Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

"Be Luke Skywalker's errand boy!"

Star Wars. You either love it or hate it in most cases, although the mediocre new prequel trilogy is slowly making it possible for a happy medium of the two (Jar-Jar Binks, angsty teenage Anakin and midiclorians, ugh). Anyways, I'm definitely a fan of the original trilogy and since this game takes place shortly after that time, I dig the story. However, the single player game has some kinks to work out and the multiplayer has a learning curve steeper than Mount Everest, even for this veteran FPS player. Let's begin!

GRAPHICS: 10/10

Despite the age of the venerable Quake 3 engine, LucasArts and Raven really know how to make it shine with gorgeous environments, beautifully rendered characters and some slick weapon effects. Although using an older engine may be considered a weak point by many, the ability for the designers to create a great-looking game with it brings a bonus; this game is able to achieve much better framerates than the recently-released Max Payne 2 and the horribly-unoptimized Halo at similar resolution rates. If you're looking for a game with plenty of eye-candy that will run smooth on your 1Ghz or higher machine, this is it.

SOUND: 10/10

This is one of the game's absolute high points. The sound effects in this game are top-notch. The sounds of the blasters and sabres, the characteristic muted speech of the stormtroopers, and especially the sneering comments of the dark Jedi and Reborn are masterfully created and applied here. If you are able to sneak up undetected on some of them, you may be treated to one of their scripted conversations, some of them quite humorous (one Stormtrooper comments about how Darth Vader used to ''use Stormtroopers for lightsaber practice''). The music is probably one of the only truly effective applications of the ''dynamic soundtrack'' idea I've seen. While one of my other favorite games, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, suffered from a shortage of music clips for its soundtrack, Jedi Academy doesn't have this problem as there are seemingly endless segments of John Williams score effectively spliced to build tension or provide excitement during firefights. Fans of the series will recognize pieces of various themes mixed with the original score as well. This is one game that will make you turn up your system.

STORY: 8/10

In the single-player game, you create a generic male/female with a genderless name and engage in a bevy of linear, heavily-scripted missions given to you by Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn (returning from his roles in previous Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games as an NPC) to further your Jedi training. Along the way you will unravel a plot by cultists of some old Sith guy to resurrect their 5000-year-dead master. As I was running through missions hacking up anything and everything with my trusty lightsaber I kept wondering one thing; why are Kyle and Luke sending these Jedi youngsters to do their jobs? This was especially pertinent during the mission where you team up with Kyle, who basically cuts through any resistance he encounters like a hot knife through butter. However, if this were the case the game wouldn't pose any sort of challenge, right? Maybe that's better than what there is now...

CHALLENGE/FUN: 6/10

This is probably Jedi Academy's weakest point. Now I'll go ahead and say I haven't played Jedi Outcast, but I was able to blast through Dark Forces 1 and 2 without any problem. This game, however, kicked my heiney on MULTIPLE occasions. First weak point is the AI; it's at two extremes, ridiculously easy or ridiculously deadly. During the first half of the game you'll be chopping through everything from Stormtroopers, to Cave Beasts and Reborn, even an AT-ST walker in one mission without so much as a scratch on your forcefield. Once you get into tier 3 of missions, though, expect to get owned by dark Jedi in lightsaber battle after tedious lightsaber battle, often against unfair numbers of them. Even though I was competant with the wide variety of moves, it seemed more often than not the only way to defeat these guys was to die and reload until I got a lucky strike on their backside. Of course, I was using all Light force powers; if you decide to go to the Dark side and use chain lightning they too become fodder. Whatever happened to balance? Another mixed bag is the use of various vehicles in the game. You'll be able to do everything from jumping on Bathas and piloting Speeders, to even jumping in an AT-ST and stomping the life out of Stormtroopers in one missions. However, the controls of these vehicles often lead to more frustration than fun. On the Speeder level, I began to wonder what sadistic bastard at Raven thought a high-speed chase with a bike that reacted as fast as my 80-year-old dead grandma was a great idea.

MULTIPLAYER: 7/10

So after playing the single-player and feeling semi-confident in my saber skills, I fired up the multiplayer game on my 768Kbps cable modem and jumped on a free for all, saber-only server. The fact that I can frag the snot out of anyone in Q3A coupled with my veritable skill at Soul Caliber 2 led me to believe I would be having a blast hacking up others. WRONG! I'm running around with my dual sabers, casting Force Lightning and not having any sort of effect on anyone I engage. I find myself going up against a dual-staff player and getting owned in 2 seconds by some cheap spin move. After an hour playing I have maybe 5 kills (3 of which were lost to being chucked off cliffs by Force Grip) and an embarassing number of deaths. Since the game has no sort of cheat protection (ie Punkbuster), either there's an unforgiving learning curve or some people are doing a bit of hacking that isn't a lightsaber manuever...take your pick. Until then I'll keep playing games where kills come from more than dumb luck, like RtCW.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this game. I'm sure after a while I too will be able to cheap other players to death with my ''DARF MUAL 5KILLZ'' or whatever. Unfortunately, the single-player experience is just not fun enough and the multiplayer is ungodly intuitive for a Jedi n00b like myself.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/29/03