Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

"Good, But Dissapointing"

GRAPHICS 8/10 -
Though there are still lots of polygons and wierd character movements, there is some sort of an upgrade in graphics from Jedi Outcast. There are some ragdoll physics scattered throughout the game which is always nice..however most of the character movements seem like their walking on ice or something. If you have played Jedi Outcast, you will find alot of similarities in the graphics department.

SOUND 6/10
This is where Jedi Outcast exceeded beyond any star wars game of its date. The sound mixers did a beautiful job of intertweening differnet star wars melodies, and making a different one for each level. In Jedi Academy however, they borrowed alot of the same mixes from Jedi Outcast, and i swear i think there were only 5 combonations of song mixes in the whole game, which means things can be really repetitive. The sound effects are what save this score from a 3...the weapon sounds and lightsaber effects are top notch.

CONTROL 9/10
Nothing to really complain about here other than some of the acrobatic moves are kinda hard to pull off, the control is the same as Jedi Outcast which is in my view fine.

GAMEPLAY 5/10
This is where i really went crazy while playing this game. The missions are so pointless. The creator said they tried not to be too linear by allowing you to pick you force powers, customize your lightsaber hilt/blade, and let you choose your missions. Yah thats nice however you get a set of 5 missions, which you can do in any order...woop de doo. Although ofcourse your going to do it in order because if you pick the last one first, youll find yourself getting chopped up into sith spit in a matter of seconds. The missions in this game went somethign like this: You (Jaden) would be sent to a remote island were someone crashed. Then you find out that no one is there but in the meantime your ship is dead so you now have to find parts to get it back and running...you have just accomplished ... nothing....next mission you will have to go to see about a guy who controls some robots, but after you beat alot of guys, you see him die before he sais anything...you have just accomplished ...nothing...Then suprisingly there are alot of levels where you have to defuse bombs and plant bombs...what is this counter-strike mixing with jedi outcast? i mean jeez when was the last time a guy in jedi set us up the bomb? Also, I remember having to sit back and think alot in Jedi Outcast about different sorts of puzzles and such. There were absolutley no puzzles in Jedi Academy which makes this game ultra linear...just go up to the bad guy and hack him up.The good side of gameplay in this game is that you get the lightsaber in the very first level where as in Jedi Outcast you had to wait about 7 levels before you got it.

STORY 8/10 Jedi Academy gives you multiple endings based on your decisions in the game. This is cool however I found that while the endings were different, they were the exact same levels. The story in Jedi Academy is an upgrade from Jedi Outcast though.

MULTIPLAYER 7/10 Sure the Multiplayer will give you a few hours of enjoyment just running wild with 2 lightsabers in your hand, but after a while, it gets repetitive. You hack a guy up then you immediatly get owned. There really is no strategy to multiplayer, you just have to run wild with the mouse1 button held down. And lightning can kill you in one hit..whats up with that? They did add a few cool features like the Power Duel mode where its 2 players vs 1 strong player kinda like episode 1 duel.

DIFFICULTY 5/10 This game was super easy. There were no puzzles or anything, its just basically alot of platform jumping and slicing up enemies.

OVERALL 6/10 The game is good, but it falls short of the masterful Jedi Outcast. Academy is much too short and my favorite part of Jedi Outcast was taken away: Dismemberments. Its a tricky process to turn them on in Academy where as in Outcast you just punch in a code. Unless your a die hard Star Wars fan, dont get this game just yet. Wait a few months till there is a mod to make the multiplayer a bit more enjoyable.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/03