Game: Jedi Academy (Also known as Jedi Knight 3) Platform: PC Release Year: 2003 Stephen's Rating: 8/10
Jedi Academy is a third and first person action game developed by Raven Software set after the events of the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
Basic Plot
Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn are re-forming the Jedi order in order to counter-balance a growing number of Sith forces. In order to train new initiates they form the Jedi Academy.
The story involves being tested and trained as a Jedi Knight. Eventually you are able to accompany Kyle and Luke on missions, and go on solo missions as you become stronger.
Unique to this story is the ability to choose your fate. You can choose the path of the Jedi and stay true to your mentors, or alternatively turn against them and become the greatest Sith Lord of them all. The choice is yours, and ultimately changes how the final missions pan out.
Gameplay
The gameplay occurs either first person (when using guns) or third person (when using a lightsabre). Overall I enjoyed the third person view a lot more and avoided guns simply because the first person mode wasn't well executed.
Wielding two lightsabres.
Fighting with guns is self explantory, but fighting with a lightsabre was unique and quite exciting. Unlike other games your character would swing the sabre at one of three set speeds. You could then move the player character about to influence where the sabre would swing. It became quite second nature, and it gives a really physical sense of swinging the sabre around.
Battling Sith apprentices.
The game progresses through a series of missions which each tell a mini story, but all the missions collectively tell a wider story arc which culminates in the ending. Halfway through the game your character loses his or her lightsabre and you get to choose a new one. You have the option to either keep a single sabre, or take two sabres into battle, or even wield a double-bladed lightsabre.
Skill allocation.
As you progress through missions you get force points to spend on abilities. Each ability is either classified as light or dark force. Although there is some mention to watching how many dark abilities you take on, it ultimately has no impact on how the story occurs. Some of my favourite abilities were force lightning (of course), but also force grip. A friend of mine used to grab enemies with force grip and drag them over large distances, just to throw them off ledges or into lava.
Positives
Having two alternative endings meant I simply had to play the game through twice. I think it's a really positive feature for any game, to give the player some free will.
Swinging the lightsabre around is the most visceral in this game that I've ever seen it. Since the entire Star Wars franchise is basically rotating around the concept of the lightsabre, I think this is a very good thing.
The abilities were interesting and fun to use.
Negatives
First person view isn't well designed and is difficult to enjoy. It would have been as good a game without guns available at all.
Memorable Moments
I really loved having two lightsabres. There was a special move where you would crouch down and your two blades would swing around you in an arc destroying everything in close proximity. Loved that.
Wonderful game. I don't usually like "older" games very much, but this is worth a play for anyone that hasn't tried it. The combat in this game is one of the best that I've encountered.
In my opinion, the single player of JKA pales in comparison to its predecessor - but maybe I'm just being nostalgic here. After all, seeing for the first time a properly dynamic lightsaber duel play out infront of you does leave one with quite an impression, be it in JKA or JK2. The one thing that you apparently skipped completely while playing this game seems to have been the multiplayer, which I believe to be the very essence of what makes JKA such an absolutely unique and fantastic experience. The multiplayer is where the game shines! In fact, most of the movement mechanics and to a large extent also the sabering ones are quite different from what you get to use in the SP - one could even compare it to SC2 in terms of how the SP relates to the MP.
Indeed, the MP is also incredibly competitive.. or well, it used to be, seeing as the competition right now is a bit less than active and almost all of the greatest players have stopped playing the game - although to be fair, activity does flare up now and then, mostly around the summer and winter vacations, but considering the age of this game, it's a no-brainer that there really aren't as that many people left playing it. Another issue is that although the MP is very unique in terms of it's gameplay and therefore quite awesome, the fact that the developers had to abandon support for the game early on means that it's unfortunately left a bit unpolished. It's still awesome, but it's nowhere in hell as refined in terms of its mechanics as the vast majority of the competitive games right now.
But yeah, it was actually my very first competitive multiplayer game. I used to play it extensively over many years and was quite active on the ESL ladders in pretty much all the gametypes there - 1v1, 2v2 and TDM aka 3v3/4v4. It was an incredibly long time ago (6 years by now), but it really was quite something. Back then, I even made a bunch of fragvideos, mostly taken from competitive games that I had played on the ESL. You can check out one of them if you like:
Great game.. I don't know where I got it from because my family always disproved but I was in love with starwars. When I was like 8 I spent all my birthday money on a sidewinder and rebel assault 2. I went home and put a red vest on with my sunglasses and bike helmet. thanks for listening to my childhood.
I played JK2 Jedi Outcast multiplayer for 10 years and I still play it today. It is imo best multiplayer game ever created skill wise, thers tons of bugs that became a skill on their own. We also have this guy ( Phanto) that was never, even once, defeated in 10 years in a sort of a duel style gametype called ff ( 1v1, full force- user invented). Hes like Flash x 100 in this game.
Anyways, Jedi Academy was a huge dissapointment for me in MP. So much skill with force powers and saber was left out, but then again, you cant really recreate the accident that was JK2 in which so many things just clicked cos of bugs.
On June 13 2012 07:32 NukeD wrote: I played JK2 Jedi Outcast multiplayer for 10 years and I still play it today. It is imo best multiplayer game ever created skill wise, thers tons of bugs that became a skill on their own. We also have this guy ( Phanto) that was never, even once, defeated in 10 years in a sort of a duel style gametype called ff ( 1v1, full force- user invented). Hes like Flash x 100 in this game.
Anyways, Jedi Academy was a huge dissapointment for me in MP. So much skill with force powers and saber was left out, but then again, you cant really recreate the accident that was JK2 in which so many things just clicked cos of bugs.
I was not in the competetive scene at all but i playd JK2 and JKJA in multiplayer... JK2 was imho just superiour.
Main problem i had with JK2 was... On most "normal" survers damn "casuals" would run around shouting at you because you used a gun to kill them instead of just saber/force... Fuck them, fuck newbs that are also sw nerds that think they somehow are playing the game "right" when literally not using 90% of the weapons....
Ahh, this brings back some good memories. This game actually used to have a competitive scene, and just like mister Sauwelios, I participated in it & enjoyed it while it lasted.
On June 13 2012 07:32 NukeD wrote: I played JK2 Jedi Outcast multiplayer for 10 years and I still play it today. It is imo best multiplayer game ever created skill wise, thers tons of bugs that became a skill on their own. We also have this guy ( Phanto) that was never, even once, defeated in 10 years in a sort of a duel style gametype called ff ( 1v1, full force- user invented). Hes like Flash x 100 in this game.
Anyways, Jedi Academy was a huge dissapointment for me in MP. So much skill with force powers and saber was left out, but then again, you cant really recreate the accident that was JK2 in which so many things just clicked cos of bugs.
I was not in the competetive scene at all but i playd JK2 and JKJA in multiplayer... JK2 was imho just superiour.
Main problem i had with JK2 was... On most "normal" survers damn "casuals" would run around shouting at you because you used a gun to kill them instead of just saber/force... Fuck them, fuck newbs that are also sw nerds that think they somehow are playing the game "right" when literally not using 90% of the weapons....
Haha that must have been such a long timemago because servers these days are all lightsaber only in server settings. Lightsaber is so superior to any other weapon in the game thers no reason to use them (except having fun with mines). If you used any gun and I used a lightsaber and we 1v1'd I would win 100-0 no problem ( not braggin just pointing out how bad guns are; Im not even that good at the game).
Problem is takes such a long time, 6 months or more to go from total newby to newby in this game and thats why it never caught on. And playstle which is considered the best today developed in 3 and a half years after release by this guy called Wesley, long after a lot of people dumped the game bcos it was then just random saber slashing and running around.
@Sauwelios wow! That's amazing, I had no idea there was a competitive multiplayer community around this game! I admit that a friend and I did play quite a few 1v1 battles but one of us worked out that if you jumped backwards casting drain and force lightning alternately, you just couldn't be beaten. Well, we couldn't work out a way anyway, so we stopped playing. Thanks for your awesome reply though! The battles on those videos look intense!
OMG so many memories T_T I still remember playing the shit out of the original Dark Forces (and later Jedi Knight). All of the games in this series are amazing.
I never got into the competitive scene though. I mostly played mods like Moviebattles(which is incredible imo). Other than that I just jerked around with friends in private servers. It is a perfect game for LANs as well, and I have had some great fun running around and slashing my friends in JKA.
I really want to reinstall the games and play them all through again. Too bad I don't have as much time to play games anymore Damn responsibilities.
Edit: If anyone has time during the weekend, I would love to play with some of you. I'm a total scrub at it, but whatever. ^_^
Goddamn I loooooved this game. I disagree about the shooting too. The game is based on the Q3A engine, that's why it "felt" so good. Both first person shooting and 3rd person melee was way, WAY fun. I thoroughly love it. It's not a short game either, and there's such a huge variety in missions and environments, a decent story, and the MP... ooooh the MP... I almost spent more time playing this then I did Q3.
JKA and JK2, by far the best star wars games since Rebel Alliance 2... yes I am THAT old lol. Wish they would do a new one, force unleashed was way to focused on saying "look at all the cool shit what we can do" (bad grammar on purpose lol) as opposed to actual story lines and good game play.
Oh and JKA duels...... well lets just say, fantasy fulfilled.
I've played this game for about 7 - 8 years now, I was heavily involved in the Lugormod and JA+ scene joining and being a high level member of many clans. The best game I have ever played with such a good community (best community ever).
I wish it wasn't dying and more people still played
MP was the best in JKA, SP was crap so not worth it.
On June 13 2012 08:08 MentalGNT wrote: OMG so many memories T_T I still remember playing the shit out of the original Dark Forces (and later Jedi Knight). All of the games in this series are amazing.
I never got into the competitive scene though. I mostly played mods like Moviebattles(which is incredible imo). Other than that I just jerked around with friends in private servers. It is a perfect game for LANs as well, and I have had some great fun running around and slashing my friends in JKA.
I really want to reinstall the games and play them all through again. Too bad I don't have as much time to play games anymore Damn responsibilities.
Edit: If anyone has time during the weekend, I would love to play with some of you. I'm a total scrub at it, but whatever. ^_^
Movie Battles II was amazing I played that shit for years. I really didn't like light saber combat in multiplayer and naturally I was good with firearms. MB2 was the only thing that ever offered actual starwars gunfights since 90% of the servers in JK3 were JA+ or some roleplay server where you could only use sabers.
On June 13 2012 08:07 DRTnOOber wrote: @Sauwelios wow! That's amazing, I had no idea there was a competitive multiplayer community around this game! I admit that a friend and I did play quite a few 1v1 battles but one of us worked out that if you jumped backwards casting drain and force lightning alternately, you just couldn't be beaten. Well, we couldn't work out a way anyway, so we stopped playing. Thanks for your awesome reply though! The battles on those videos look intense!
Yeah the competitive scene used to be quite vibrant, mostly centered around the ESL, but it also had a very vibrant American branch with the BWN league (not sure if that one exists anymore though, been a while). The thing is that all competitive play, with minor exceptions, was done without force settings and with only the saber enabled. The reason for this can be easily inferred from your own observations: Force is a terribly imbalanced, unrefined and quite frankly boring aspect of the game. So yeah, except for the rare full-force fun tournament on the ESL, it was quite a no-go - which is great, if you ask me, because sabering is fantastic.
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Damn responsibilities. 
