Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

"Inferior to its PC counterpart in every way."

Jedi Outcast was originally a PC game released by lucasarts in early 2002 that was generally well received by reviewers and gamers alike. The game puts you in the role of Kyle Katarn in the third true iteration of the Dark forces series. At the start of the game it seems you've lost your powers for some reason or another and you don't have a light saber either. First, lets get some facts out of the way. Jedi Outcast has by no stretch of the imagination a captivating story. Infact its boring, poorly executed and has little to do with the actual movies' plots. For the first 1/3 of the game you do not have a light saber. This part of the game can be tedious and immensely stagnant. Bill-Dee Williams actually provides the voice for Lando, and its one of the few bright points of the game's narrative. Now, onto the review.

Gameplay 7/10:

Like I stated above, the first part of Jedi Outcast is a straight FPS except set in the star wars universe. These beginning parts of the game are straight forward storm trooper turkey shoots with an occsional break in the mundane action to use some force power or interact with an NPC or a button. If the whole game was like this the score would be a lot lower. The games enviornemnts and situations are bland compared to the industry watermark (Half-Life) and the flimsy puzzles and storyline don't help the situation out much.

Then, just when you think you've had enough, you receive your lightsaber, and for a time, things are good. The game uses the direction control in combination with the attack and the jump button to offer-up some intially amazing duels. Force powers like push, pull, lightning, choke, and jump also add immensely to the bland foundation of Jedi Outcast. The first scene when the light saber is actually used, a bar fight complete with cantina music and a bevy of Greedo look alikes ready to be cut in half and disemboweled, is probably the game's greatest moment. The ability to force speed-run through the rooms slicing and dicing whoever might pop out of a shadow and threaten you is truly great. Also scattered throughout the game are various duels with evil agents infused with the power of the dark side (yes the story is retarded, I'm just telling it like it is) and these sometimes test your ability to use your powers and your saber settings and moves quite well. Teaming up with Luke and taking out the baddies is pretty great, but the actual combat leaves something to be desired. You never truly feel in control of the saber, and the duels never reach the frantic yet co-ordinated struggle of the films, hell I'm not even sure if that would be possible in a game, but the current system really isn't as good as it should be. Force powers are awarded after every mission and given in a linear fashion, some of them probably should've been streamlined because they are kind of useless. But the powers that are useful really make the game enjoyable.

The game slumps back into mediocrity after a few hours of euphoria and this is mostly due to bad level design and poor puzzles. The gamecube version of the game, while fundementally the same as its PC brethren has some glaring gameplay issues. Firstly, the mouse control of the PC version is not replicated well, making moving around and fight with the saber more difficult than it should be. The biggest issue with the conversion gameplay wise would have to be the way force powers are handled. The player has to fumble around in clumsy sub menues to select a force power or gun; the PC version allowed the player to map force powers to hot keys letting you force choke a storm trooper, throw your lightsaber throught him and then push him off a ledge with the rest of his companions. this kind of on the fly switching is impossible in the gamecube version, and while probably unavoidable due to the controller, still a major detraction.

Graphics: 6/10

These graphics are ugly. The gamecube version is scaled down severely from what the PC's best settings were. Polygon counts are down, the textures are 16-bit and are blurrier than on the PC. The whole thing runs at an astonishingly low frame rate and low resolution.....and (drumroll) there are still crippling graphical issues. The most glaring is the problem when turning quickly, the screen does not evenly turn, the bottom or top is rendered a split second after the top creating a disjointing effect that is not just extremely ugly but just plain annoying. On top of this the game still suffers from the occasional bout of slowdown.

''Wow,'' you must be saying ''the Gamecube really got screwed on the graphics''. But you're only partially right, because Jedi Outcast for the PC wasn't a very good looking game either. The models were crude (especially for the levels and space ships), some the levels (like the reactor core) are just plain nasty. Repeated textures and sloppy effects are abundant and level design quality oscillates wildly between areas. A player might be suprised by the simplistic charm of the Jedi training facility and then shocked by the Crate stack oblivion of the garbage disposal level. On top of all that the compression for the cut scenes is horrendous, making the already bland cutscenes just plain ugly. This game is a true dissapointment in the graphics department and fares poorly on the gamecube hardware, which is capable of so much more than is displayed on screen.

On the bright side there are good things visually. Your lightsaber leaves a trail of glowing light whenever it strikes an objects the animations when storm troopers fall down in groups and run when they lose their weapons is pretty good. But overall the graphics and presentation are sloppy and saddled with slow and frequent loading periods.

Sound: 9/10

What did you expect? The soundtrack is almost entirely licensed music from the original Star wars trilogy and is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre game. The voice acting is also fairly well done with the original Lando providing his voice talents and a convincing Luke-a-like joining the solid cast that has provided lucasarts with voices for a while now. Lucasarts usually comes through on the aural side of things and this is outing is no exception.

Overall: If you really were looking forward to this game, and have no way to play its superior PC cousin (which had a fairly decent online feature, versus the split screen gamecube version) I suggest you rent before you purchase. the game is quite lengthy if you want to stick with it. And despite my harsh criticism the game is actually a solid gameplay experience worth atleast checking out if your into star wars. But don't buy it unless you've played it first.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/03, Updated 07/19/03