Rating: 
Summary: r_dynamicglow 0
Review: I have to say straight off I have only played the demo, but I thought this might help those with framerate issues.If you open a console (Shift-tilde) and type: r_dynamicglow 0 It turns off an extra 'halo' effect around sabers, lava, &c. It does _not_ turn off dynamic lighting. Your framerates will probably double or triple. On my computer with it on at 1600x1200, I can get around 17-25fps, with it off, around 55-75fps or higher. That said, I left it on and play at lower resolution, but I have to admit its effects are very subtle compared to the framerate hit. Try toggling it (r_dynamicglow 0 for off and r_dynamicglow 1 for on) with your saber(s) out and decide if it is worth it for you.
Rating: 
Summary: JK2JO
Review: This game is okay. There are some cool things and some things that suck. The story is that you're a new republic mercenary and you and your girlfriend are going to investigate this imperial outpost that appears to be abandoned. From here the plot develops. Now, down to the game. Pros OK Graphics
Some hilarious physics (you can open some airlocks and set 20 stormtroopers flying out into space hehehehe)
Cool force powers
A nice amount of weapons
Cool multiplayer mode with tons of maps and bots
Nice cutscenes
Stormtroopers and officers talk casually about really funny things
Low system requirements
Medium size levels (plenty of them too, there are 25 in all) Cons The shadows are crappy
Some really confusing puzzles
Unrealistic payload
Useless texturing
You are way to strong
First level is hard even on easy mode
When you have 17 players playing on multiplayer it can get pretty jerky
Many missions where you have keep other goodguys alive (AARGH!)
Mushy scenes with your girlfriend Verdict All in all this is a pretty good game. The levels are fun and big. The enemies are plenty (the more the merrier). LucasArts could have down a better job with the graphics and the puzzles are to hard the first time. However, multiplayer is a hugely reedeeming quality. Also, here at amazon, the price is great. You are getting a lot of bang for your buck.
Rating: 
Summary: mistake corrected
Review: This started out a game with no real action. sure, bang bang, punch, bang. it bgins an uphill journey, which makes it impossible to find all of the secret areas. i wish, one of these days, Lucasarts would make a game that actually has the character start out with a lightsaber, but noooooooooo, you have to work for it. the aspect of the game in the sense that you finally get to choose whether you actually are a light or dark jedi is fun. you got to hand it to the weapons, though. a tip to readers, the 13th level may seem unbeatable, but when you get into the colloseum-like area, DO NOT FIGHT, by any means, because thay just come back. instead, jump on the boxes, then onto the ledge where there is one troop. kill him, pull the lever that opens the door and RUN into it. kil hte couple of troops inside then close the door and hop on the elavator for the ride of your life, or death. In the last level, against Jerec, do not let him into the tube that goes up!!!!! he automaticly heals when he reaches the top. I found it useful to block the entrance with my body. Pros:
FINALLY, A LIGHTSABER!!!!
weapons reallistic
voice and cutscenes are awesome. Cons:
graphics are not as hot as they should be
blaster are weak
rifles are too strong. in conclusion, this game has its ups and downs, which is a good thing for hard-core starwars fans. for starwars and rpg fans: get
for shoot em' up gamers: be careful
for gamers who like to sneak, as in splinter cell: stay away at all costs!
Rating: 
Summary: DONT BY THIS GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: BY STAR WARS THE KNITES OF THE OLD REPUBLIC ITS MUCH BETTER
Rating:
Summary: Pleasing. And strangely lacking.
Review: At first , i am dumbfounded by the lack of proper collision handling with the graphics engine. There are literally times when i am standing on nothing, but do not fall. Or, i am standing in front of someone and my saber is going through him, causing a trail of smoke and a slicing sound, but that person is not being affected by it. Also, in the training levels, you will even notice that the storm-troopers are not standing directly on the ground. Somehow they are standing 1/4 of an inch above the soil. I began to worry during the training levels. Then there was the blah textures as well. I was flat out scared that they were dumping a mediocre follow-up on a bunch of unsuspecting gamers. Then, like magic, the game actaully started. I went through the horrible training levels, and into a very well crafted game. I am not sure why they allowed such mediocrity in the training levels. But, the game itself is sweet. A meaty design, with lots of options on creating your own personal identity as the character. Bringing back our old favorites from jedi knight 2 and adding a great lineup of new/classic players. My favorite, chewbacca. It's nice to be reminded of the 'whole' star wars universe, instead of just the Luke Skywalker character. You should be pleasantly surprised overall that this game is immersive and challenging. If only the textures were as advanced as they should be, this would be a 5 star. In any case, this took an hour to grow on me. Now, i think i'm in love. VIVA STAR WARS!
Rating:
Summary: Pretty cool
Review: It's a great game and all. You can also play the bonus games when you beat the missions. The problom is certain levels are realy hard to beat so after that there's nothing really to do. I mean you could still try and beat the game except those particular levels take miracles to pass. It is a very cool role playing game for several reasons. It has good graphics and a wide variety of enemies and weapons. On one of the last levels you even command a walker and kick some stormtrooper ... ! It's a hard call on buying it. If you buy it, oh sure you may enjoy it for weeks or even months. But once you get stuck and get bored with the bonus stuff (which you may not get bored with)that's like fifty bucks down the drain. Or you might get the game down early or you just played the other games and get past the tough levals. It totally depends on your skills as a gamer and whether or not you will get bored with it. It's your decision. My advice is be wise in your purchase and be absolutely sure you want it. P.S. if you become a crazed fan of this game for some far off reason look for the two other Star Wars games.
Rating:
Summary: not to be confused with a game with good graphics
Review: This game is great. I will start out with that. However, notice that this is the FIRST Jedi Knight game. It is the SECOND 'Dark Forces' game. The first of which was a Doom engine like Hexen. Its graphics engine is Doom2 era and grainy as hell. I believe it has support for 1 video accelerator though I am not sure. The other pitfall of playing a classic like this is that you can not use the mouse to aim. The mouse movements are limited to left and right, still have to use keyboard for aiming. If you are okay with that then have at it. I know I have reloaded this game on my spanking system just so replay it....twice. The gameplay was great, the story was great, overall a good packe. I believe it won at leat one Game of the Year accolade when it was out.
Rating:
Summary: Play it for the speeder mission...
Review: This latest Jedi offering has more good points than bad: The Good:
- The ability to customize your character.
- More Force power options.
- More light saber moves/styles.
- Double-Bladed light saber or double-single sabre option.
- *Mission where you get to ride and fight in a speeder, kind of like a futuristic demolition derby, great fun!
- Riding Tauntauns.
- Very few stupid puzzles.
- Tons of light saber fighting opportunites!
- Raven Software (Soldier of Fortune 1 and 2) co-built the game.
- Force Grip power more fun than ever! (Build up your Grip power then use it to grab stormtroopers and drop them from cliffs, use them as shields, etc..) The bad:
- A few boring, stupid missions, like picking up ship parts in the desert.
- Force Sense power = only good for stupid puzzle-centric missions. This game is worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Basically a commercial Outcast mod released standalone
Review: "Jedi Academy" is the latest in a long-line of Star Wars shooter games that began with "Dark Forces" (1994) and followed the adventures of Kyle Katarn, former imperial commando, free-booting mercenary and now Master Jedi Knight. As with last year's entry - "Outcast", "Academy" has you fighting various enemies across the Star Wars universe as rendered by the QuakeIII engine. Rather than play Kyle, you lead the fight as one of his assistants - an acolyte jedi (who ya' callin' Padawan!?). Looking and sounding little different than Outcast, Academy does allow you some flexibility. You can alter the appearance of your race, gender, skin color, dress and (because this was beginning to sound like some Supreme Court case) your lightsaber. Choose the color and style of your saber - single or double sabers, or the double-bladed single saber made famous by Darth Maul in "Episode 1". The problem? While it's always fun to play "Star Wars", I spent much of my time just reminding myself that this was supposed to be a sequel to Outcast, with all the improvements that sequels should be expected to have. Using the same graphics engine as Outcast means that the game overall looks the same, while gameplay is otherwise little changed. Being able to customize your appearance is nifty, but it doesn't really add to the game - you're just a generic character in a generic Star Wars story (young and untrained Jedi students against former imperial forces and darker jedis who try and kill you with their fast moves and taunts). Anyway, players have been able to "mod" their appearance since the days of "Dark Forces", so even that feature isn't so new (I played that game as Boba Fett). Though a technological leap over the first "Jedi Knight" game of 1997, neither "Academy" nor "Outcast" match it in making you feel like you're inside a Star Wars movie. The levels (or maps) are compelling, but they always feel like maps - they don't connect in a way that suggests a single story the way the older game did (LA followed the older game's example when releasing "Mysteries of the Sith", a companion disk relying on a tweaked version of the engine used on "Jedi Knight"; though MotS looked shoddy, and its story was actually several loosely linked stories, the individual stories themselves never relied as heavily on cut-scenes to drive the game as Outcast or Academy did). Even forgetting about narrative, Academy is still less of a leap in technology over "Jedi Knight" than that game was over "Dark Forces". I'm not sure why it was even released at all (the only real effect is that the on-line communities that craft mods for Star Wars games have stopped working on Outcast mods, and have begun turning to Academy exclusively). Being little advanced over Outcast, the same system specs should apply. I played this on my P4-2ghz, GeForce3, WinXP system (remember when that sounded like more horsepower than you'd ever need?) and had no problems. Remember to check LA's website to make sure your graphics card is on the approved list. In short, if you missed on Outcast, get Academy. If you got Outcast, Academy is still a worthy game, but not one that will rock your universe.
Rating:
Summary: Not much is different from Outcast
Review: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was my second foray into the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight line of games. Since I really enjoyed Outcast and the demo for Jedi Academy, I decided to plunk down some money and buy Jedi Academy. I am not sure this was a good decision on my part. I am now going to go over what I see as the good and the bad parts of the SINGLE PLAYER part of Jedi Academy. First off, the good:
Since Jedi Academy (hereafter JA) does not revolve around Kyle Katarn, the player is given a new character that can be somewhat customised. Species, gender, clothing, and their lightsabre hilt and color are all modifiable. The addition of dual lightsabres and double bladed lightsabres (ala the end of Episode II and Darth Maul respectively) available to your character and the enemy is also a nice touch. Several times in the game I got into a particularly intense and enjoyable lightsabre fights that helped to draw me into the game, and I found that lightsabre fights seemed to be more fun than they were in Outcast, especially when I ended up fighting two or three enemy Dark Jedi, lightning bolts and force push being used in abundance. JA allows you to customise your force power progression by awarding you force points to go towards your secondary force powers (Force Heal, Lightning, Grip, Absorb, Rage, ect). Each time you complete a mission, you get a force point that you can spend towards whichever secondary force power of your choice, a nice touch since it lets you concentrate on developing the force powers you care most about. The Bad:
My major gripe about this game has to do with the basic storyline. I am not really concerned with whether or not they kept consistant with the Star Wars movies/universe, but I DO want to have a storyline that makes me interested in the character and the conflict that character finds him/herself in. Jedi Academy did not produce that for me. The game never really got me interested in my character. Your character is never given a history, and I found the character development practically non-existant. Maybe I am expecting too much, but I thought they did a fairly good job in Outcast, so I was hoping for more than I got. The missions in JA were also a dissapointment. The game starts out with two short missions that seem designed to get you used to the game and to introduce the main characters more than anything. The real missions that follow are broken up into two categories: what I call "side missions," and the storyline missions. You are given five "side missioins" to choose from, and once you have successfully completed four, you can choose to go to the first storyline mission. This mission design is repeated several times for a total of roughly 15 side missions and 3 or 4 storyline missions. My problem with this setup is that some of the side missioins felt as if they were designed for another game. That is not to say that they weren't fun, only that I had no real sense of why I was going off to complete a mission that had no real impact on the game as a whole. They felt more like filler to me than well designed and implimented missions. Why do I need to run into a bunch of "Tremors" rip-offs on a desert planet in order to advance the storyline? The character voices in the game left something to be desired. There is only one male and one female voice actor for the main character, and neither one of them really seemed to fit the alien species I could have chosen for my main character. The force powers themselves came as something of a disapointment to me as well. Being able to force heal while fighting, or to use grip on an enemy dark jedi and fling them over the ledge of a cliff seemed a little anti-climactic to me. Most of my battles saw me fighting a couple of dark jedi, taking some hits, defeating them, force healing, and then repeating these steps once I ran into the next one. In this way the game became very repetative. It seemed to deginerate into constant lightsabre battles without much rhyme or reason. I would have liked to have seen a better developed AI that reacted more true to life than as scripted as the game felt. At one point in my game I ran into three dark jedi whom I seperated by shooting at one of them (thereby activating that dark jedi) and then defeated him while the other two dark jedi just sat there, even though they were in visiual range of my fight with their AI friend. My conclusion is that the single player version is a good buy for those of you who have to have all things Star Wars or those of you who love almost constant lightsabre fights and not a whole lot else. I personally think Jedi Academy is only better than Outcast in the area of lightsabre fights, and I think the story and missions are actually worse than they were in Outcast.
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