Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

"Redemption from Lucasarts!"

Yes, we all know the music, and yeah, we’ve all played Star Wars games before, and yes, LucasArts totaled their reputation with the last few games in the series. But it seems to have changed with this one. It’s a pretty good game - beautiful, lengthy, and pretty fun. And it seems LA has decided to redeem themselves from that crappy Battle for Naboo.

The game starts out with you, Kyle, and your co-pilot, Jan, heading to a supposedly abandoned outpost in Kejim. As they begin their final approach, Mon Mothma holographs in to tell you that a previously received transmission has something in it regarding the Valley of the Jedi, and could be more dangerous than you expected. This should be apparent to you already, because they made a video game about it, and the title isn’t “Kyle’s half hour walk around an abandoned outpost”. I digress. Anyway, you land on the planet, and you take control. It obviously isn’t abandoned because there are something like fourteen billion freaking storm troopers that come and blast the crap out of you. From there, you progress the first third of the game until you meet Dessan, the lead antagonist. And that’s all I can say without ruining it.

As you progress through the first levels of the game, you become more and more aware that you have no freaking lightsaber. This becomes painfully apparent after you realize that you bought this game FOR the lightsaber combat. After you finally get it, you start playing a whole new game. You get pretty much complete control over your saber, which leads to the best looking saber duels ever seen - you can pull off movie-style battles if you practice.

The puzzles range from fairly inventive to totally freaking stupid. None of them are very memorable, however, and I feel like I’ve played them somewhere else before. The levels tend to kind of move slowly, and that becomes a buzz kill later into the game. Sometimes, you just want to move on to the next level, but the puzzles keeeeeeep coming until your ready to quit - and then the level ends.

One of my favorite elements of the game is the force. You get a number of abilities at your disposal, and most of them are very handy. My personal favorite moment in the game was when I came across a large ring surrounding a deep pit, crawling with storm troopers. I could have taken them with just my saber, but I was feeling particularly sadistic. I selected Force Pull, and dragged the lot of them towards me, at the same time disarming them. I then proceeded to select Grip, pluck one from the crowd, and drop him down the hole to his doom. This takes up force power, which is limited. So, I selected pull after my force had regenerated fully, and pulled them to me, knocking them down. I then selected Speed, which slows everything around you while you move even faster than normal, activated it, and selected push. I san to the side of the crowd of troopers, and Pushed them all into the pit ass soon as they got to their feet. They all fell, totally defenseless, and made the most rewardingly tortured scream I’ve ever heard.

The graphics are incredible, and there are no two ways about it. If you slash the wall with your saber, a heated marks appears, and turns from a burning orange to a cold steel black. Small details like this are everywhere - if you get in that lucky hit and chop a storm troopers hand off, you’ll see a darkly hilarious animation of him falling to his knees, gripping his arm before he dies. The game looks as pretty as you would expect from the Quake III engine - that is, to say, incredible.

The sound matches the quality of the graphics. Saber noises are dead on, the blasters sound as real as I think they would, storm troopers yell things to their comrades, commanders bark orders. Nothing here is really revolutionary, but it does sound great.
The game plays fairly fast during some of the levels, especially the earlier ones when you haven’t gotten your saber. You run and gun, but in a way that it isn’t repetitive, but very entertaining. The later missions can vary, depending if you get stuck on a puzzle or not. Occasionally, you wind up playing a very, very unfair puzzle that requires you to memorize the location before you can get through it, which takes lots and lots of dieing and reloading.

The game automatically saves after you complete a level, and whenever you hit a checkpoint. This is very helpful, because the game is very consuming. You end up not realizing that you haven’t saved in a while and it would be a wise idea to do so before you jump over that crevice until it’s too late.

This game is not for everyone. If you love Star Wars, you won’t be disappointed. But if you’re a shooter fan, there isn’t much here you haven’t seen already. A worthy purchase if you’re looking for a fun little distraction.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/02, Updated 10/08/02