User Rating: 8.2 | Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast XBOX
Jedi Knight is a fun, and engaging game that is hurt by its own technical flaws. Gameplay: The single player portion of the game is main draw (since there is no Xbox Live support). It follows the journey of Kyle Katarn beginning as a gun-for-hire and rediscovering the force. The game starts out as a fairly standard FPS, but then Kyle reclaims his lightsaber and the game takes a turn for the best. The lightsaber combat is fun, but also feels kind of spastic at times. You also travel to many varied locations, while the worlds are unique, the level design is so-so, and the Quake III engine doesn’t seem to help the presentation. Graphics: When the game was released on the PC in March of 2002 it looked pretty good. Eight months later though it is released on the Xbox and it looks extremely dated. The Quake III engine has unfortunately started to show severe signs of age. While the engine seems to be good at displaying large outdoor environments, and levels all feature a lot of low-res textures that are repeated often. Even the character models are less than spectacular. Though I will give credit where credit is due, the lightsabers look great and all give of their own glow appropriately. Sound: The sound is pretty much standard game affair. You have the obligatory Star Wars music, blaster laser fire, and so on. The voice acting goes between ok to laughable at times. Probably the coolest part of the sound in the game is the low hum of the lightsabers. Value: The single player while long, it doesn’t give you much incentive to replay it so basically once you played it you won’t want to play it again. On the plus side there are several two-player game modes including: CTF, FFA, Team FFA, and more original things like Duel and Jedi Master. Without Xbox Live support the game loses its value. Overall: The game suffers from weak visuals, overly difficult puzzles/gameplay, and limited multiplayer options. For the Star Wars fans though this is a great entry in the Dark Forces series. For everyone else it’s a good rental.
