Star Wars: Jedi Knight

There should really be a topic for this awesome series. I bought Jedi Academy (the only one I hadn't played) off Steam two days ago, and... it's So Okay, It's Average compared to Jedi Outcast.

I haven't played Outcast, but I liked Academy.

They both play almost the same, but Outcast has more in the way of story and puzzle solving.

And also more in the way of cripplingly hard.

Both are brilliant games to my mind.

I study European longsword as a martial art, and those games are actually very good representations of swordfighting within the limitations of the game. It's interesting to note that the tactics and ploys that work so well in European swordsmanship aren't just applicable to the game, they're some of the best calls you can make.

So apart from being great games, they're also great depictions of swordsmanship (excluding all the funny spinny stuff).

These were fantastic. I need to buy them again off steam. Force Grab was so much fun.

Two rejected concepts for future games in the series include Jedi Knight III: Brink of Darkness and Jedi Master.[1] Jedi Master was one of the many video game concepts LucasArts considered for what would later become Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It was to be a survival horror game—a much darker, more violent, and more mature continuation of the Jedi Knight series set during the Great Jedi Purge immediately following Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The concept was originally put out to potential consumers to test the demand for both another Jedi Knight game and a more mature Star Wars game, but both the consumers and the developers felt the concept was too gratuitous and derivative, and so it was thrown out.

DAMN YOU, STAR WARS THE FORCE UNLEASHED! DAMN YOOOOUUU~

Wait, what?

Survival horror against the Empire with mad lightsaber battles?

Revive that shit, stat. The Force was with whoever came up with that idea.

I enjoyed Dark Forces II Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith (barring that F***ing swamp)

@Saigyouji: That's what I liked about it.

Jedi Outcast was frigging amazing. I'm not even kidding. To this day that's the only Star Wars game where I actually felt like I was a Jedi tearing shit up.

Not to mention the excellent balance between when guns and lightsaber are useful — usually a Star Wars game will have a tremendous hardon for one or the other and render the other useless, but I was actually using a good half of the arsenal up through the end of the game.

edited 14th Oct '11 1:41:24 PM by Pykrete

So, am I the only one who cried They Changed It, Now It Sucks! when the original Jedi Knight came out? In Dark Forces Kyle Katarn was a clean-shaven Badass Normal fighting against cybernetic monstrosities, alien creatures and genetically superior bounty hunters, and in Jedi Knight, he's a sappy Jedi wannabe with a weird beard and total lack of common sense. Jedi Outcast remedied some of that... right until the Valley came back into the story, sadly. And don't get me started on the books, oh noooo.

I have fond memories of shooting Reborn with fully charged disruptor rifles and disintegrating them if I didn't feel like a lightsaber battle... which wasn't often, as the lightsaber fights in that game were some of the best I've seen in any Star Wars game.

Meh. Dark Forces Kyle seemed pretty bland and generic to me. It wasn't until he got his lighsaber/beard that he started standing out from your stock FPS protagonist. I haven't read the books. And I fail to see how finding a lightsaber and kicking seven Dark Jedi asses with absolutely no training beyond what that ghost guy told him makes him a "sappy jedi wannabe".

edited 14th Oct '11 1:52:38 PM by Vox

Ah, the Jedi Knight series. Good times.

To be honest, I loved both Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, but what I didn't like about the former is that it could be so unforgiving that it would verge on - if not reach - unfairness. However, in a way that was a blessing. Firstly, it showed you that stormtroopers aren't actually the hapless mooks they appear to be, since we're usually seeing them up against Force using protagonists, which kind of makes a joke out of them. On that note, it also showed you how royally fucked a non-Force sensitive was if they went up against, say, a Dark Jedi. You could plink away at Desann all day, but he'd kick your ass ten ways to sunday no matter what you tried. In a way, I think that was a Hopeless Boss Fight done right.

The writing tended to be quite good throughout, too.

Now that Lucas Arts have become one with the Force, does anyone hope the series will get, if not a proper continuation, than at least a Spiritual Successor? Much like @Pykrete, I also think JO was the one game where I felt I was actually there, in the GFFA, fighting stormtroopers and Dark Jedi. Now that the Mikey Mice are running things, it'd be a shame if they didn't make good on that legacy.

I'd love such a game to itty bitty pieces, personally.

Considering how shitty a lot of focus groups seem to be doing at picking what the masses want, I get the sinking feeling they're generally hand picked to say whatever the company wants said. Not always, just a lot of the time. I would love a survival horror set during the Purge . . .

To be honest, I think Dark Forces was the best game in the Jedi Knight series.

I only played Jedi Academy, though I loved it, specifically the lightsaber battles despite them just being mindless flailing xD

Playing through Jedi Outcast now. Hard as hell, even with a guide and on Palawan difficulty.

You mean Padawan? Palawan is a city in the Philippines.

Since Steam is having a sale on Star Wars I decided to buy the whole series for $6.80, although I previously owned Outcast and Academy on CD, to see where it all started.

Is there a way to look up/down in Dark Forces? The fourth level gave me fits navigating over instant death pits and trying to target those nasty ceiling turrets by jumping and letting the auto-assist do all the work.

Used to have Jedi Outcast ages ago and I loved that game. Deathmatch vs bots, Nar Sheddar (sorry if I misspelled it) and lvl3 force choke was pretty much my version of the GTA pedestrian bowling in terms of venting.

Single-player was brutal though.

Now going through Dark Forces and doesn't make me feel confidant about the level I am on (just entered lvl 4)

Found out how to look up and down. It's page up/page down. It could just be my keyboard, but they are inverted.

edited 3rd May '14 4:04:14 PM by mudkipz

^ I always liked the whole set up a bot deathmatch between Rebels and Stormtroopers with maximum bots. No Force powers, blaster rifle only Final Destination.

Since I am now on the Detention Center (6th level) and managed to uncover quite a few secrets without actually solving the main objectives, then died, a bit of advice that might save you some frustration when you reach it:

Press F1 to view your journal, code combinations you pick up are listed under inventory there.

Cracked walls can be split open with explosives and have goodies within.

One of the maglocks shuts off with a timed switch, but another one needs to be run through as it flickers, which I didn't notice at first (graphics!), and the gas/radiation/whatever should also just be run through quickly. I wasted time looking for switches on the last two—they're not impermeable/fatal.

The floor with orange color-coding, there's a large pit where shields are visible in the corner. Either don't drop down there, or saturate the area with the thermal detonators/mortar first. There are lots of mines, they're deadly, and you can't set them off with blaster fire (but can with explosives).

The door on the green level that you can open with the red key? The diagram in there is showing how you need to configure the elevators to access a crawlspace. Which I noticed was there but kept trying to access from inside the moving elevator. I died just short of what I think was the end (since I'd wasted lives to the mines, underestimating the blast radius then thinking they were all gone).

edited 3rd May '14 8:25:17 PM by montagohalcyon