I really loved Jedi Knight II (JK2), so I was really looking forward to Jedi Academy (JA). I liked JK2 so much, in fact, that I judged it the new first-person shooter (FPS) king of the hill despite its several problems, greatest of which was that the developers absolutely ruined the multi-player aspect with subsequent patches. My hope was that the next game in the series would do three things: (1) fix some of the visual quirks, (2) provide the light saber right from the outset, and (3) provide a better (i.e., more tactically interesting and balanced) multi-player experience. Read on to see if JA delivers the goods.
When JK2 came out it was a bit behind the times, largely because of its reliance on the venerable Quake III Arena (Q3A) engine. That's not to say that it looked bad, mind you, only that its competition looked better in some respects. The same is the case with JA, for whereas other recent Q3A-powered releases like Star Trek: Elite Force 2 (ST:EF2) manage to push the aging engine far enough to keep up with anything else on the market, JA does not. Again, that's not to say that JA looks bad, only that its competition looks better in several respects.
Still, there are some significant improvements over JK2, the first of which being that the environments and modeling are far more detailed. Some of the areas are positively huge, providing the player quite a view when wandering around. That view isn't as pretty as the view provided by Unreal Tournament 2003 (UT2k3), for example, but that's to be expected. Ship models are quite detailed, characters seem to have more polygons and animations, and even the droids and other "background" objects look better than they did in previous games. Texture resolutions also seem to have been upped a bit as has the resolution of the pre-rendered cut scenes, which don't appear to have the same degree of "chunkiness" as those in JK2.
In these and other respects JA is noticeably better looking than JK2, yet it seems to run just as smoothly on my system. I was able to play the whole game at 1024 x 768 x 32 bpp with 2x full-scene anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering and all of the game's graphical settings maxed out. With one notable exception, about which more will be said when discussing the multi-player aspect of the game, JA ran very smoothly on my system. There were a couple of cut-scenes with minor frame rate issues, but they were nothing unpleasant.
What isn't so great is some of the facial animations and ship textures. Whereas ST:EF2 manages to provide some pretty convincing facial animations and incredible ship texturing, the characters and some of the ships in JA look pretty ugly by comparison. Luke Skywalker's face is particularly mechanical in its motions, for example, and the X-Wing fighter textures are bizarrely bland in their unadorned gray/white look. Why the developers chose to make the X-Wing fighter look like a grayish white lump of metal is quite beyond me. Granted, these are pretty small complaints, but they are noticeable given the competition provided by nearly flawless visual feasts like Splinter Cell and Tron 2.0.
Another more substantive complaint is that the display suffers from periodic flashing. The work-around for this problem is supposedly to disable the dynamic lighting, but that doesn't completely resolve the problem and removes some nifty effects from the game. It seems like there is some kind of minor glitch with the way the camera and dynamic lighting work together so that on rare occasion the player gets a few frames of blinding light. It was particularly bad for some reason in large open areas such as Coruscant. I liked the dynamic lighting enough that I left it enabled and just ignored the occasional problem, but it was pretty irritating sometimes. I hope the developers will address this in a patch. Such gripes aside, JA looks more than good enough to get the job done and that's all that really matters.
It's Star Wars. What more can I say? The music is vintage John Williams and the sound effects are all perfect—as they should be given LucasArts' access to the libraries used for the films. Even the EAX support seems better this time around, and that's always a welcome thing. Unless you're bored with the sounds of the Star Wars universe, you'll find little to quibble about with those portions of the audio content of the game.
The major gripe I levy against JA is that the much of the voice work is ridiculous. The acting is relatively good compared to some titles, but the limited and inappropriate selection of taunts by enemies is simply laughable. I can't tell you how many times a dark Jedi asked me whether I feared him, even when I was carving him up badly along with a handful of his companions. Seriously, you can wade into a room of dark Jedi, start hacking them to bits, and listen in amazement when they mechanically proclaim that you're weak. I realize that audio and game AI frequently get short shrift, but that's just silly.
Another more minor complaint is that the audio system implementation has a really annoying bug. When I got to the very last couple of levels, some of the sound effects stopped altogether. It was really weird. All of a sudden the light saber would make no noise when being drawn or put away, enemies didn't make any sounds, and none of the other sounds of battle would play either. If I would then hit escape and click a few menu options, some of the sound effects would reactivate but not the enemy voices. What's more, the various re-started sound effects would stop working again in pretty short order.
The only reliable workaround I found for the problem was to disable EAX support, but I really don't understand why that helps. I played through about 95% of the game with EAX enabled and had no problems; it was only in the last section of the game that I ran into that weird sound bug. Turning EAX off brought all the sounds back, though, so I guess it's not such a big deal. Perhaps the developers messed something up with the environmental audio handling? I don't know what they might have done, but that's the only thing I can think of that would cause the problem to appear in such a limited subset of the game.
The interface for JA is pretty straightforward, though like its predecessor it suffers from the problem of not displaying which force power is currently selected. Too often I've hit the force power key expecting one power but getting another instead. I had the same complaint with JK2, and it seems that it went overlooked in building the next game in the series. On the plus side, however, everything else works as it should, and it even seems that maybe the third-person camera control got cleaned up a bit for JA. I know this much: I never experienced a completely useless camera angle like I did on rare occasion in JK2.
In this respect JA improves substantively upon its predecessor. Being able to customize one's character helps the player feel like he owns the story. Previous games in the series can't hold a candle to JA in this regard, insofar as letting the player customize his character is a lot more fun than playing Kyle Katarn over and over. The ability to choose force powers is also great, though I wonder whether the game should be a bit different in dealing with the whole light/dark thing—more on that in a moment.
The light saber combat has been buffed up a bit from JK2, with each sort of light saber choice (i.e., single, dual, or dual-bladed) having its own special moves. Better still, they're all actually useful! I definitely appreciated the basic both-button kata with the single saber when facing my first tough dark Jedi enemy, Alora. I'm sure I could probably have taken her down anyway, but that move let me nail her a good three times in a row to end the fight on a very high note. The forward-rolling stab is also pretty useful in the single-player game.
Overall, the game mechanics are superb, conveying the experience of being a Jedi rather nicely. Remember how calm Luke looked in Return of the Jedi, even when he was being made to walk the plank on Jabba's barge? There's a reason he looks so calm: he knows darned well that one lone Jedi can waste hundreds of bad guys all by himself! That's what's so cool about JK2 and JA; i.e., they convey that feeling of power wonderfully. It's a blast being a Jedi, even if that does mark me as a fan boy (grin).
My one major complaint with the game mechanics is that the game's structure has a somewhat fragmented feel. It starts off establishing a strong story, but once the basic training is completed the game shifts to a somewhat schizophrenic approach. That is, the player makes his way through three tiers of missions, choosing in which order he'll complete them. There is a sense in which this is reasonable, insofar as the Jedi are the guardians of peace in the galaxy and one should expect them to get sent hither and yon to handle all kinds of stuff.
What doesn't seem right, though, is that the name of the game is Jedi Academy, yet the vast majority of the game feels nothing like training at an academy. Rather, it feels like playing a super-precocious video-game character. Jaden advances so quickly that it feels like I could start training on Monday and be a Jedi Master by, oh, noon Wednesday at the latest. I realize it's just a video game, but it seems to me like the developers could have made things flow a bit more smoothly. Being able to wander the academy grounds would have helped a lot, as would getting missions directly from an NPC on said grounds rather than picking them from a menu.
That's sure the nastiest aspect of the fragmented approach: the player picks his missions from a menu, which feels like being slapped in the face with a fish-scented anvil. The in-mission play is immersive, sucking the player into the life of a Jedi. The interface to pick missions rudely beats the player over the head with the fact that he's merely playing a game. Maybe this won't bother some people, but it bothered me. I guess I should be grateful that each tier of missions ends with some story-focused stuff, otherwise the game would have seemed completely fragmented.
A final, less telling complaint is that I could find no keystroke in JA for skipping cut scenes. I've written about this plenty of times before, and I have a terribly hard time believing that games made today still elide this obvious need. It wasn't so troubling during the game itself, but it really ticked me off at the end. Why, you ask? Because JA forced me to sit through several minutes of credits, during which time I could do nothing else with my computer. That's both arrogant and ridiculous.
The last thing that must be said about the game mechanics is that the way the developers included the choice between the light and dark side of the force seems strange. Honestly, I'm not sure whether it's an improvement over the previous games or not. On the one hand, I really like the philosophical approach JA takes: any given force power is simply a tool, being neither good nor evil in itself. What matters is what the player chooses to do with them, or so Jaden is told. Yet on the other hand, what finalizes Jaden's choice of direction, light or dark, is a telling scene toward the end of the game in which he must make an important choice having nothing to do with how to use those powers.
Maybe this is simply a limitation of computer technology at present, but what I think would make a lot more sense is for the game to track the player's actions. This would be relatively pointless with the way JA is designed at present, for almost everything that moves in any given level is an enemy to be destroyed. If the developers included more innocents, however, and some more varied choices for how to approach certain situations, it would then be possible for the player to choose the light or dark side by the sum of his decisions. I personally think this would be more compelling than the one, dramatically overwrought choice with which Jaden is ultimately faced.
It bears observing, of course, that this opinion of mine might be unworkable in terms of gameplay , or it might actually turn out to be less fun than the way JA handles the issue. For that matter, I might be the lone voice calling for such a shift in light/dark mechanics; I don't know how many other fans would prefer such a change. At any rate, it surely isn't something that should prevent anyone from buying the game, for the choice Jaden makes works in the context in which it's placed and is quite reminiscent of the choice Luke has to make when confronting the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.
The story is interesting enough, but I think that any further sequels really need to pick a different period in history. The battle on the Endor moon has been over for something like a decade, but the new Republic is still fighting the Imperial remnant as well as the dark Jedi. I realize that the whole Star Wars universe has a very Manichean quality (i.e., there is always a balance between good and evil with neither ever triumphing completely), but the time period around the films is so crowded these days that it's time for a different setting.
This is a minor complaint, as I think the story is engaging for what it is. I won't spoil the game by supplying a lot of detail, but I will say that Tavion from JK2 is back with a vengeance. Kyle should have cut her into bantha treats when he had the chance. Suffice it to say that if you liked JK2, or are a general fan of Star Wars, then you'll probably like the story. If you're not such a person you might find it a little strange, but not so strange that you won't like the game as a whole.
I've got a lot of good things to say about the content, and not necessarily in their order of importance or enjoyment. First, the character customization is nifty. The player gets to choose his race, sex, saber hilt style, saber color, and even customize the color of his clothing. This might seem like a relatively silly waste of time at the start of the game, but believe me when I say that this feature really ties the player to his character in a way that few other games do.
Second, all the new and different stuff is great! Being able to ride tauntans was both fun and convenient. The swoop bike races were a complete blast, especially because you can still carve up cultist booty with your light saber while driving! The Imperial mini-walkers, or AT-ST for geeks in the know, weren't available much but were fun nevertheless. Other levels gave the player the chance to man a gun on an Imperial Dreadnought against TIEs and even fight his way through a cargo ship hurtling through the skies of Corellia—an effect which the game engine renders incredibly well, I should add. The developers clearly intended to provide a bunch of new and nifty stuff and they delivered in spades.
Third, though the overall structure of the game gives it something of a fragmented feel, this does provide at least one positive benefit: the game features a lot more diversity in its environments, bad guys, mission parameters, etc. JK2 consisted of over twenty levels, some of which were pretty huge and involved in their size and objectives. That was great insofar as JK2 provided the player with a lot of gameplay. Unfortunately, if you got bored with a level, as I sometimes did, you could be stuck for quite a while before it was over. The diversity of JA ensures that the game is never boring.
JA gives you more levels than JK2, and the individual missions are shorter, sweeter, and more finely focused than any of the missions in JK2. In contrast, the missions when switching tiers are longer and drive the story forward nicely. I actually prefer JA's approach in this regard because it let me play a few levels here and there when time permitted without my ever having to stop playing in mid-mission. In contrast, I had to stop a couple of times with JK2, and that always left me disoriented for a while when next I returned to the game. Suffice it to say that the cost of fragmentation does purchase at least this tangible benefit.
Fourth, I compliment the developers on not giving me a CD key to fuss around with and lose. I'm no advocate of ridiculous copy protection schemes that degrade performance and introduce difficult-to-solve issues with various hardware, and I positively despise having a CD key on top of them. No matter how hard I try I invariably lose my darned CD key at some point, or I'm sure to be asked for it at some point after installation when I can't seem to find it. JA currently uses SecuROM v4.84.84.0020 for copy protection, so maybe the developers figured they didn't need a CD key as well? I don't know. I've already seen no-CD cracks for the game, but I've yet to find one that works. Despite the copy protection, it's nice not to have a CD key as well.
Fifth, the addition of the new saber choices is wonderful! I think I would prefer to be able to try them all within the context of a single game, but I guess it does give the game greater replay value. The single saber choice is probably my least favorite. Yes, the single saber does allow the use of all three styles (i.e., fast, normal, and strong), but only the latter two are really useful. I've yet to find any need for the fast saber style, which short changes the single saberist quite a bit as far as I'm concerned.
The dual saber choice is far more interesting, but its special kata is not all that useful in the single-player game and is almost completely useless in multi-player action. It's pretty to look at, but it's too easily stopped and is more artistic than functional. That's a pity, really, because the dual saber approach has some nice benefits, the ability to throw one saber while holding the other back to defend surely topping the list. It sucks, though, that you spend half your force pool to start a move that any force-powered enemy can easily disrupt with a single push. That's why it's useless in the multi-player game.
Without a doubt my favorite saber choice is the dual-bladed saber ala Darth Maul from Episode I. The alternate attack is a moderately useful kick rather than a saber throw, which I find prevents me from accidentally throwing my saber when I don't mean to. Maybe that's an idiosyncrasy of mine, but I suspect it probably benefits others as well. Better still, the moves available for the dual-bladed saber seem far more useful in the long run. I know this much for sure: the only enemies I feared in the single-player game were those carrying a dual-bladed saber. None of the dual saber or regular, single saber foes gave me much trouble. When I had Jaden swinging those dual blades, nothing got close to him without getting hurt.
Sixth, JA finally made me feel like the light side of the force was really worth following! Let's face it: the dark side powers are far more destructive and often more fun. I never got tired of swatting poor storm troopers like flies using force lightning no matter how often I did it. The sheer, visceral nature of the dark side abilities can make the light side abilities pale by comparison if not handled properly.
Having said that, I really liked and used all of the light side abilities. Absorption is useful only when facing force-powered enemies, but its absolutely necessary by the time you're facing lots of cultists. If you're not using absorption by the time they're ganging up on you in twos and threes, well, then you're going to get pushed, drained, and hit with a lot of painful lightning. Protection is similarly useful against the rest of the enemies in the game, and it really shines in the later levels against the big and tough Imperial hazard troopers.
Force healing is an absolute necessity, as far as I'm concerned, but even the Jedi mind trick manages to be useful. If you pump it all the way up, you can use it to convert enemies to your side for thirty seconds. That might not sound like such a big deal, but believe me it is. In the later game you will often come across multiple big, bad enemies at once; turning them against each other lets you run past them without even bothering to fight them. The hazard troopers in particular can be difficult to handle without the Jedi mind trick.
I should also single out force sense for discussion, for it's a new and interesting neutral power. For the record, I hate having to hunt like crazy for secret areas, objectives, and so forth. It's not that I'm too lazy to bother; it's more that so many games make them so obscure that it frequently isn't worth the effort required to find them. Force sense takes a lot of the pain out of this and simultaneously provides a great way to give the player hints when he's stuck. In one situation, for example, I couldn't figure out how to progress any further. Once I enabled force sense—use the force, Luke!—some important features of the room I was in became far more visible, a change which helped me figure out what to do next. That's great!
It's also very helpful to be able to use force sense to discern the health of friends and enemies, though I wish the developers had handled it a bit differently. As things stand, the health status is indicated by a horizontal bar over the heads of targeted individuals, an interface convention which again slaps the player right in the face with a fish-scented anvil. It would have been far better, I think, to give friends and enemies a glowing aura whose intensity and brightness fade as they grow weaker. That certainly makes more sense in light of the description of the force in the films; i.e., that it is an energy field generated by all living things. Why not show us the degree to which each given living thing generates it, rather than give us a ridiculous horizontal bar? Is it just me, or were the developers relatively unimaginative in this regard?
Seventh, the pacing and scaling of JA is absolutely perfect. The pacing and scaling of JK2 was uneven and downright ridiculous in spots. Facing Admiral Galak Fyyar, the second-to-last boss, was a bit like facing superman. That boss battle was far harder than the final encounter. Worse, the toughest level in the entire game was the first level in which I had a light saber because of all the ridiculous snipers! Perhaps the silliest bit, though, was the stealth section of JK2, which punished the player with immediate failure if an alarm was raised. The developers fixed all of these problems with JA. Not only does the game get more difficult at just the right pace, its difficulty also scales perfectly with the different difficulty levels. Very nicely done, developers!
Eighth and finally, I shouldn't have to say this but I do: JA gives the player more than his money's worth. Many of the games released a year or so ago were egregiously short, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and Max Payne being my favorite examples. If you're going to force me to pick quality or quantity I'll pick quality every time, but that doesn't mean that developers should feel free to give me a really intense handful of hours of play and still charge me full price. There's got to be a reasonable amount of content in a good game, and I was concerned that the gaming industry was heading south of that mark.
I'm happy to say that it seems like the industry has got the message. JK2 certainly delivered the goods, and I've recently written the same of Star Trek: Elite Force 2 and Tron 2.0. I'm happy to report that JA also gets it right. Overall, I think the game clocks in just a bit shorter than JK2, despite having a larger number of distinct levels, but it's still a solid value. The game occupied me for between twenty-five and thirty hours during my first pass through, and I can guarantee you I'll be finishing it at least once more if not two or three more times. It's that much fun.
My one big complaint about the game in the content department involves its AI. To first give credit where it's due, some of the dark Jedi do a pretty convincing job of fighting with a light saber. I find that pretty impressive because melee weapon tactics are far more varied than ranged weapon tactics; consider how much more is involved in using a sword properly compared to the simple point and shoot mechanics of a gun and you'll understand what I mean. Any idiot can fire a gun, as evidenced by the fools on the nightly news.
But despite JA's success in this area, the rest of its AI is really pretty stupid. Storm troopers run at you by the handful, completely heedless of the fact that you just wasted a dozen of their buddies standing nearby. Sometimes enemies get caught in corners or even on switches and can't seem to extricate themselves, which leaves them running in place like idiots. At other times I've seen the AI run off high platforms, jump into lava, and do all kinds of other stupid things. Maybe I'm asking too much, but it seems to me like gamers ought to expect more these days. In the grand scheme, though, this is a minor flaw in a game otherwise jam-packed with good stuff.
The multi-player aspect of JA includes all the standard game modes one might expect like duel, deathmatch, and capture the flag, along with a couple of new and interesting modes, namely, power duel and siege. Power duel is an expanded version of the duel mode and seems to draw its inspiration from the big fight sequence near the end of Episode I. I say that because it pits a two-man team versus a lone opponent on a playing field with no powerups and nothing but the light saber. I guess that's for people who really have something to prove. Saber dueling is well supported by the game, though, even to the point where special bows and other such animations are provided for dueling and not regular play.
More interesting to me, however, is the siege game mode, which borrows heavily from Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multi-player aspect. The game is divided into two teams, the Imperials and the Rebels, each of which have opposing objectives. On the Hoth assault map, for example, the Imperials' ultimate objective is to take the Rebel base, whereas the Rebels' objective is to foil the Imperial assault. To accomplish these goals players can choose from a number of different classes, including a basic assault fighter, a heavy weapons expert, a demolitions expert, a scout, a techie, and even a Jedi.
The great thing about the siege game mode is that it really does require a good balance of classes to accomplish the mission at hand. No team can simply go all Jedi and expect to win. Yes, Jedi are formidable, but when they're restricted to the sorts of stuff that we've seen in the films (i.e., Jedi aren't generally found toting rocket launchers) they need the help of others to get the job done. From what I've seen thus far I'd have to say that siege and capture the flag are my current favorites, though the other modes are a lot of fun as well.
What worried me most about JA's multi-player was whether it would suck like JK2's did after the developers patched it into oblivion. Honestly, I have to say the verdict is not yet in. On the one hand, JA seems to fix several of the problems with JK2's multi-player aspect. The ridiculous "butt attacks" of JK2 aren't the guaranteed kills that they used to be, which means that the servers don't seem to be full of idiots running around backwards like they eventually were with JK2. The kicks and saber throwing also seem to have been tamed down a bit, though I haven't been able to tell yet whether the unbeatable push/throw combo of JK2 remains a part of JA.
Yet on the other hand, JA multi-player seems to go wrong badly in at least one way, namely, in the addition of the new graphics for force usage. When pushing someone in JK2, the player reaches out as a noise plays accompanied by a subtle graphical effect. In JA the graphical effect is much enlarged, featuring what looks like a warping of space itself around the player's hand. That's all fine and good for the single-player game, but for whatever reason it sends the frame rate straight into the toilet in the multi-player game. I haven't found any workaround to date, and it doesn't seem to matter at what resolution I run or what settings I tweak. Every time a character pushes or pulls in the multi-player game, my frame rate dips so badly that it's essentially impossible to respond intelligently.
I'm still investigating the problem, but it's a show-stopping bug as far as I'm concerned, and I really hope the developers will fix it or explain how to disable those more involved graphics. I guess my estimation of the multi-player aspect of the game has to be a bit divided right now. JA looks really good and seems like a lot of fun, but it might harbor some as-of-yet undiscovered abuses as JK2 did. Like I said, the verdict isn't in yet, but I have been enjoying the multi-player game and that counts for a lot.
JA is easily worth buying for the single-player aspect alone. The missions are all interesting and varied, the difficulty levels really do ramp up the game in a meaningful way, the story is engaging, the game packs a good amount of playing time, etc. It's not perfect, as I hope I've indicated by my various complaints, but I think it's the best first-person Star Wars game ever made. I don't know what it is about being able to play as a Jedi, but it's still as incredibly refreshing as it is fun. I hope they keep making sequels, though I hope future sequels use a different engine—does anyone else drool at the prospect of a Star Wars game powered by Half-Life 2's Source engine?—and are set in a different time period.
The multi-player aspect seems fun, varied, and engaging from what I've played thus far. Yes, it has a pretty crippling bug with the push/pull graphics, but I've enjoyed it nevertheless. Whether the developers will ultimately kill the multi-player game like they did with JK2 remains to be seen, but the initial signs are pretty encouraging. Whether dueling, free for all, capture the flag, or siege is your thing, you're bound to find something to like with the JA multi-player aspect.
So, what's the final verdict? I'd have to say that JA is an absolute must buy if you're a fan of Star Wars games. It's also a must buy for anyone who really liked JK2, because it's basically more of the same but better in almost every respect. For all others, it's a good game to consider, especially for those gamers with older hardware (e.g., video cards that don't support DirectX 9.x) who are looking for a recent release that will still run relatively well on their systems. JA doesn't rely heavily upon all the newest video card gizmos to work properly, and I know that's important to many gamers. In short summary, JA is a great game and well worth the money. May the force be with you!
10/23/2003