I’d never played Jedi Academy before. This seems remiss of me, given how much I love Jedi Knight II. What could have happened in 2003 to distract me so?
Anyway, better late than never.
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Tag: Lucasarts
Blog 883: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
And so we finally come to where it, for me, all began. 2002’s Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was my very first Star Wars game, so it’s probably wise to concede that there may be some bias approaching. I first played this game having just bought The Best of Ultravox and Gold: The Greatest Hits of Spandau Ballet, so please play those in your head while you read this too.
Jedi Knight II is quite a departure from the previous entries in the series. Developed by Raven Software rather than solely in-house at LucasArts, and built off the Quake III Arena engine rather than their own tech, it’s something of a fresh start in almost every way.
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Blog 882: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith
Where are we at for title-stack by now? Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith makes four, but maybe we’re dropping the Dark Forces II entirely since this is an expansion pack. (Although gog sells it bundled with Jedi Knight, it comes as a separate installer so maybe it’s one of those fabled expandalones?)
But the real question is: did a brand new suite of missions manage to address any of the more wobbly bits of Jedi Knight?
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Blog 880: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
If I said that Star Wars: Dark Forces would have made a perfect film, then it’s no surprise that its sequel basically just went ahead and made a film. Yes, Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is the one with the live-action cinematics, supplanting the hand-painted characters of the first game’s cutscenes with proper costumed actors.
Dark Forces ended with a distantly observing Darth Vader asserting that “the force is strong with Kyle Katarn.” Let’s find out just how strong, shall we?
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Blog 878: Dark Forces
I used to like Star Wars. The original trilogy? Bangers. The prequels? Flawed execution of a fundamentally solid plotline.
Then there were the video games. Jedi Knight II has long been one of my favourite Expanded Universe adventures, but I’ve never played the game where this particular storyline began and I’ve been meaning to catch up for years.
Kyle Katarn started his life in 1995’s Dark Forces. Now, I struggled to play Doom and gave up on it after a few levels because it was too old even for me, so it was with some trepidation that I took this particular plunge…
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Blog 699: The Force Unleashed
Chris McPhail and I have been working through the Star Wars fanchise in its cinematic chronological order in our audio/video podcast Close, But No Biscuit of late. During one clip that didn’t make the cut, I was raving about The Force Awakens (as I am wont to do) but accidentally said The Force Unleashed instead. Twice.
Obviously it got me to thinking about that game. I accused it of being hideous fanfiction the first (and only) time I played it, but in the light of the even more hideous fanfiction of The Force Awakens… Maybe it’s not so bad? Maybe its story, crass as its foundations might be, actually… kind of works?
We are on full spoiler alert today, but The Force Unleashed is from 2009 so it should be safe by now.
Rao Dao Zao 