Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

"Hmm. This is 'old skool' I suppose."

To summise this very quickly... if you don't intend to play this game online, do not waste your money on it. The single-player side of it is the worse example of 'old skool' gameplay seen since Hexen. I'll get to that in a minute however.

Graphics: 7.
Very nice Quake 3 powered graphics. However the head models all seem to feature horrible 'horse teeth' type effects due to the creators attempting to create an accurate lip sync but failing. Also do not attempt to run it on ''high quality'' unless you have a super fast machine. On my 1ghz machine it ran on that setting like a bad acid trip at a 70's disco. The colour ''mottled grey'' is also highly fashionable in the galaxy so it seems.

Sound: 9
All the familiar John Williams tunes. Lovely sound effects. Pretty good voice acting, complete with the sneered ''Rebbel scyammm'' of the English imperial commanders.

Story:
Star Wars! Luke! teeth! Valley of the Jedi! swoosh! clank clank! Actually the story is pretty good I suppose. Certainly better than recent Star Wars licenses. If this were any other game without the licence though, it'd get panned.

Gameplay: 4 (8 in multiplayer)
Ah... slight problems. As mentioned previously the game is 'old skool', now this doesn't mean it can't be fun. Just because Half Life appeared and gave you continuing narrative and floating babies (without the heroin) doesn't mean a simple mission based blasting session can't be fun. However this is true Hexen style ''To open the door you must find the switch.'' territory, and to find the switch you must search the entire level. This occurs again and again and AGAIN. Until you wonder to yourself ''hang on... isn't this the 4th level of a Jedi game?. Where is my bloody lightsaber and how come I have to keep finding keys, when I have thermal detonators and thus could surely blow locked doors open?''.

The in-game AI varies from insanely stupid ''I just gunned down an entire squad of troops right by one stormtrooper, and he still hasn't noticed me.'' to the ridiculous ''step around corner and be instantly snipered with no real way of dodging''. There are however nice touches, like enemies yelling out orders and so forth and the enemy jedi possess some skill and cunning on harder difficulty levels.

So in closing, if you enjoy spending many, many minutes without any enemies and just LOOKING for any hidden doors masquerading as walls or invisible key fairies then this is your game! Once you finally get your lightsaber things improve, you can pose, use force powers, generally swan around like a duck with horlicks. However to get to this point you must cope with the level design from hell and gameflow like a prostitute with RSI (you're having a lot of fun then it just stops until you find a switch. Repeat.)

Multiplayer enables mass orgies of glowstick fisticuffs with the added hilarity of force 'grip'ing people into bottomless pits. However without a fast connection the main attraction (lightsabers) becomes a random mess of button pressing. There also seems to be a boring 'elite' of people on servers whining at people who shoot them in the face with a rocket launcher. It may not be honourable but it is rather amusing.

Fun if you have money to waste and a fan connection, however As a single player game this_just_isn't_fun.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/02, Updated 03/30/02