his is the fourth installment of the Jedi Knight franchise, which began in 1995 with Dark Forces. The protagonist of the first three games was a mercenary-turned-Jedi-turned-mercenary-turned-Jedi-again, Kyle Katarn, who, aided by his pilot Jan, battled the forces of the Empire, both before and after the Emperor's fall. In this latest installment, Kyle is still around, but the protagonist now is young Jedi trainee named Jaden, not even a padawan yet when the game begins. That gender-neutral name is necessary because players start by picking Jaden's race, sex, torso, legs and head. Players also choose the handle style and beam color of Jaden's lightsaber.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is set in the days after the Emperor's fall, and villains are remnants of the Imperial forces who are currently serving a group of dark Jedi who call themselves the Cult of Ragnos. The action begins with Jaden's trip to Luke's Jedi academy. Her transport is attacked and Luke's quarters are broken into. These seeds are the jumping-off point for adventures that take Jaden to all the classic Star Wars planets, from Tatooine to Hoth. As Jaden takes on each mission, she encounters other characters from the movies, such as Chewbacca and Wedge. Jaden also gets to drive various classic Star Wars vehicles, such as swoop bikes and AT-STs. The mission on Hoth even calls for riding a tauntaun.
As with the other games in this series, Jedi Academy contains lots of ways to kill the various bad guys who crop up. True to its first-person-shooter roots, the game contains eight different kinds of guns and three different sorts of grenades. Unlike Kyle in the previous games, however, Jaden starts with a lightsaber and Force powers. As the game progresses, Jaden's Force powers improve and she learns new styles of saber fighting. Eventually Jaden even gets the chance to fight with two lightsabers or with a saber staff.
Three (or four) games for the price of one
Jedi Academy is at least two games and possibly three, with elements of a fourth. It is primarily a first-person shooter, but it is also, thanks to the emphasis on lightsabers and the number of Dark Jedi running around, a fighting game. In addition, it has levels, particularly the swoop bike one, which play like a racing game. There are even role-playing game elements: Before each mission, the player gets to add or improve one of the optional Force powers by one level. Jaden starts with Force push, pull, jump and sense; these go up at predetermined points in the story.
The first-person shooter elements of the game are rock-solid, having been well tested over the years of the series' life. The fighting part of the game is a little rockier because there is no lock on. Both Jaden and the Dark Jedi are free to move about and face as they wish during a duel. The result is that while there are a number of moves specific to each style and combination of lightsaber fighting, most duels consist of the characters racing back and forth across the map, their sabers crossing only at odd intervals. This is not necessarily bad in terms of gameplay, but it rankles aesthetically. It also decreases the frequency of saber lock, which is when the two combatants lock lightsabers and must push against each other to break them apart.
The player will completely forgive whatever wobbles the lightsaber combat contains when they reach the swoop bike level. Lightsaber held wide, Jaden meets biker after biker, cutting up either them or their bikes or simply forcing them into canyon walls. The game shows the more spectacular deaths in slow motion, and they are the best animations in the game.
Like any FPS, Jedi Academy can feel repetitive if played for too long in a single session, but it is a wonderful game that gives the player high after high.
Jedi mind trick is really powerful in this game; at level three it makes the stormtroopers and other scum change sides and shoot at their fellows. I mapped mind trick to my right mouse button and spent my first few seconds in each room mind-controlling as many characters as I could before I ran out of Force points.
— Eric
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