JKII: Jedi Academy

[Quirinus]

A pretty old game, but still one of the best Star Wars games IMO. Anyone else played it?

[frogbeastegg]

:raises hand: Back when it was new. I've played the entire series, from Dark Forces onwards. Mysteries of the Sith was far and away the best, Jedi Academy my least favourite.

[Mailman653]

JA was pretty good, decent story, fun MP, lots of mods too.

[Quirinus]

The story for the original JKII (the one with Kyle Katarn) was waay more epic, but I was extremely annoyed by its constant puzzles, jumping or otherwise. Also, there were long periods with not much challenge, and then suddenly a bottleneck of nigh-impossible difficulty.

I liked Jedi Academy better overall because it was pure, unpretentious fun. Puzzles are kept to a bare minimum, and those that are there do not feel like filler, but feels more intergrated. Better, the Force powers were augmented, and the lightsaber techniques don't feel too choppy and repetitive like in JKII.

It was pretty easy, yes, and with the Force powers and lightsaber, all other weapons are pretty much obsolete, but there's a certain perverse fun in using minds tricks on a stormtrooper squad and watch them rip themselves apart, or hold a Sith over a precipice with a Force grip and laugh when he pushes and plummets to his death. Or zap a roomful of enemies to death two-handed ala Palpatine.

Considering its difficulty level, I found it way too short. Now, if I wanted to, I can complete an entire game in an afternoon. Still, the missions were uniformly good and varied. The only ones I hated were the ones with rancors and with the Dune-ripoff-sandworms.

:raises hand: Back when it was new. I've played the entire series, from Dark Forces onwards. Mysteries of the Sith was far and away the best, Jedi Academy my least favourite.

D: Why?

[Whacker]

Another original Dark Forces player here, and I played all of the sequels. Can't really say that I had a "least favorite" in the series, they were all enjoyable. If I had to pick, I'd say the original Dark Forces was and still is my favorite.

Dark Forces: Loved the levels. The gameplay was great and the story was... cheesy, in that normal Star Wars kind of way. The graphics were also pretty good for it being a Doom 2.5D clone.

Jedi Knight I: Oh man this was a fun game. It looked a bit old for it's time, but the levels were huge and well done. This is the game that ultimately forced me to switch from both hands keyboard to WASD/mouse. Multiplayer was a ton of fun.

Mysteries of the Sith: This was also good, but I only played it through once.

Jedi Outcast: Another great game, finally lightsaber combat that was more challenging. The modern Quake-3 engine usage made the gameplay much smoother, and everything looked better and was well textured. Level design was... pretty good, nothing mind-blowing but good. I guess one thing I noticed oddly enough was the musical background, the older games had lower quality music, this is probably the Star Wars game that made me realize that they'd finally come up to using better quality sounds.

Jedi Academy: The plot was decidedly meh, but I agree with what Quirinus said, it really is pure unpretentious fun. Level design was creative, puzzles were minimal but acceptable, combat was difficult but rewarding. A good finale to the Jedi series, as I honestly do not expect to see any more in this series.

[frogbeastegg]

D: Why?

Pretty much this:

Puzzles are kept to a bare minimum [...]with the Force powers and lightsaber, all other weapons are pretty much obsole.

Also:

In addition to being obsolete the weapons were mostly rubbish.

The level design wasn't as good as that in Mysteries and Jedi Knight. I loved those sprawling, complex levels, and I loved the ingenuity displayed by the map makers. Nowadays things like having starfighters flying around bombing the area the character is in is passe. Back then it was revolutionary. I've not seen anything to match MotS' scramble through a dying space ship, complete with gravity failing, explosions, and wrecked systems.

The storyline was yawnsome, the characters tedious. JK and MotS were decent in this regard for their time.

Atmosphere. It was lacking. The final two levels of MotS were genuinely creepy, and very tense.

The boss battles. The whole series uses standard boss battles, except in one instance: the final battle in MotS. That is the best boss battle I've played.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You had to put your weapons away and wait for the boss to realise he couldn't kill you. As long as you were armed he'd attack, and he was completely invulnerable. You weren't expressly told this; you were expected to work it out for yourself. What else would a jedi facing her fallen mentor do?

MotS is the high point of the series for me, amazing considering it was a mere add-on for JK. I played it over and over.

[Quirinus]

Then I suppose it's because we have different playing styles and look for different things in a Star Wars game. I detest those jumping puzzles where you'd die again and again trying to figure out if that ledge is where you're supposed to jump to, or if it's just ornamental. Or those parts where you have to brave a series of mechanical, faceless perils such as assembly lines and such.

For me, Jedi Academy captured the spirit of the original movies pretty well. I haven't played any of the games older than Jedi Outcast, so I can't compare, but it seems that they were going for entirely different moods-- I'd guess that Mysteries of the Sith was dark and creepy, while Jedi Academy goes for the swashbuckling, heroic feel of the movies.

[Fragony]

With the frogmod. Didn't like the leveldesign, they should have hired the guys that did Dark Forces II, those levels were exceptional. Combat was fun though. Looking forward to Force Unleashed, these physics look sweet

[frogbeastegg]

The old games didn't feature many jumping puzzles. Instead they tended to rely on clever force usage, and on exploration. The original Dark Forces had some based on code breaking too; Kyle Katarn wasn't a jedi. One DF puzzle, near the end, required you to configure a maze using panels so you could navigate on through to the objective. When you solved that and left, computer chip in hand, you scurried through a cleared level in peace and quiet, to find Boba Fett waiting at your ship, rocket launcher in hand. Mysteries excelled at clever puzzles; it took everything Jedi Knight had set up and pushed it to a whole new level. One involved locating an explosive and setting it up on a glass dome to gain access to a Hutt's audience chamber, and you had to disguise yourself as a Tusken Raider to get past security.

Jumping puzzles don't deserve to be called puzzles, and I do recall one particular 'puzzle' in Outcast which I detested. It was based around jumping about silly floating boxes to hit switches and send a message via a com relay. In the first, that's a completely unbelievable, impractical set up (the Imperials do this each time they send a message?!), and in the second it was not at all fun to play through.

Mysteries, and indeed Jedi Knight, covered a range of moods. The Sith temple and swamp levels were creepy and tense. The Hutt palace was Jabba's palace redux, complete with a trip to a rancor pit. The massive space port was seedy and dangerous; in a nice touch the stormtroopers on garison duty would ignore you until you commited a hostile act in thier viewing range. The stricken space ship made your hands sweat. Fending off an imperial attack on a rebel base, that made my pulse race! JK's level 5 featured an entire city, an imperial base, and a sewer system. IIRC it was by far the largest level to feature in any game at the time. Originally level 6, infiltrating and climbing the imperial base tower, was intended to be part of this level too. Computers of the time couldn't handle something that big, so it was cut into two levels.

The first games in the series were incredible experiences, made when LucasArts was at its peak. It may be hard to believe now, but once upon a time LucasArts turned out golden game after golden game, and were truly one of the very greats. Star Wars games used to be events, industry landmarks and measuring posts for other titles. Since Episode 1 was released only KOTOR 1, Rogue Leader and possibly Lego Star Wars have touched those heights.

[Quirinus]

Then I have to say that Mysteries was probably a far superior game.

That mission you mentioned in Jedi Outcast, IMO such 'puzzles' make up a significant part of the game, which was a pity, because some aspects of the game were excellent. (The bowels of Cloud City, in particular, were impressive.) Which is why I prefer Jedi Academy to its predecessor. None of the levels required a stretch of creduelity like portions of Outcast required.

[Sarathos]

I go more for Outcast myself. JA wasn't too bad but in Outcast you get to be more badass,and you have to earn your force power instead of starting with it. Plus multiplayer is insanely fun.

[Quirinus]

True. Also, because the non-core Force powers were optional, there were no in-game use of the Force to advance, such as Outcast's using mind trick on an officer to open a locked door.

Which is preferctly understandable, but I was disappointed that they did not include certain shortcuts to the missions that you could attempt if you had a Force power. For example, they can have a locked door which a player can circumvent via a long detour in the ventilation shafts, or, if the player chose mind trick, provide the option for the player to cast mind trick on the guard ala JO. What about a flaming obstacle which you could only survive if you had Force protect? Or a little Force jolt to a reluctant blast door, or.......

The possibilities are endless.

[Geoffrey S]

Played the original Dark Forces to death. For quite a while I was heavily involved in the mod-making community, and some made really impressive levels renewing an aging game. I think it's one of the best games of its 2.5D type, and really captured that Star Wars feel.

Jedi Knight... it and Mysteries have aged very badly, but I was impressed at the time. I had a lightsaber! I was a jedi! For me it fit in with the Star Wars feel infinitely better than Jedi Outcast, which while containing some decent bits was largely uninspired, with the lack of charm of the newest episodes combined with a complete lack of interesting level design. Again, certain mods show just how much more can be gained from the engine.

Edit: oh, but I do hate the series' reliance on cheap plot devices, superjedi machines or whatever which miss the mark entirely. Dark Forces is the only one that did this well, with a very nice buildup to the first encounters with Dark Troopers.