Product Details
 | Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
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Product Description
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy gives you the chance to follow an ancient and powerful tradition from long ago, in a galaxy far away!Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #4159 in Video Games
- Brand: Lucas Arts
- Released on: 2003-09-16
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.25" h x 5.25" w x 7.75" l, .45 pounds
Features
- First-person Star Wars action/adventure, with a story-based singled-player campaign and a variety of multiplayer combat modes
- Learn the ways of the Force from Master Luke Skywalker
- Customize your character by choosing species, gender, clothing, and physical attributes such as hair and facial features
- Create a custom lightsaber by choosing hilt design, blade color, and style: single, double, or dual sabers
- Unique level selection system allows players to choose their own path through the game
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Video
games and books such as the popular New Jedi Order series have
continued the storyline of Star Wars past the events in Return
of the Jedi. According to this "extended universe", Imperial
loyalists have been pushed back to a small number of worlds and are now
known as the Imperial Remnant, and meanwhile Luke Skywalker has started a
training academy to rebuild the once glorious Jedi Order. Jedi
Knight: Jedi Academy casts players in the ongoing Star Wars
epic as Jaden Corr, a new character in the Star Wars universe who
has enrolled at Luke's Jedi Academy. The Imperial Remnant and a group
of dark-side Force users have been up to something shady, and it's your
job as Jaden to uncover and stop their nefarious plans.
The game
is a mix of first-person shooting and third-person lightsaber combat,
with a heavy focus of the latter over the former. Players are allowed to
customize the basic look of their character by choosing from a list of
heads, torsos, and legs. Moreover, players can now customize the look of
their lightsaber hilt in addition to the blade color, though all of
these customizations are aesthetic only. Answering overwhelming fan
demand, players now have the option of fighting with two lightsabers or
the double lightsaber made famous by Darth Maul. The flashy new
lightsaber combat styles are a lot of fun and make duels twice as
entertaining. Players are able to use a set of Force powers such as
Push, Pull, and Speed, that should be familiar to anyone who has watched
the Star Wars movies. Ironically, players can learn and use
Light Side and Dark Side powers like Heal or Lightning interchangably
without any real restriction or consequence. The single-player story
line is fairly thin but adequately does the job of giving you an excuse
to visit a variety of diverse environments and cut through bad guys by
the boatload.
The multi-player game features standard action game
modes such as Free For All, Team Free For All, Capture the Flag, and
Duel. Jedi Academy also features a couple of innovative multiplay
experiences. Power Duel pits two slightly weaker players against one
slightly stronger player. Siege is a team-based combat mode ala Battlefield
1942, but with a far older kind of Stormtrooper. Players assume the
role of Scout, Demolitions, Soldier, Heavy Weapons, or Jedi, and use
the strengths of their particular role to help their team accomplish the
objective. Objectives typically involve breaching a wall or carrying an
object from one place to another. Imagine a dynamic Star Wars
battlefield complete with vehicles, Star Wars architecture, and
small teams of Scouts, Jedi and Demolitions guys sneaking around while
troopers and heavy weapons specialists blast everything in sight, and
you've got an idea of Siege.
The game's only major flaw, if you
can call it that, is the focus on lightsaber combat; those looking for a
dedicated shooting experience may resent the reliance on these elegant
weapons. If you're willing to play a Jedi simulator as a Jedi simulator,
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is a fun foray into the Star Wars
universe that takes players beyond the familiar events of the classic
trilogy. - Jon "Safety Monkey" Grover
Pros:
- New lightsabers and lightsaber moves are fun to play with
- Multiplayer Siege mode is excellent
- Force powers and Star Wars setting a refreshing break from standard FPS fare
- Storyline is not terribly interesting
- Lightsaber and character customization--while cool--have no effect on gameplay
Customer Reviews
More Force to be reckoned with...
After a healthy wait, the
third installment of the Jedi Knight saga continues in this latest
release. Fans of the earlier games will be at home with the basic setup:
run around lovingly crafted Star Wars locales, zwapping Storm-Troopers
with a lightsaber and generally spoling the Evil Galactic Empire's
plans. Where this latest installment differs from the older games is
that for the first time you WON'T be playing as spy-turned-Jedi, Kyle
Katarn.
"Horror," you gasp, "don't tell me he's gone forever!".
Well no, he'll be making a special guest appearance, but this time as
one of your Jedi instructors. As the title suggests, the game offers
players the chance to join Luke Skywalker's Yavin IV Jedi academy - a
sort of Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry, but for Jedi.
Instead of playing as a familiar Star Wars character, the game allows
players to create their own, unique, Jedi apprentice by customizing your
species, sex, clothing etc, allowing for literally thousands of
configurations.
Even better, as you progress through the
non-linear missions that you'll be dispatched on by your instructors,
you'll be able to specialise in a particular saber style...the basic
single-saber, the Anakin-inspired two-saber approach or the pyrotechnic
staff-saber, of Darth Maul fame. Saber combat is the main focus of the
game, but you can still grab a handy blaster to zap things with.
After
you've sufficiently honed your skills in the one player game you can
take the fight online (with your custom character, naturally). New
multiplayer modes include an objective-based team game called 'Seige',
and the ability to re-enact the climactic Qui-Gon/Obiwan/Darth Maul
threesome from Episode One in the new 'Power Duel' mode - its a two
against one saber showdown...what better way to prove your force mastery
than by thwapping 2 birds with 1 stone?
So, loads of new tricks
up the Lucasarts' sleeve, no doubt all wrapped up in the usual gorgeous
graphics and sound. If Jedi Outcast is anything to go on, this game will
be a must-have in any Star Wars fan's collection.
Good game, could be better
Star Wars, Jedi Knight: Jedi
Academy is the 3rd installment of the Jedi Knight series, and could
really be called 'Jedi Knight III'.
The game is fairly similar to
Jedi Outcast in terms of gameplay, graphic and sound. The story in this
game involves a young Jedi student at the Jedi Academy, studying under
Kyle Katarn. The game follows a fairly standard setup, you participate
in missions to achieve various goals, using your Jedi powers that
increase with every mission to achieve those goals. But this game has
one fundamental difference to Jedi Outcast, it allows a player to choose
the Force powers they want to have more ability in, and those powers
can be either of the light side, or the dark side. Towards the end of
the game, the player is forced to make a choice to go to the light side
or the dark side of the Force.
But the major new feature of Jedi
Academy is that a player can now customize their character in the game,
choosing gender, species, physical appearance, and, most importantly,
lightsabre colour and handle style.
This is where I found the game
lacking. I expected to have a wide range of character choices and
options, instead there were only a handful of choices, Human male, Human
female, Zabrak male, Twi'lek female, Rodian male and another male from a
strange alien species. I would have liked to have been able to choose
from a huge range of species, clothes and physical appearances, with
enough options to ensure that every character is unique. This lack of
options is one of the reasons that I gave this game 4/5 stars.
The
lightsabre combat though, is where this game really shines. In additon
to choosing blade colour and handle style, this game also features a
whole host of new and cool lightsabre attacks and uses, such as a roll
then quick lightsabre stab, and a move where a player can do an
extremely fast twirling motion, essentially killing anything within the
radius of the lightsabre.
Later in the game, the player must build
a new lightsabre, but now there a 3 choices, single sabre, twin sabres,
or a double sabre like Darth Maul used in Episode I. The new options
are great, and allow for some fantastic new moves. Lightsabre combat is
definitely the highlight of Jedi Academy.
Another point to mention
is that the game is surprisingly short and easy. An experienced Jedi
Outcast player could finish this game within 20 hours, probably less.
The in game problems were surprisingly easy to solve, allowing a player
to progress easily through the levels. After all the care and effort
taken to customize a player's character, to finish a game that quickly
just isn't satsifying. This is also part of the reason why I gave this
game 4/5 stars.
In short, this is a good game, but not an
outstanding one. I get the sense that it was possibly rushed through
production, which may explain why it was so short. If you're a Star Wars
game fan, you should definitely buy this. If you're just a casual gamer
with a passing interest in Star Wars, I recommend you think twice
before buying this one.
Basically a
commercial Outcast mod released standalone
"Jedi Academy" is the latest
in a long-line of Star Wars shooter games that began with "Dark Forces"
(1994) and followed the adventures of Kyle Katarn, former imperial
commando, free-booting mercenary and now Master Jedi Knight. As with
last year's entry - "Outcast", "Academy" has you fighting various
enemies across the Star Wars universe as rendered by the QuakeIII
engine. Rather than play Kyle, you lead the fight as one of his
assistants - an acolyte jedi (who ya' callin' Padawan!?). Looking and
sounding little different than Outcast, Academy does allow you some
flexibility. You can alter the appearance of your race, gender, skin
color, dress and (because this was beginning to sound like some Supreme
Court case) your lightsaber. Choose the color and style of your saber -
single or double sabers, or the double-bladed single saber made famous
by Darth Maul in "Episode 1".
The problem? While it's always fun
to play "Star Wars", I spent much of my time just reminding myself that
this was supposed to be a sequel to Outcast, with all the improvements
that sequels should be expected to have. Using the same graphics engine
as Outcast means that the game overall looks the same, while gameplay is
otherwise little changed. Being able to customize your appearance is
nifty, but it doesn't really add to the game - you're just a generic
character in a generic Star Wars story (young and untrained Jedi
students against former imperial forces and darker jedis who try and
kill you with their fast moves and taunts). Anyway, players have been
able to "mod" their appearance since the days of "Dark Forces", so even
that feature isn't so new (I played that game as Boba Fett). Though a
technological leap over the first "Jedi Knight" game of 1997, neither
"Academy" nor "Outcast" match it in making you feel like you're inside a
Star Wars movie. The levels (or maps) are compelling, but they always
feel like maps - they don't connect in a way that suggests a single
story the way the older game did (LA followed the older game's example
when releasing "Mysteries of the Sith", a companion disk relying on a
tweaked version of the engine used on "Jedi Knight"; though MotS looked
shoddy, and its story was actually several loosely linked stories, the
individual stories themselves never relied as heavily on cut-scenes to
drive the game as Outcast or Academy did). Even forgetting about
narrative, Academy is still less of a leap in technology over "Jedi
Knight" than that game was over "Dark Forces". I'm not sure why it was
even released at all (the only real effect is that the on-line
communities that craft mods for Star Wars games have stopped working on
Outcast mods, and have begun turning to Academy exclusively).
Being
little advanced over Outcast, the same system specs should apply. I
played this on my P4-2ghz, GeForce3, WinXP system (remember when that
sounded like more horsepower than you'd ever need?) and had no problems.
Remember to check LA's website to make sure your graphics card is on
the approved list. In short, if you missed on Outcast, get Academy. If
you got Outcast, Academy is still a worthy game, but not one that will
rock your universe.
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