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Intro  For
someone who never figured into any movies or associated marketing scheme, Kyle
Katarn has had a pretty prolific and colorful life in the Star Wars saga. Starting
off within Star Wars: Dark Forces, this Imperial-turned-Rebel-mercenary
found himself embracing his Force-imbued heritage within Jedi Knight: Dark
Forces II, and now returns to the scene, saber in hand, within Star Wars
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (which, if you think about it, should properly
be called "Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Dark Forces III: Jedi Outcast").
Although PC owners have been able to run amok with the Force for the better part
of the year, Katarn has only recently hit the Xbox, leaving console fans to decide
for themselves whether it was worth the wait.Gameplay: 9/10 Occurring after the fall of the Empire and eight years after the events in Jedi Knight, Jedi Outcast finds that Kyle Katarn has returned to his old mercenary ways, having abandoned the Force and its all-too-attractive power in favor of his old blaster and a spot in the Moldy Crow next to his longtime partner, Jan Ors. In fact, the story opens with this very scenario as Kyle and Jan are sent by Mon Mothma to investigate an old Imperial listening station. Naturally, our heroes discover the station to be anything but empty, and a "blue milk run" rapidly escalates into something much more ominous and dangerous, leaving Kyle to stumble onto an insidious plot that threatens to restore the Empire, enslave the galaxy, and destroy all those who use the Force. Additionally, an army of Dark Jedi known as Reborn stand in your way, as new enemies and old friends - such as Lando Calrissian and Luke Skywalker -- cross your path. It's an interesting plot, to be sure, and while it's certainly better-told than the vast majority of stories seen within gaming today, it doesn't quite have that same epic feel found in the original Jedi Knight, which found our mercenary's father killed, his own Jedi heritage embraced, and a race for the ultimate source of Jedi power. Still, there's nothing too shoddy about threats of Jedi Armageddon, and it's likely to keep you interested from start to finish. Although you start out with little more than a Bryar pistol, you gradually come to get your hands on the bulk of the old Jedi Knight weaponry, such as the Imperial Blaster Rifle, the Wookie Bowcaster, the thermal detonator, and more. With the possible exception of the Bowcaster, these are all useful in their own way, each possessing their own unique and distinct feel. However, once you've progressed a third of the way through the game, you'll finally come to reclaim your Jedi past and take hold of your trusty old lightsaber. Fortunately, the wait is well worth it, as it proves to be every bit as powerful as you could hope it to be; so much so, that you'll rarely use anything else once you've got your hands on it. Veterans of the series will find that the way it's used has changed considerably since the last time they've seen it, since it now utilizes three different styles that you gradually acquire over the course of the game. There's the strong style, which is by far the slowest but the most powerful; the medium style, which is handiest for dealing with multiple Force-wielding opponents at once due to its mix of speed and strength; and the fast style, which sacrifices power for speed and thus is best used to mow down large amounts of lower-grade foes. This choice of styles makes for a nice strategic variety, though not so much as the way in which you actually control your saber: the direction in which you're traveling while you use the saber will affect what kind of move you pull off with it. For instance, swinging your lightsaber while running straight forward will have you slash downwards, whereas moving back and to the right will have you swing your weapon down and up to the left. It's a fairly involved, somewhat complex system at first; with time, it becomes downright intuitive, and introduces a whole new level of melee strategy. So glorious and well-implemented is this system that lightsaber duels actually feel like duels, rather than just a random mashing of buttons; in fact, if you're playing against an opponent who knows what he's doing, just stabbing away at the "use lightsaber" button while running around madly will find you sliced up in no time. It's easily the most entertaining weapon to be seen within a FPS, and almost instantly makes you feel like you are in fact a part of the Star Wars universe. The developers deserve a tremendous amount of credit for making this aspect come together as well as it did. Any game with "Jedi Knight" wouldn't be much of a game if it didn't allow you to mess around with the more powerful aspects of the Force, and thankfully it's something that Jedi Outcast is more than happy to let you do. There are a broad range of powers that you'll eventually get to choose from: they range from the self-explanatory Force Heal, to Force Jump which enables you to pull off superhuman leaps and even wall-running and double-jumping in later levels, to Lightsaber Defense that allows you to deflect shots, and a great number of abilities in between. There's Force Push, which is great for shoving people off catwalks and into crevices, and Force Pull, which can rapidly disarm multiple enemies; these are the two most often-used powers in your repertoire, as these are the best crowd-control skills you have at your disposal. This isn't to say that there aren't any "fun" powers; you've got Force Lightning, which lets you do your best Emperor Palpatine impression; Force Grip, which you can use to choke the life out of your foes before slamming them against the walls and chucking them into a ravine; and Force Speed, which slows the world down in a Max Payne-ish kind of way, enabling you to hack away at your now-sluggish enemies. Although all of your Force abilities start out weak and relatively low-key, they gradually develop into tremendously powerful talents, which does a great job of slowly easing you into your role as a Jedi. In all, the Force powers are nicely varied and assure you that, as things go along, you'll feel like a full-fledged Jedi. However, unlike the original Jedi Knight, you're not able to pick and choose your force abilities as you go along; instead, you're specifically given set abilities at the beginning of certain levels. This is a bit distracting at first, though it makes sense: after all, you are slowly regaining your former talents, and apart from the pacing issues mentioned above, it's also really important to note that this system of gradually getting ahold of your Force powers figures heavily into the game's many puzzles. That's right, Jedi Outcast is more than just a Force-using, lightsaber-swinging run-'n'-gun, although at times you'll wish it weren't. This isn't to say that the puzzles are particularly bad, because they're not. Actually, a number of them are nicely designed and come off well, even if the bulk of them do boil down to "find the key" and attempting to figure your way through the game's enormous, maze-like levels. It's fun at first to explore the towering catwalks of Nar Shadaa and the confines of Cloud City; however, when you've been combing the level for what feels like ages in the search of a way forward when all you had to do was leap onto a nearly invisible ledge on the far corner of the map, you'll start to curse this "loose" type of puzzle feel. Nevertheless, with a little bit of observation and a fair bit of patience, most players will be able to pound their way through. If
you find yourself tiring of the single-player aspect, you can always leap into
Jedi Outcast's multiplayer mode, which is quite impressively realized.
In the way of available modes, you can choose from Free-For-All; Holocron Free-For-All,
where Force powers are collected in the form of Holocron cubes within the map;
Jedi Master, where whoever grabs hold of the map's only lightsaber will earn maximum
skill in all Force powers; Duel, where two players duke it out by themselves,
and the winner continuing on to future duels until they are defeated; Team Free-For-All;
and the self-explanatory Capture the Flag. A broad range of options can be set
for each session, which include time limits, kill limits, friendly fire, as well
as the chance to set a match as lightsabers-only, weapons-only, or to have the
Force disabled. If the Force is active, however, you can choose to distribute
points to your character as you see fit, though the amount of points available
depend on the "Force Level" you've established; this is a great system
that really helps to boost replay value, and encourages a tremendous amount of
strategy even within the multiplayer mode. If that's not enough, there are even
additional Force powers that only available in the realm of multiplayer. There's
no question that Jedi Outcast seems perfectly suited to multiplay, which
makes it all the more mysterious as to why it's not Xbox Live-capable.
Whatever the reason, you're stuck playing with your friends at home, although
you can also add more than a dozen bots if you want to enjoy the frenzied action
on your own. The hitch here is that, initially, only a handful of lesser-skilled
bots are available to you; in order to access the talented and therefore more
challenging opponents, you have to progress through the game, thus unlocking more
multiplayer maps and more upper-level bots. Along with the moderately interesting
"Character Viewer", this is what Vicarious Visions offer up as unlockable
content, though it seems a bit strange when you consider that all of this is available
to PC players right off the bat. Still, having to play through the single-player
game is hardly a death sentence, and it's likely something you'll be doing many
times over anyway, as Jedi Outcast is indeed a masterpiece of Star Wars
gaming. Graphics: 9/10 Sound:
9.5/10 Control: 7/10
Overall:
9/10 [ top ] | |||
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