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released in AUSTRALIA FIRST!! Thats right! You read that correctly. You are not on drugs. Jedi KnightII, JEDI OUTCAST was released in Australia before it was released in the US. That just NEVER happens! Perhaps as Starwars Episode II is being filmed in Australia, Lucas Arts has given OZ the nod. Nevertheless I'm sure those in the rest of the world will not go wanting for long. I was surprised to see Jedi Knight II in my local Target shopping centre. Not just the downright boring box, but the all trendy collectors tin box! OK OK so I was a victim of marketing and cruel scheming on the part of Activision. I'm well aware of that. But they hit my weak spot. STARWARS! I resisted the Wolfenstien Collectors box, with a mere pffffffft! But the JEDI KNIGHT II box had me from the start. It cost a cool $100.00 Australian. Which is a much better $0.02 American. Heheheh just showing my EXTREME dislike for the exchage rate between OZ and the US. IN the collectors box you get a JEDI KNIGHT II T-Shirt and a JK-II poster, both sporting the same graphics you see on the front of the box. The Shirt is size L, made in China. Looks to be on the larger side of the LARGE sizes. The poster is unavoidably folded into little squares so it will fit into the tin box. So it has all these fold marks when you unfold it. A pity but unavoidable. You also get a very good manual and of course the CD containing the goods. Take note to read the readme file as there are some nasty errors in the manual that you should know about
Stupidly, I threw the manual aside in my haste to get into the game. Come on, we've all done it! But I recommend you at least check out the weapons and their alternate fire modes and the items list. You see there are these stations all throughout the game were you can charge up your weapon cells(Orange station) or charge up your personal sheild cells(green station). I didn't realize this in the beginning and was running about with no sheild and very few ammo cells. Not recommended. For those that played the original JEDI KNIGHT, you will instantly recognise the HUD. Basically it's the same. You have your health (indicated by the red readout) and your sheild strength (indicated by the green readout) ont the lower left hand side of the screen. Your remaining ammo count is displayed in the lower right hand side of the screen. All in the classical Jedi Knigt and Dark Forces style. OK, enough ranting, how does it look? Yeah. Ok I was disappointed at first. In the first mission you are exploring a remnant base in the valley of the Jedi. You gotta go in ahd kill all the baddies and find out what the hell the Empire is friggin up to in there. The geometry appears a little blocky and the texturing is just a little too bland. I think the two problems go together. The textures are all greys and whites, with all the variants in between. A little coloured lighting is splashed around to try and liven the place up a bit but it's an exercise in futility. Because the textures are grey and don't have a lot of detail to them, you instantly pick up on the simplicity of the geometry they sit on. The detailing that IS done is done very well. really giving the surfaces the crisp appearances that were intended. But the beginning level appears droll and uninteresting due to the lack of lively textures. On the other hand, you must remember where you are exactly. Inside a base! Prettey square looking at the best of times right? True. But in this day and age we expect pure artistry as well as level design genius when we load up our games. Anything less disappoints. Wait until you get to the second level. You arrive at this mine where the Empire is mining crystals that supposedly harness the force allowing the holder to have force like abilities. Even though the force may not be with them. A nice peice of work here, Check out the screenshots here on this page. You'll notice the rockface textures look really really good. There, thats the kind of thig you need to hide the polygon relief beneath. This level is where the design of the game really starts to go right. It looks GOOD. Nothing like Return to Castle Wolfenstien or Medal Of Honour I might add. All buildings seem quite uninspired and done in a drab grey colour that would make exterior designers puke. How about a little colour? How about a little creative design? Sadly that is lacking. To get into the mine you need to climb up this network of pipes that really do look like proper pipes. They're round! or close to it as far as FP Shooters go. So, while we have the Quake III engine powering this game, you'd never pick it! It looks downright DATED in certain areas. Which is the first time I've seen this with the Quake III engine. They need more inspired textures and more inspired polygon design to bring this aspect of the game up to scratch.
While I'm bagging the game, I really need to mention the HOPELESS loading times. They are ATROCIOUS! We have been spoiled with RTCW and MOH:AA with their almost instantaneous quick loads and good full loading times. JK-II allows you to go and get some coffee, make toast, and visit the dunny before it's done loading. Even quick loads take this long. TERRIBLE! You get taken right out of the flow of the game when the need arises to reload and detracts from the overall enjoyment of the game. You're left saying "DAMN!! Now I gotta reload for AGES!" That simply isn't good. Lets now get onto the weapons. Let me tell you now. The first two missions are going to be a trial. Your default weapon is Kyle Katarn's preferred BRYAR BLASTER PISTOL. After years of mercaneering he still prefers a piece of junk like this!!!? It's energy blasts travel MUCH too slow to be any use in battle. You find you'll need to predict where a baddie will be when your energy blast finally gets to him in order to do any good with it. If you play online regularly with a heap of lag then this is the gun for you. It has a useful secondary fire mode, where it buils up energy into one big blast thats good for knocking out gun turrets and the like. The first storm trooper I killed dropped a E-11 BLASTER RIFLE! Immediately I picked it up thinking anything had to be better than the stupid thing I had! WRONG! The E-11 is THE most INACCURATE pice of crap you'll ever get the shits firing! Primary fire mode is a single blast thats KIND of accurate. It might hit somewhere within the crosshair. But still slow to refire and the energy blasts still travel too slow to be any use at all. The secondary fire is next to useless unless you want to let go at a large group of StormTroopers. It is a rapid Succession of energy blasts let off at the EXTREME cost of accuracy. You can stand directly in front of a baddy and not hit him with this firing mode. Bahh. Sadly, that is all you get to play with in the first mission. That and Thermal Detonators that are extremely good for throwing into a knot of StormTroopers for a quick fix to your sticky situation. You also have a STUN BATON at your disposal that requires a number of ZAPS to take the StormTroopers out of commission. Only good if you can dash up behind somebody or zoom around a corner with MR ZAPPY in hand. Here's a tip. Look for explodable cannisters and crates! You can often blow these up taking the enemy morons them. After walking around the in the second mission a bit, you can pick up the WOOKIEE BOW CASTER. Finally a decentish weapon to fire at those StormBastards. It will fire as fast as you can click your mouse button. With accuracy to boot! I nearly fell off my chair! The secondary fire mode shoots off a reflective blast that bounces off walls! You can shoot around corners and the like. If you hold down the primary attack you build up energy thats released in a spray of 5 or 6 energy bolts. Damn good stuff! I like this weapon a lot! It doesn't look as good as the crossbow in HERETIC II and IS again coloured a boring GREY. BUT is a good weapon. Once you get it, you'll be peeved if you have to put it away. I also had a play with the TENLOSS DISRUPTOR RIFLE when I had a small run about on some of the multiplayer maps. It has the physics of the railgun from QuakeIII. Very fast shooting weapon. Nobody's going to dodge a blast from this little baby! There's plenty of other weapons. An Ion gun for killing things with an electrical circuit, such as droids and electrical devices. The IMPERIAL HEAVY REPEATER WITH CONCUSSION LAUNCHER. This is basically the Machine gun of the game. You also get a shotgun like weapon and the standard rocket launcher.
THE LIGHTSABRE! you don't get this until some time in the third mission. But I played the recorded demo that comes with the game in the multiplayer section. When you switch to the lightsabre you immediately go into 3rd person mode so you can see the action a little better. The lightsabre FX are the best we've seen to date. When you waggle it around you get a very cool motion blur effect. You also attain the ability to throw the lightsabre some distance and grab it back again on the return stroke. EXTREMELY QUOOLE! The throw however requires force power that you may or may not have. Different slashing and swinging attacks depend on player movement. So you need to press certain buttons in a certain pattern to attain some of the attack styles. You also have several force abilities. Force jump, Force push, Force pull, Force speed, Force heal, Force grip (allows you to choke a living being), Jedi Mind Trick, and the all mighty ability to use lightning. How do you get better force powers? Well there are pickups you can get along the way that upgrade your abilities, but these are understandably rare. Otherwise you get automatically upgraded each time you finish a level. A pity you don't have a statistics screen that you could upgrade a la DIABLO. That would really make things sweet. As it is, you just progress through the game getting upgraded by default. If you find a force pickup, yay for you! The sound in JK-II is excellent. Very very good. The blaster sounds are straight from the starwars movies which is really the only way you'd ever have it right? Right. Explosions sound really good and the voices of the StormTroopers sound exactly like they did in the movies. The music is done very well too. Rising to a groovy beat when the heat is on and receding to Starwarsy type tunes when the heat is off. It just adds to the overall groove you get in when playing the game, instead of peeve you like the music does in some games. All FX and voices are high quality, so you get no dubious sounds when something happens. Well made sounds that entice you further into the game's universe. How hard is it to navigate through the game? Not difficult at all. I've just done a fair swag of the Atrus Mine level and I have to say, for verteran FPS gamers JK-II should not frustrate for long. For instance. In the mine there are these ore carriers that fly around all through the level. When I first saw them I thought right! At some point I'm gonna have to hitch a ride of one of those things, question is... WHEN???? Needless to say I did indeed find myself riding one to get to where I needed to go. You always have a clue as to what you're meant to be doing. If you're meant to trip a button on a console there'll be a big flashing panel there that has "HIT ME" written all over it. Sometimes you can take control of robots to get into places that you can't, and that is quoole, it's a level of puzzle solving we just don't get enough of. The clues aren't always glaringly obvious, but just a subtle touch that catches your attention after a few minutes of gazing about a particular place. A small hint. Use the remote camera stations to have a look around. That solved a small impasse I had.
The models look good. But there is a small problem with the StormTroopers where they really suffer if you don't have Anti Aliasing turned on. Because they are all mostly white they are a bit glarey. As a consequence of this you can really see the pixel popping effect you get when Anti Aliasing is not being used. But, StormTroopers are white man, so what you gonna do about it. Case closed. Other models such as officers and bug like creepy crawlies also look good. But I hit the Creepy Crawly tunnels and found it was dark so I couldn't really sse em all that well. But they blasted well. They almost looked tasty when cooked. Every now and again you get a cutscene made by moving the camera and animating people within the game engine. I have never seen the Quake III engine look so good as when this is being done. It is really good. Some of the animations are indeed a little stiff and jerky but hell, I've seen worse. A LOT worse. Instead of getting some kind of short cutscene of dubious quality and clarity, you get a very professionally done animation sequence done within the game engine. Fabulous! Just fabulous. You could imagine an entire movie done this way. Raven have really done a good job with this aspect of the game. The cutscenes are vibrant and really quite reasonably fluid. You just wait. You'll like em! Well Thats prettey much it. JK-II Jedi Outcast. I'ver now played it for a number of hours and haven't tired of it yet. Even though I bagged the visual quality of the game, and I still stand by those sentiments. At each step you've got something to be about, rather than just killing the baddies to find the key. Free prisoners. Blow up the mine. Restore power to the gun so you can blow this apart. Perhaps a small criticism is the amount of environmental interactivity. There isn't much stuff you can muck around with. Computer consoles are all untweakable and there doesn't even seem to be any flushable dunny's for the StormTroopers to do n.o. 2's in. But thats not exactly unexpected in the games we get today. I don't think JK-II is going to have great replayability for the single player minded people. Once beaten, always beaten. However you should really check out that rollling demo that comes pre recorded with the multiplayer section of the game. You could have some real fun with that. Pitting your force powers agaist those of your friends. You can do all the mega jumping, Lightsabre throwing, mind-tricks and shooting. Really a new variant of the shoot to kill multiplay we have already come to love. Star Wars fans will get a blast from JK-II. Man I have. The action is never lacking. There IS a storyline of sorts really quite interesting if you compare it to "that Quake Bastard" that we never ended up seeing anyhow. You'll come across Luke Skywalker, Lando, and even R2D2 and C3P0. You get to see tie fighters and heaps of other stuff that you will directly notice from the films. Being a StrWars fan I really find it hard to give this game a bad name. It has several regrettable aspects to it, such as the drab texturing and the uninspired building designs. But the actual LEVEL layouts are done well. Interesting places to break into and explore. Best of all, ALL this happens in the Star Wars universe, which I simply can't get enough of!
One final note before I post this review up. I have just entered the Jedi academy and spoken with Luke Skywalker This level looks stunning. Forest vistas and plenty of higly detailed textures. You get to see recruits training with lightsabres and training in other force abilities. You are sent to find your own lightsabre in the temple surrounding the academy, which is the last screenshot. GET through the first two missions and THEN you will see that this is a CLASSIC game by RAVEN.
Well, time for a revisiting. I have now finished the game and thought this review needed some extra work. The lightsabre fights in the game alone make for a VERY enthralling Starwars experience. After you meet Luke Skywalker at the Jedi Academy to get your lightsabre, you start meeting some Dark Jedi along your travels. To begin with they are easy to dispatch and don't pull many tricks on you. However, any attempt to force push or pull a Dark Jedi will only work around 10% of the time, but the results are very satisfying. Force push a dark Jedi onto his ass ans then rush up and cut his head off. Another favorite of mine was to hold somebody with the force grip and then throw the lightsabre at them. WOW. Some of my battles with the dark Jedi lasted for ages, went through several sabre locks (AWESOME), lightening strikes, and choking holds! While some I was able to dispatch with relative ease. As you progress through the game the Dark Jedi you meet CERTAINLY get stronger. But that is good because YOU get stronger too. Kicking Desann's Padawan's ass was one of the most enjoyable battles in the game. Tavion, begs for mercy as you hold her over a cliff in a choke hold once you've beaten her. I force pushed her off the cliff several times and just waited for her to return for another dose. What a BLAST!. You also have the ability to MIND TRICK those vile Empire Scum! There are three levels of each force ability you move through, with level 3 being the kick ass stage. When at level 2 you can mind trick stormtroopers into attacking each other which is quite hilarious. But you just wait until you reach level 3 with your lightening. YOU WILL KICK ASS!!! You can fry multiple targets in very short order which is extremely useful if they're all trying to KILL you.
You do indeed get to ham it up with LANDO CALRISIAN. In fact you have to free him from jail and then help him back to his ship, whereupon you both fly to the cloud city. Wish I got a sceenshot of that cloud city level. VERY NICE! Often you will have Two or Three Dark Jedi appear and begin to hack at you with their feeble red LightSabres. That is particularly satisfying when you emerge from a Three to One Sabre fight having kicked serious Butt! You will progress through Three different LightSabre fighing styles. Classic, Fast, and Strong. Classic is a bit weak and slow and you have to work hard to beat the Dark Jedi right before you progress to FAST. When I got to the FAST lightsabre fighing style, I stayed there. It involves very quick sabre motions and blocks. Whereas the strong style is EXTREMELY SLOW and leaves you open to cuts from the Dark Jedi WAAAYYY too much. Even with Desann I used the fast Sabre style. To begin with you can block the single shot slower weapons with your lightsabre. But not the multiple or gun turret fire. However once you progress to level 3 in sabre defense you can block DAMN NEAR anything with your LightSabre without losing a smidge of health. Another VERY satisfying thing to do is send back rockets to the person that sent them with your force push. As your push and pull skills progress you can push over a heap of Empire scum or pull the weapons out of their hands and leave them running around with their hands in the air. Look, you have HEAPS OF FUN with JK II once you get into the Sabre Fights and fighting with the force. You just don't get that level of gameplay with ANY other FPS. The most memerable moment in the game for me was sneaking into a space hangar control room which had a window that allowed a view into the actual hangar itself. The hangar was CRAWLING with stormtroopers and bounty hunters. I was able to OPEN the hagar doors and watch as about twenty Empire Scum got sucked out into space screaming! The screams lasted so long and gradually faded but by that time I was laughing so hard I nearly passed out! JK II ends up being one of the BEST FPS I have played for a LONG LONG time. Those initial levels look slightly dated and droll yes. But that fades later in the game with the levels looking lively and VERY VERY well textured. A blast! No other way to describe the game. Get it! And you won't be sorry. RAVEN, I salute you.
Graphics 9 / 10 Level Design 8.5 / 10 Sound 8.5 / 10 (Sabre Sounds ROCK) Enemies 8.0 / 10 Detail 9.0 / 10 Gameplay 9.9 / 10 (Nothing is Perfect) Addictiveness 9.0 / 10 |
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