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Star Wars: Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2 with Mysteries of the Sith

Star Wars: Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2 with Mysteries of the Sith

List Price: $19.99
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good, typical "Star Wars"
Review: I've never been a big fan of the 3D shooter genre. So many of them boil down to nothing more than a quick reflexes, and practically none of them have any sense of coherent plot. Jedi Knight, however, remains among one of my favorite games. It is, in essence, the next evolutionary step of games like "Doom" or, of course, "Dark Forces." But its real strength lies in its ability to keep a strong sense of plot and location, and to balance its action with puzzle elements that never seem gratuitous.

The plot is not particularly original, but it's functional. Seven dark Jedi are seeking the sacred "Valley Of The Jedi" (a Jedi burial ground with infinite power.) It's your job, as Kyle Katarn, to stop them. In a sense, the plot is a mix of "Star Wars" with a trace of "Indiana Jones." A side plot involves the fact that Kyle's father was murdered by the dark Jedi, and so the quest becomes more personal.

The story unfolds through a series of cutscenes after each level, with actors filmed against computer-generated backdrops. At times the performances and dialogue will make you cringe, but then so will much of the dialogue in the actual movies. The computer-generated scenery, however, is quite impressive throughout.

Gameplay is like most other 3D shooters. You run about a 3D world shooting almost anything that moves before it can shoot you. If you're hoping to become a "good" Jedi, however, you'll want to avoid shooting civilians. The pace in "Jedi Knight" never gets as frantic as it does in games such as "Quake." You'll rarely face large hordes of enemies in a single room. Mostly, you'll be picking off stormtroopers from a hiding spot, or stumbling into a security room and being faced with two or three imperial officers. A couple well aimed shots will take them out easily. Nevertheless, there's a good arsenal of weapons available to you to keep things interesting.

Eventually, you'll confront each of the seven Jedi in a light saber battle. The duels, unfortunately, are one of the more irritating points of the game, and are often won through rapid sword swinging, rather than through any sense of strategy. Fortunately, you can view the battles in a third person perspective, which at least helps you get a better sense of your proximity to the enemy.

The third person view is also useful for some of the platform jumping sequences. In typical Star Wars fashion, each location is infested with bottomless pits for the unwary.

Despite the annoying sword fights, Jedi Knight is the most immersive Star Wars game I've played, and truly gives you a sense of playing a movie-- something many games aspire to do, but rarely succeed in doing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Older Game, but Not to be Missed
Review: If you can't wait until the release of LucasArts' Jedi Knight-style "Obi-Wan" game, this is a great temporary fix. Jedi Knight is consistently in the top ten most popular games at Microsoft's Gaming Zone, and the online JK community is huge; there are literally dozens of web sites that add new depth to this near-ancient (in gaming years) 1997 masterpiece. The graphics are dated from current standards, and the live-action cut scenes seem cheesy now, but budget-conscious fans of deathmatch and capture the flag styles might enjoy the Star Wars twist as much as the low price. The included Mysteries of the Sith companion levels feature my favorite, "Kill the Fool with The Ysalamiri," something like a Star Wars version of "keep away." If you're not into Internet gaming, however, you'll be happy to know that Jedi Knight features complex levels, hidden objects, and strange guest appearances (Max from "Sam and Max Hit the Road" is tucked away in one level). Overall, Jedi Knight is a great action-based online game that is just as satisfying when playing...er...Solo. (And, with respect to another reviewer here, you can play against Darth Vader or even play as him: he's one of the character selections available in the multiplayer mode. If you and a friend want to stage the Skywalker-Vader saber duel in Cloud City, complete with machinery to throw around, you can do it).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Older Game, but Not to be Missed
Review: If you can't wait until the release of LucasArts' Jedi Knight-style "Obi-Wan" game, this is a great temporary fix. Jedi Knight is consistently in the top ten most popular games at Microsoft's Gaming Zone, and the online JK community is huge; there are literally dozens of web sites that add new depth to this near-ancient (in gaming years) 1997 masterpiece. The graphics are dated from current standards, and the live-action cut scenes seem cheesy now, but budget-conscious fans of deathmatch and capture the flag styles might enjoy the Star Wars twist as much as the low price. The included Mysteries of the Sith companion levels feature my favorite, "Kill the Fool with The Ysalamiri," something like a Star Wars version of "keep away." If you're not into Internet gaming, however, you'll be happy to know that Jedi Knight features complex levels, hidden objects, and strange guest appearances (Max from "Sam and Max Hit the Road" is tucked away in one level). Overall, Jedi Knight is a great action-based online game that is just as satisfying when playing...er...Solo. (And, with respect to another reviewer here, you can play against Darth Vader or even play as him: he's one of the character selections available in the multiplayer mode. If you and a friend want to stage the Skywalker-Vader saber duel in Cloud City, complete with machinery to throw around, you can do it).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jade
Review: In "Mysteries of the Syth", you meet a new character named Mara Jade, Kyle Katarns Apprentice in training. What seperates this game from the others, in skill, is the awesome long-distance sniper scope attatched to your quick fire storm pistol. This game is bundled with the well-worth-it game Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. With both of these games, your mind will be buzzing for a while. To give an example: One night I played one level until I fell asleap. I just couldn't figure one part out...I fell asleap and dreamed how to beat it. I woke up, and promptly conquered the level. That says two things. Its addictive. And it keeps you awake at night, depending on if you like leaving games in mid-level. Just funning, come on yall. Get it, thats all I'm saying.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Dark Side of the Schwartz
Review: Jedi Knight (JK), a first-person shooter game set in the Star Wars universe, is the sequel to Dark Forces - but that doesn't begin to describe its sophisticated gameplay engine or narrative. To begin with, JK brings back Kyle katarn, the hero of Dark Forces. Being a sequel, playing JK is a lot like going to see a Star Wars seuqel that's just opened, and the experience is a mix of the old (familiar charachters, situaitons and John Williams' score) and the new. Because the game-engine of JK is much more sophisticated than that of Dark Forces, the experience of something new is much more palpable than that of seeing a new movie (barring some hyper jump in special FX technology).

In JK, ex-Imperial Scout, Rebel spy and mercenary Kyle Katarn has gone on personal leave, meaning he's gone to hunt down the man who killed (ofcourse) his father. Unfortuntely, the culprit is Jerec, the leader of a band of evil dark Jedi who, to stay in charachter, cruise through the stars in a monster ship larger than some moons, and possess numerous mystical powers. Jerec killed the elder Katarn to extract the location of the fabled "Valley of the Jedi", the battleground containing the force energies of countless fallen Jedi. What begins as a mission of vengeance becomes a race to reach the valley before Jerec. Along the way, Kyle learns the ways of the Jedi, which means that slowly amasses the powers of super-speed, high jumps, to see through walls and make guns fly out of people's hands.

JK has a tighter narrative than Dark Forces - the older game merely sending the player to numerous planets in an effort to learn the secret behind a new Imperial weapon. JK is much more linear, and the different levels join together to form a single cogent story-line. Many of the levels seem like homages to other movies: in one level, Kyle must escape an imperial sckyscraper starting from the roof and proceeding down (faster than you can say "Yipeekyaayy") by way of elevator shafts and ventilation ducts; the tower itself is built on top of a ruined desert town reminescent of pre-WWII Cairo (big desert warriors w/big swords and no guns, not included though); to reach the Valley of the jedi, you pass through another ancient stone temple (another Raiders gibe); and so on.

Technologically, the game is light years from Dark Forces - with more fully realized objects, distances and special FX. Head and body movements, which seemed annoyingly artificial in Dark Forces, are much more natural here. (People who got carsick playing Dark Forces will find definate improvement here.) Just as in DF, though, JK allows the use of add-on levels which can be downloaded from numerous sites on the web (not all levels are star wars related - fans of Starship Troopers take heart!!). This edition of JK includes the once separate campaign disk "Mysteries of the Sith" (MotS) which has better graphics and more aggressively intelligent enemies (while stormtroopers who lose their guns in JK run around like beheaded chickens, their counterparts in MotS are willing to go mano-a-mano).

I originally ran this game on a P-166MMX with 16mb of RAM and found graphics and sound excellent. While a better machine would run newer games like "Half-Life", Jedi Knight has enough to keep my mind off obsolescence for a long time. Set to John Williams' score and relying on the proper sound effects, it's as immersive an experience as a Star Wars junkie can get on anything less than a Pentium II.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A couple of years old, but still fantastic to play!
Review: Jedi Knight is a first person shooter game, like Doom, or Quake, but with a Star Wars twist. To me the familiar Star Wars aliens and even the new ones make this game a true joy to play. Jedi Knight easily has one of the best game soundtracks ever with the booming symphony sounds in the backgroud. The graphics and gameplay are also a sight to be seen. A truely fantastic game, anyone who enjoys first person shooters should try this one out.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Superb
Review: Jedi Knight is my favorite shooter. Although its 3D engine lacks certain features, the single player gameplay is lightyears ahead of games like Quake 2. The atmosphere is very good, feeling like you're truly in the Star Wars universe. Also there is a good sense of scale; you can run around under AT-AT walkers and get vertigo from the huge distances in the levels, something I never felt in Quake engine games. I was often reminded of scenes like Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back, and some scenes surpassed the movies (playing this game was a lot more fun than "Episode 1" anyway). The level design is amazing, with many puzzles that require you to think, and inventive situations like a crashing starship and a ship refuelling station.

This game set a benchmark for FPS games that has not been surpassed in my opinion, except by Half-life in some respects.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: multiplayer = the best
Review: Just played Mysteries of the Sith after 3 years of buying it, and even with very dated graphics (5 year old now ??) its one of the best single player games ever, and multiplayer in Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith is imo better than in games like UT/UT2003 or Quake 3, for 2 reasons:

1. speed of characters (especially with force speed always on) is much MUCH faster than in UT/UT2003/Quake 3, which makes it quite difficult to play (control of movement and crosshair) and makes for very fast-paced fights

2. weapons are good (except for bowcaster and starting laser pistol) + it has GOOD melee weapon (light saber) but it also has force powers in addition which add whole another level to the game (and for example you can use force pull to get powerups from enemies etc)

Jedi Outcast could be the best but it lacks the speed of original Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Make sure you get the real MotS
Review: Make sure that you get the real Mysteries of the Sith, and not the demo CD - also known as the 'special limited edition.'

Aside from that Jedi Knight is awesome game. Even though it's graphics engine is poor even for its release time, the storyline and gameplay more than make up for it. And if you're into game editing, this game is very editable...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Add Spice to your boring computer !
Review: My computer started collecting dust until I saw a video game ad in a magizine . So I went out and bought it. My best choice ever ! There is only one set-back , you don't get to fight Darth Vader (Like on the Box) . When I got home and started playing it. I digged into the box and found the Mysteries of the Sith! It is more confusing (weird missions and creatures). And the Teen rating is a bunch of bull , the Star Wars movies are more violent.


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