N-Philes

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

Posted by Archived.

Eight years ago this month, Lucasarts took their beloved galaxy far, far away into the realm of first person shooters in Dark Forces. In it, you were some nobody in the Star Wars universe named Kyle Katarn, and you basically ran around and shot stuff. I had a three level demo of it back in the day that I used to play a lot, but I never got around to getting the full version. This was a point in time where people thought it'd be cool to let ordinary characters in the Star Wars universe discover that they were Force-attuned. See Michael A. Stackpole's brilliant X-Wing series and its follow-up I, Jedi for reference. Lucasarts thought it would be brilliant to give its Dark Forces hero mad Force skills in the 1997 sequel, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. I never got to play this game, as my computer was too low-end to handle it at the time, but it looked totally sweet. Katarn had a lightsaber and had the power to actually choose to be on the Light or Dark side of the Force. I saw you could play a virtual reality version (aka TV screen inside a pair of glasses) against a friend at Six Flags, but alas, it was too expensive. Last spring, yet another sequel, Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, appeared on the PC, with the Dark Forces name surprisingly dropped. And, though I think it's just me, the title bothers me. They're not calling Episode Three Star Wars - Attack of the Clones 2: Fall of the Jedi, but whatever, come what may. Just a brief eight months later, in what seemed like a Star Wars bonanza on the Gamecube, Jedi Outcast became the first Dark Forces game to ever grace a Nintendo system.

Story

It is now eight years after Return of the Jedi (in the books, Luke has just started up his Jedi Academy over on Yavin), and Kyle Katarn has all but completely rejected the Jedi ways. If you recall, in the first Jedi Knight you could go Dark side, and this is essentially a plot element to make you Light side again. Oh yeah, and keep you from your precious lightsaber for way too long. Without revealing too many spoilers (and the story is quite deep for a First-Person shooter), there's this mad crazy Desann, a former Jedi, who wants desperately to destroy the Valley of the Jedi. Kyle takes up his training again as a Jedi, and that's where the real fun begins.

Visuals

Well, when Jedi Outcast first hit the PC, it didn't exactly have the best graphics around. Add an extra year and, well, it definitely shows. I was told the graphics were optimized for the Gamecube, which means that the original must've looked absolutely horrid. It's hard to explain, but the Stormtroopers are definitely lacking that certain flair that keeps them from looking as realistic as they could. I guess I'm a whiny little brat, but I've always wanted my Stormtroopers to be somewhat reflective. One of the major things you'll notice is that the game is incredibly dark. I have to jack up the brightness on my television just so I can see what's going on. On the whole though, the graphics, even in the third person view, were dramatically superior in every way on Bounty Hunter. Characters were smoother, textures were beautiful on Jango, fire looked cool, draw distances were longer, and everything just looked cleaner.

The first person perspective for most of the game provides some problems within itself. First of all, Jedi Outcast thinks that it's fun to platform jump. Let's just say that if you want first person, there are certain things you sacrifice. Things like peripheral vision, but jumping's the major thing. So I die, because I can see where my feet are going to land. Not fun. Goldeneye didn't have jumping and it worked out just fine. I don't know how it was done on the PC version, but I imagine it was even harder. Also, there's no real aim control. The default controls came without sidestepping (which I felt was quite important), so I used a custom setting and was forced to sacrifice my full control aiming. When the game switches into third-person mode for the lightsaber, you'd think that the C-stick would switch to full camera control, but it doesn't. It's still sidestep, which just gives me headaches beyond belief.

You know it's bad when the Full Motion Videos look worse than the actual game. I'm assuming because the videos had the life compressed out of them. Seriously, I have never seen such blurry, artifact-ridden video since one of my friends downloaded Collateral Damage. I've heard the Xbox version has the same problems so I don't know what to say. I just remember after watching one scene and cutting back to the real game, I was like, "Ooh, so pretty."

On a happier note though, the multiplayer managed to run two players and ten bots without much difficulty. Sure, the framerate died down a bit, but I never experience any slowdown. I still must give my props to the Death Star multiplayer level, because there ain't nothing like camping out in that little room where C3PO hid. Then, I proceeded to "Ben Kenobi it" and tried to turn off all the tractor beam boosters. Alas...I could not do anything to it. But the fact that I was there made the little geek in me cry.

Gameplay

I was really digging this idea. I've defeated the Empire a thousand times over Star Wars flying games (Rebel Assault 1&2, Rogue Squadron/Leader), but all I've really wanted to do is shoot Stormtroopers. I never really got to play Shadows of the Empire, else I would've been in hog heaven. So I figured, with tons of Force abilities (pushing Stormtroopers is fun), weapons, and a lightsaber, Jedi Outcast would just be the bees' knees. In thought, it's a brilliant game. In execution, well, that can be disputed.

The shooting game isn't overly complicated. At almost all times, your ammunition will be at full capacity (300) so you literally could shoot at anything you want. Ammo conservation isn't held in very high regard. I've always imagined that a Thermal Detonator would totally vaporize a room. Truthfully, they're the equivalent of tiny little grenades and won't do damage to anything further that five feet away. And most of the other weapons really aren't that different from one another.

But that's okay, right? You've still got your trusty lightsaber, right? Wrong. You have to toil through the game's first two worlds (five levels) before you get your Force powers and lightsaber. This would be all well and good except for the fact that each of these levels took me about two to three hours apiece. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. A lot of it's thinking you've gotten really far, then finding a dead end, going back to find some stupid switch you forgot to flip, flipping that switch, then trying to figure out what that switch did, and then finally advancing. Sometimes, you actually walk right up to the switch, but your little "Alert" symbol (similar to Eternal Darkness) won't go off unless you crouch down to focus on the switch. Apparently, standing directly in front of the switch isn't good enough. It's tedious and annoying, which brought me to the conclusion that Jedi Outcast has too many puzzles!

Finally, after what seems like many moons, you can finally get your lightsaber, and the real slicing and dicing can begin, right? The game switches to a third-person perspective for easier jumping and viewing. I would have rather had the option of keeping for the entire game, not just in lightsaber mode, but...The lightsaber's a little clunky. You don't have that fluidity that I would expect from such a weapon. I thought it'd be cool to try and purely go through with nothing but a lightsaber through a level, but that lasted all of about five seconds. What's the point of getting close to an enemy when you can shoot them from twenty feet away, especially when they're shooting at you? And the Force powers are all anti-climatic. Jedi Choke would be cool except for the fact that you have to be a little too close for comfort for it to work. The lightning though, that's sa-weet.

I find more pleasure in playing the Jedi Arena (multiplayer) by myself. There, I can customize my options and fight against ten different bots, lightsaber only. Me likey. I actually think it's more fun there, because the main game's AI is, well, lacking. With the Jedi Arena's many modes (Free for All, Team Battle, Capture the Flag, etc.), there's always something to do. And the real Star Wars environments, along with the lightsaber, help to differentiate it from all the other multiplayer games out there. Alas, Jedi Outcast is completely and utterly offline. Oh well, Xbox Live doesn't have it either, because if it did, I'd really be complaining. The PC guys have had it online for over a year, and I don't know what it's gonna take for Nintendo to get some more online titles. This would've been a great starting place. Alas...

Audio

I never thought I'd say this, but after a billion Star Wars games, I have finally gotten sick of the Star Wars theme. There's only so many times you can hear it before it gets annoying. But Jedi Knight shook up the classic tunes and busted out the beautiful theme of the Force (the Two Moons scene in the Jedi Temple missions. It brilliantly fits, because you're learning the ways of the Force again while feeling like a young Jedi. It seriously brought a tear to my eye. Yeah, I'm a little girl when I play Star Wars games.

I don't know how anyone would do a totally kickin' Mark Hamill impression, or why they would, but in every Star Wars game, the impersonator does a brilliant job. It sounds just like Luke Skywalker. And the guy who does Lando Calrissian sounds exactly like the real deal. That's probably because Billy Dee Williams gets behind the mike, but that could just be me. The other voices are their usual decent selves, so really no problems there.

This game gets an N-Philes score of C-.

After hearing the raves and reviews of all three Dark Forces installments, I figured I'd be getting one hell of a ride out of Jedi Outcast. I was sorely mistaken. What I got was a tedious adventure ridden with pointless, almost Resident Evil-esque puzzles. It was not a hoot and a half as I thought it would be. The lightsaber and multiplayer parts pretty sweet though, but on the whole, I would have to say that Bounty Hunter, while mediocre, was the superior of the two current Star Wars shooters.

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