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Fox's Review: Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Started by Fusion, May 21, 2007, 09:33:45 AM

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Fusion

Star Wars, eh?  Yeah.

*screenshots coming soon*

Previously, on the last episode of Star Wars Video Game Fanfiction Z!

Lando: Say goodbye to that hive of scum and villainy and hello to-
Kyle: What the-!?  We're moving!
Lando: ...*happy* Way to go, buddy!

Graphics (9/10): The graphics are fairly standard fare for a modified Quake 3 engine.  You can't really push them past this limit, though, as the engine fails to support proper physics without recoding the entire engine.  There IS a hidden ragdoll mod here, but you may as well just call it ragfail mode because it is unable to make deaths look realistic, and it's entirely obvious as to why the ragdoll deaths were done away with.

The game's graphic quality is overshadowed by it's potential.  Jedi Academy boasts Dynamic Glow, a type of effect supported by your high-level graphics cards that just adds a little glow to various things (or should I say a LOT of glow) including your lightsaber's blade.  It's a key part of the game, though.  There are also the usual detailed shaders, and such.  The sad part is that Raven didn't try to push the engine to it's limits by making things like cloth look even more realistic, but instead they left the character models mostly alone.  Character models from prequel Jedi Outcast are mostly intact, though some have been removed.

Jaden himself appears well detailed, as well as most of the other characters whose skins are entirely new.


Sound (6/10):

The sound is where the game falls a little.  The in-game sounds are taken from Jedi Outcast (which is essentially composed of Raven's standard sound library I'm sure) mostly.  Some are new as far as I can tell.  What is definitely new is the Concussion Rifle's return, though it came with disappointing sounds far from what I'm used to.

The footsteps to blaster fire have all been preserved in their original form.  The Star Wars tunes of typical nature are also in full swing.  But the one thing that bothers me is the character voices, which instead of carrying most of those over from JO, they instead decide to re-record the voices of the characters that are needed. Since player models from Jedi Outcast are present in Jedi Academy, this means that the 'unneeded' characters have had their sounds replaced by a generic person's grunts whose only taunt is "take that!" It may sound fine at first, but it gets annoying.

Control (9/10):

The controls are the same from Jedi Outcast, with the addition of a new move called the Kata.  It is a series of slashes executed by simply pressing both mouse buttons.  You get an ultra long saber trail and enhanced damage.  The effectiveness of your kata depends on where you use it and how you use it, though most everybody uses it regardless of whether or not it actually hits.

Single player and multiplayer modes are played almost entirely differently, both even use different kinds of physics.  Single player plays loose, it feels like you're walking around on ice, while Multiplayer doesn't give you that ice feeling.