Still doesn't have the same glory as the Dark Forces series.
Gameplay/Story: the series takes place after Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, and marks the first game in the series where you do not play as Kyle Katarn. You play as a young student named Jaden who is being brought to the Jedi Acadamy to learn to be a Jedi. After a slight mishap on the way, he arrives at the Acadamy to be trained under none other than Kyle himself. The single-player game is all about Jaden learning about the Force and exactly what it means to be a Jedi. As with most current Star Wars games, you will get to choose to be Dark Side or Light Side. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but the decision will be a hard one to make.
The Jedi Knight games have the best lightsaber combat of any Star Wars game, by far. This is because it is actually realistic. If you get hit by the lightsaber, you will die. This goes for you and "most" enemies. This makes the battles a lot more exciting. You won't just be chopping up random guys forever (though you will still be able to chop down stormtroopers). Once the Sith start coming, you will have to play seriously or you won't survive the battle. Of course, you can still choose to play with the guns but it will be hard since the enemy sith are able to deflect mostly every shot you shoot at them. This game is also much more biased towards saber fighting since you start with the saber unlike in the past where you have to earn it about halfway through the game.
The force powers have also been upgraded since the past, but mostly just in the powers you can choose from. There are 4 passive powers and these are attack, defense, saber throw, and jump. Also 4 core powers. These 8 powers are neutral and will upgrade as you progress through the game. There are also 4 light side powers and 4 dark side powers. You get to choose which of these are upgraded and at what pace. How this works, is every time you start an optional mission (there are 3 sets of 5 optional missions. You must complete 4 to move on with the story) you will get one point to put into one power. There are 3 levels of each power too so you won't be able to max out them all. The problem with force powers isn't in the customization, it lies in actually using them in gameplay. To switch powers you must use the D-pad to sort through your powers and select the one you want, then you must click the left joystick to use it. This can be kind of slow and is a problem in a heated battle. If they had added a hot button system, it would have helped the game tremendously.
Finally, the multiplayer is much like the single player battles. You will die in one good hit from a saber and guns can be used but aren't recommended. This makes multiplayer battles very exciting and takes a lot of skill. You can add bots if you don't have any real people to play against and the bots actually are pretty good at the higher difficulty settings. The modes are the basic deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag kind of thing. The multiplayer, overall, is great and will entertain you for a long time.
The only real unfortunate part of the game, is in the background coding. The game is very glitchy and, while most of the time won't effect you too much, can be very frustrating. For example, there is one level where you must fight on a speeder bike. The bike will often become stuck and/or will strafe to the left and right at random times. This can be very frustrating when you are trying to fight off hordes of other speeders in a narrow course. Among the littler things, the physics system is very poorly done. An example of this is that if you shoot an enemie from a balcony up above you, they will sometimes come flying towards you when they should be going backwards. It's small and doesn't affect gameplay very much but small things like that detract from the realism of the game.
Graphics: The graphics are okay but not great. the backgrounds are very different for each planet but on each individual planet, its all mostly the same thing. If you look closely on the space ship stuff, all the buttons and wiring is repeated throughout most of the map.
Sounds: The sounds are quite nice actually. The guns sound very authentic and of course, the lightsaber sound is really cool. Also, the addition of full voice overs is exciting and the voiceovers, while not incredible, aren't bad and you will be able to look past any faults once you get into the game.
Value: The single player isn't very long but it is fun. There is slight replay value if you want to go through the game with the opposite allegience (light or dark) however, this only effects the ending and doesn't change missions at all so it most likely won't be worth it to you. The multiplayer is very good and is Xbox Live enabled so you can play online with people. However if you don't have Xbox Live, you will probably be shelving this when your finished.
Overall, it's not quite as exciting or difficult as the other Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games but it still is a great game in it's own right and, if you have Live or a bunch of gamer friends, this won't be getting old for a while.