Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy review

Lightsabers combat looks great but feels random.

Another Star Wars game has found its way onto our PCs and consoles. Following hot on the heels of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Academy is a first person shooter that sees you taking the role of Jaden, a promising new student at Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy. You soon become embroiled in an adventure that spans many worlds - some familiar, some new.

A word of warning before you venture further into this review: contained within are two miniature rants that, although relevant to this game, are equally valid for any first person shooter.

The Force is strong in this one

Chewie - is it you?

The game begins with the familiar introductory words flying through space and the camera slowly panning to a space ship rumbling by. On board is Jaden, a promising new Jedi student (with the gender and appearance of your choosing) that before even becoming a Jedi has made his/her own lightsaber. You are quickly thrown into the action when your ship crashes and you have to make your way to the Jedi Temple where you can begin your training.

Once training is complete, you are given many Jedi missions that you can more or less fulfil in any order until you are given another plot related mission to keep the story moving. This mission structure works quite well and makes the game feel less linear than it inevitably is. In between the missions are frequent cut scenes that, although good for moving the story on, would feel more immersive if they were presented in the first person. Third person cut scenes only serve to take you out of the character, which defeats the purpose of first person games altogether. Perhaps more developers will take note of how successful games like Half-Life and Medal of Honour are at making you feel part of the story.

Judge me not by my size, for the Force is my ally

Its not all shooting stormtroopers.

As a Jedi you have a familiar array of powers and weapons at your disposal. The powers are well implemented and you get better at them as you do more missions and become more experienced. Often the powers take the place of the usual hunt-the-key puzzles presented by this type of game, as you use them to pull levers, re-align machinery and push boxes around.

Jedi Academy looks the part from the very beginning, with colourful and imaginative scenery. The enemies are fairly varied so that you’re not always pitted against stormtroopers. Some levels have quite original enemies and objectives, like giant underground worms that cause you to have to jump from rock to rock to avoid being eaten. These enemies are well animated and have wonderful rag-doll physics. Try using your Force Push power on a group of corpses and watch in delight and they fly though the air and flop about. Lightsaber combat also looks great, especially against other Jedi.

In a Galaxy far, far away...

You can customise your appearance and lightsabers.

Sound-wise the game offers up exactly what you’ve come to expect from Star Wars games. Authentic Star Wars sounds with re-used music from the films. A more original score would have gone a long way towards improving the game.

The gameplay is fairly standard for a first person shooter with the exception of the lightsabers and Force powers. Most times it’s impractical to use the Force powers in the heat of combat, although there are handy shortcut keys to them. The lightsaber combat against most enemies is good fun, especially as you can run up walls and jump and whirl about as your Force use improves. The lightsaber combat against other Jedi doesn’t hold up as well though and feels a bit random. Usually you click away and try and circle around them and it can get quite frustrating, especially as you start to have more and more lightsaber duels as you progress.

Together we can rule the galaxy

Online play offers all the usual modes of play for a FPS, as well as a few lightsaber-centric offerings. And it’s at this point that one of my rants will begin. It took me hours to find a game to play in. Either all the servers were full or the minute I joined I was kicked out. So, as much fun as playing online is, it’s not very friendly to newcomers. Most would be put off the task of finding a server to play in. Services like Xbox Live try and make this easier for gamers, although it’s still not perfect. Once online though, the game played very well.

Force yourself

Oooh spooky.

Jedi Academy offers a highly polished first person shooter experience with great production values and varied and often original levels. The use of Force powers is a welcome addition and the developers wisely steered clear of the excessive jumping puzzles that marred the previous Dark Forces game. It offers its own frustrations with the all too frequent Dark Jedi battles, but it’s a worthy addition to the collection of anybody that loves first person shooters or of course anybody who has to own everything related to Star Wars.