User Rating: 5.5 | Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy PC
Don't play this game if you are expecting a faithful representation of Star Wars Universe, here's a brief rundown on why. 1/ Opening text-crawl mentions that your character has a lightsaber without any formal jedi training. In hindsight that is the first warning sign that this game takes liberty with the Star Wars license. 2/ One of the very first things you must do in the game is to chop down a tree with your lightsaber in one slash. This kind of stretches your belief, but if Obi-Wan can slice through bone in a flash then maybe, maybe lightsabers can sever thick tree trunks in an instant. 3/ Your character can throw the lightsaber like a boomerang before being trained in the use of the force. This is probably a fault of the game engine rather than a gameplay fault, but is a bit annoying. 4/ You come across a clearing with two stormtroopers. Remember this is a planet that houses the Jedi Academy so there is no way stormtroopers could have got there without Luke Skywalker knowing it. If that is not bad enough as soon as they see you they start firing at you - now I dont recall in any of the movies where the Stormtroopers started shooting people for no reason. Maybe that is the policy of the Remnant (aka Empire) in the post-palpatine days, to shoot first and ask questions later. If so it wasnt exactly explained. 5/ Kyle Katarn tells you that both the light and dark sides are open to you, but neither is actually evil or bad. What determines that is how you use them. If it wasn't already obvious that this was not going to be a faithful representation of Star Wars, then it certainly is now with that statement. Stunningly after you complete the training course he tells you to never lose control of your anger (because this will lead to the darkside), yet he has already said you are free to choose darkside powers. This is a MAJOR contradiction and god only knows how that slip through, and it gives the impression that these early missions were given a rushed through plot. 6/Upon starting any mission you are FORCED to choose two handheld weapons and either a Thermal Detonator, Mine or Explosive charge. Two words, JEDI and LIGHTSABER? It's kind of stupid to have to take handheld weapons when the movies pretty much show that Jedi dont use them! Basically if you want the faithful experience of what becoming a Jedi is like then the only choice is the original game Jedi Knight:Dark Forces II. On the other hand these new games are reasonably good looking without being stunning. Sound is great, and they cant go wrong with the music (unless they had chosen to do a rock version of Imperial March like was done in Force Commander, or a techno version of the Star Wars Theme as was done in the Star Wars mod for Battlefield 1942). Let's be realistic though, your only buying this to wield two lightsabers at once or a double-bladed saber, right? The big letdown is that you are forced to use a single lightsaber at the start of the game which is extremely frustrating because one of the big draws of this game is being able to play a brand new character and decide on his/her looks and saber style! I don't think that it's possible to top Dark Forces II given that the two sequels have failed to do so. There are some cool bits in this game though, like being able to use double-bladed sabers and two sabers at once(eventually), being able to select the order in which you do missions and being able to slaughter several sand-people(which is great considering that in Attack of the Clones that scene was missing/cut). 
