A great blend of FPS, Strategy and RPG

User Rating: 9 | Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy PC
I liked this game alot. I found that the similiarites between JA and JK were everywhere. I like the engine, and the textures and shading are simply awe-inspiring. If you have never purchased a star-wars game, and this is your first experience, I think you will be hard-pressed not to buy another. Overall, the game-play is astounding, and the saber battles are so realistic that you feel like you are controlling a movie as opposed to a 3-D rendered character. I also want to say that one of the major failings of the first JK was that you had to wait FOREVER to get the lightsaber...alas, Lucas knows which side his bread is buttered on and that little problem is solved. You have a fully functional saber in the very first mission. If that isn't a great thing in itself, you have to take into account that in the first installment in this series, once the saber was acquired, the player needed nothing else to accomplish the mission. Now, it sometimes benifits the player more to use the First-person shooter aspects of this game to overcome the missions. It isn't just going in with sabers blazing now, you have to focus on what needs to be done...not necessarily who needs to be skewered (but don't worry there are PLENTY of people that need to be skewered in JA!). Also the way that your force powers are upgraded is 100 times better now. I like the ability to chose what i want, (the dark side is so ... appealing) and actually have my decisions alter the outcome of the game.

Enough of gameplay. If you haven't checked out the graphics for this game, be prepared to be blown away. If i can say one word, it would have to be "lighting." The lighting in this game is purely astounding...be it from the environment, your saber(s) or from your force powers, the lighting is breath-taking. Slower computers may have trouble running the high-polygon count graphics, or keeping up with the pace of the all out saber-wars in the game; but if you are running a moderate to fast computer, you should have no problem with the graphics or any problems with slowness for that matter. Personally i have had no problems with either crashing or with lag-time. Overall, i would recommend this product to anybody that is even remotely interested in either the Star Wars universe or FPS/Action games in general.