Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
With Jedi Academy, it’s clear that Raven Software took this oft-heard complaint to heart. From the game’s opening scene to its frenetic climax, you are immediately embroiled in more lightsaber dueling combat than you would have thought possible.
The story is set 14 years after A New Hope. You are a young Padawan (Jedi Knight wannabe) selected to learn how to harness the powers of the Force from none other than The Man himself, Luke Skywalker. You get to select the look of not only your character, but also his (or her) lightsaber — and, as the game progresses, you’ll eventually gain access to dual-saber and double-bladed–saber fighting styles. Once this outfitting is complete, you’re off to the Jedi Academy to meet Master Skywalker.
Just before you arrive at the Academy, things go haywire, and you’re confronted with an attack by a mysterious cult trying to harness the dark side of the Force. At the Academy, you’re paired up with none other than Jedi Master Kyle Katarn for instruction in the ways of the Force, with Luke chiming in on occasion as well.
However, very little of the game actually focuses on the Academy, and your Force instruction is limited to one very basic tutorial early on. Instead, your job is to help Luke investigate the intent of this evil cult of Dark Jedi, and you “learn” along the way.
While this in-game training certainly gets the action moving in a hurry, more of the actual Force-progression elements of the game should have been set in the Academy. For instance, it would have been awesome to learn new saber moves or acrobatics by dueling with Kyle or even Luke at the Academy, rather than just being given access to all the combat moves from the get-go (a number of different attacks are accomplished via specific key combinations, à la classic arcade fighting games). And Academy exercises could have been used to beef up your individual Force powers, whereas instead you simply select where you want to apply your earned Force points among all the available dark and light Force powers (with a core group being reserved for automatic upgrades when you hit certain milestones in the game).
In all, you get 16 classic Force powers —Push, Pull, Heal, Jump, Absorb, Speed, Protection, Drain, Lightning, Rage, Mind Trick, and more — and they’re great fun to wield, particularly late in the game when you’re a full-fledged Jedi Knight.
Jedi Academy introduces a less-linear approach to level progression than in JK II. You are presented sets of five missions at a time (20-plus missions in all), but you can choose the order in which you tackle each mission in a set, with the last mission always being optional. Unfortunately, the order really makes little difference in the difficulty of completing each set, and on one occasion led to a bug I couldn’t get past until I replayed a given mission in a different sequence.
Also, while at times you may be fighting alongside your fellow classmates, you never get to know who any of them are — except for one, who’s central to the story. Thus, you don’t care when they get killed — or when, should you choose the path of the dark side, you may have to kill them yourself. Indeed, the game as a whole suffers from a lack of character/personality: too many of your opponents are nameless, faceless enemies.
The best part of Episode I — yes, it had some good parts — was the whole “Check out this Darth Maul!” aspect, and each time he was introduced viewers felt a heightened sense of drama. Jedi Academy would have greatly benefited from this sort of approach, rather than just tossing dozens of generic cultists and Dark Jedi at you.
After your pivotal choice whether to follow the light or dark side of the Force, you’ll be tracked toward one of two endings. However, rather than the choice being the result of which Force powers you’ve decided to focus on using, this selection is based entirely on a single action — one whose importance is clearly presented — late in the game. More of a gradual progression to this epic decision point would have helped, because if you pick the dark side the transformation that overtakes your character is extreme and instant.
The Raven crew has beefed up the Quake III: Arena engine quite a bit for Jedi Academy, adding a new “rag doll” skeletal animation system, a new terrain system, and the ability to pilot “ride-able” vehicles such as speeder bikes. And while enemies are prone to killing themselves on occasion, and a few scripted sequences are beset with pathfinding problems, the AI is generally improved from JK II as well.
Mastering the array of ballet-inspired acrobatic moves helps you greatly in multiplay, where individual saber skills make a big impact. In addition to all the classic multiplayer modes, Jedi Academy offers new Siege and Power Duel options. In the former, attackers must accomplish a series of objectives within a given time limit, and in the latter two weaker opponents must team up to take on a single, more powerful adversary, which is quite fun.
The new modes top off what is already an extremely solid menu of multiplayer options. Academy is the rare recent action game with an engaging single-player campaign and a deep multiplayer dimension, which definitely ups its replayability factor.
All things considered, Raven deserves major kudos for delivering an extremely compelling experience. Jedi Academy immerses you in the Star Wars universe, a feat bolstered by countless little touches and homages to the films — not to mention a few brushes with some popular characters we’ll not reveal here. The use of the classic Star Wars sound effects (and particularly music) is simply brilliant. And many of the levels feature some truly awe-inspiring designs that cater to delivering sweat-inducing, life-or-death duels on dramatic precipices.
Indeed, you’ll find more than a few memorable moments. I just wish more of them involved memorable foes.