the Dark Forces franchise, you’d think that only Kyle Katarn could thwart their dastardly deeds. You’d be wrong.

After the events of Jedi Outcast, Katarn is now a Jedi Master training students (of which Jaden, your character, is one). In an interesting contrast to the RPG Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Academy begins with you picking Jaden’s gender and race (KotOR offered human-only role playing). You then customize Jaden’s outfit and select a lightsaber color and hilt. As you progress through the game you also add new Force Powers, so in many ways Jedi Academy blurs the line between shooter and RPG.

While the entire game covers the Cult of Ragnos threat, the structure of Jedi Academy differs from previous entries. After the initial events and training/tutorial levels, you are presented with five missions around the galaxy. You can play the missions in any order and only have to complete four of them to advance to the next tier. The structure of the game works out to be five mini-missions followed by one larger story-related mission, repeated three times.

As you move up in tiers, your core Force powers (Jump, Speed, Push, etc) advance to the next level (up to level three- Jedi Knight). After each mission, you can add a new Force power or strengthen a preexisting one. These are the other Force powers (Light or Dark Side) like Heal, Grip, Mind Trick, etc. In an interesting switch, Force powers no longer seem to be viewed as good or evil, rather it’s how you use them.

Unlike Jedi Outcast, you start off with a lightsaber (something Jaden was able to build on his own before the Academy). Lightsaber combat is even more dynamic this time around with many more new moves and combinations. I can’t really say I figured out how to use the new moves, but with frantic button mashing I executed many of them. Towards the end of the game, you have the option of keeping with your single saber or picking dual sabers or a double-ended saber. You can also bring along the clumsy, random blaster and other weaponry if you want to try Jedi Academy as a FPS. These weapons are less vital this time around, especially against Dark Jedi who can deflect blaster bolts and Force Push missiles back in your direction.

So how is the game? The mini-missions are a lot of fun. There are plenty of different landscapes, mission types, villains, etc. You can investigate an attack on a Jawa Sandcrawler, become the hunted in a The Most Dangerous Game level, explore the acid rain blasted ruins of Vader’s Bast Castle, plant targets on an orbital platform for a Rogue Squadron assault, and more. Within the missions you can ride Tauntauns on Hoth, race along on swoop bikes, turn a capital ship’s turrets against a wave of TIE Fighters, and kill many many Stormtroopers and Dark Jedi.

The Bad
So what’s wrong with this game?

First off, this is the first Dark Forces game which isn’t a great improvement over its predecessor. In-game graphics are great and the rendered cutscenes look great, but the cutscenes using the game’s engine are poor. Lip-synching is way off and character animation is clumsy. Pathfinding seems to be missing in missions where characters fight along side you and they are also less effective this time around and more prone to falling down chasms, not reacting to combat situations, and (in one strange situation) attacking each other. Finally, spawning is very visible in this game—it’s very disconcerting to see enemies beam in right in front of you.

Then, while the mini-missions are varied, there is no depth to them so you have a nonlinear game comprised of very linear missions. One mission was so strictly scripted that I had to restart the mission when I took the wrong path. Other missions end abruptly once the goals have been met, so in some cases it may be possible to escape combat and just run from objective to objective.

Finally, the story is serviceable but lacks the punch of Dark Forces, the scope of Jedi Knight, or the richness of Jedi Outcast. Jedi Academy does feature a Light and Dark Side path, near the very end of the game. Unlike Jedi Knight, which had a primitive, but workable, alignment system, Jedi Academy stops the game at a crucial moment and tells the player: “Do this to be on the Light Side or do this to be on the Dark Side.” The end result is something that feels like a compilation of mod missions, feebly tied together.

The Bottom Line
Where does this leave us?

Jedi Academy is still a great game, but it suffers in comparison to Jedi Outcast. I would recommend this game for its fun, short missions that mix familiar worlds and characters with new planets and enemies. I think it misses the mark set previously, but it was such a high mark.

The Good
This game capitalizes on its predecessor's strength: lightsaber combat. This time around there is more variety with plenty of opponents and new saber modes (dual saber and saber staff). While these fights can get fairly hectic, the developers have added some special moves that you can execute, and the whole experience can really come together quite well.

While the story is minimal, and there is a groan factor at the beginning of every mission as you "unexpectedly" encounter trouble in the unlikeliest of places, once the action gets going it is generally varied enough to keep you entertained. There are vehicles to operate, huge monsters to contend with, and you even get to man the battle stations to shoot down some TIE ships a couple of times.

The Bad
The games missions are structured more like "chores", which you must do in groups of five (you can skip one of each group), in order to get the the few plot-advancing missions. This means that each one is mostly unrelated to the others plot-wise. A major gripe I have with these missions is a good 50% of them are not what they advertise to be. For example there is an early mission taking you with rescuing crash survivors. However once you get to the crash site, your ship breaks and it turns out there are no survivors to save. So the mission is actually about fixing your ship to get back. There are quite a few such bait-and-switches, where nothing gets accomplished by your being there.

My second biggest gripe is the level design. Of all the Jedi Knight games, I believe the first one with its old proprietary engine worked the best at presenting Star Wars' massive settings. In Jedi Academy, to an even greater extent than in Outcast most of the levels seem cramped and artificially walled off. Additionally, some of the levels' population of baddies goes strangely unexplained. While it's easy to believe that an Imperial Remnant installation on some god-forsaken planet would be full of Storm Troopers, one tends to wonder why the rooftops of a residential district on Corusant are a veritable menagerie of alien life hell-bent on trying to kill you. Civilians are nowhere to be seen, even in places you would expect them, and a number of areas seem empty and desolate because of this. And while there is significant variety in levels, a lot of them are simply a sequence of nondescript hi-tech looking rooms with various meaningless displays, populated by a lot of troopers. I believe that the use of the Quake 3 engine, which was designed to allow for intense combat in relatively small and cramped quarters really hurts the game here.

Puzzles are more or less meaningless - there are buttons to push and keys to find, but it seems like they're only there because one is supposed to be pushing buttons and finding keys in these types of games. The rule of thumb is push any button you see, and this will get you past 90% of the games "obstacles".

It is also unfortunate that the designers chose to limit the use of force powers to a few "key" points. For example, while you posses the push and pull force powers, you can only use them on designated objects in the game world. It would be much more fun to incorporate the force powers into the physics system, and allow the player to find creative ways to use them to navigate obstacles. Instead you will see your trigger light up when pointed at a "force-friendly" object, to let you know that this rock, out of thousands of identical rocks in the level can be force-pushed.

The Bottom Line
Despite its flaws, it is definitely an enjoyable experience once you get going. The lightsaber fights alone are worth the price for a star wars fan. As a shooter/saber fighter it's a pretty good game, but don't expect a lot of Star Wars immersion.