Customer Reviews

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dark Forces was my favorite first-person shooter (FPS) for a long time. I still play it occasionally, and was upset about LucasArts not porting the first Jedi Knight game to Mac. My bitterness is at an end however, having longed for, rushed-to-buy and now completed Jedi Knight II -- a terrific game with loads of great weapons and Force powers. I haven't played the multiplayer game yet, but here is my evaluation of single player mode:

Good things: (1) First and foremost, as with Dark Forces, there is an actual STORY with mission objectives that tie in to a larger purpose. Unlike most FPS's, where you just kill everything in sight and push whatever buttons present themselves, there is a plot here that makes sense. (2) The settings are terrific -- 24 levels that take place on ships, planets, city streets, the Jedi Academy, swamps and more -- filled with lovely graphics and extraordinary detail. (3) Humor. One reason I can't wait to play again is that I was so anxious to get through the game the first time that I sometimes didn't wait to hear the often funny conversations between Storm Troopers or their dressing down by officers. (4) The weapons and tools are great, with primary and secondary functions that have you changing tactics just for the joy of trying different modes of attack. Seeker drones and assault sentries are fun to use, but they are nothing compared to the great Force powers, which have three levels of power that are upped as you make progress through the levels -- Force Push, Pull, Grip, Lightning, Speed and Mind Trick are a blast to use, and add dimension to your strategy. The light sabre is great fun and you can become as adept as you want to with the magnificent number of moves and saber styles available. (5) Many of the same bad guys as in Dark Forces, but in better graphics and with more challenging moves. Great new villains include the camouflaged Swamp Troopers and Admiral Fyyar. (6) The ability to choose between first- or third-person perspective is awesome. (7) The game is very stable. Running on a PowerMac G4, I never had one crash. (8) The cut scenes added dimension and moved the story along, and they integrated seamlessly with gameplay. (9) John Williams music makes you feel like you're in the Star Wars universe, and sounds in general are used to good effect. (10) Billy Dee Williams voicing Lando Calrissian! (11) Enemy death throes.

Bad things: (1) Unlike Dark Forces, there is no map function, and I found I really missed that. Levels are sometimes HUGE, and I'd have liked to have had some reference. (2) The secret areas were not very exciting, usually just containing a few supplies. (3) Sometimes voices were garbled or masked by the music and there was no way to hear what Kyle was muttering to himself or repeat what message had come over an intercom, for example. Unlike cutscene dialogues they were not subtitled. (4) The climactic battle with Evil Lord Dessan was less interesting than an earlier encounter with Fyyar. (5) I found it was difficult to maneuver when I used Force Speed.

But these are minor quibbles. The game is wonderful. I'm ecstatic that it was ported to Macintosh. I've made it through one time and look forward to playing it again. And again .... and again ....

There are several things that grabbed me about this game. First was the demo. Without it, I would probably not have considered buying this game. I remember not liking the original Dark Forces. Running around hacking Stormtroopers to bits with a lightsaber was very enjoyable, so the purchase was made. (By the way, the Demo is a level not in the game itself)

After playing around with the demo and the lightsaber, I got annoyed at the switch from third person to first person when changing to a blaster. This can be easily rectified using the 'p' key. There are some really neat acrobatics that look like they can only be done in 3rd person. Aiming with a blaster in 3rd person can be a bit of a pain, so the ability to switch gets a major thumbs up.
Those acrobatic jumps have to be done 'just right'. It's far too easy to try to jump to a ledge and bounce off a wall, or skid too far and plunge to your death.
Many of the 'secret' areas are accessable only though these jumps. The only thing you get at these areas are some shields, or ammo, so if you're stocked up, it's not worth going to them. There are no 'hey, cool!' aspects to them. I guess I expected more after the Marathon days when secrets meant more story depth.

The 'auto block' feature of the lightsaber was great, as far less time is spent dodging blaster fire, and you can concentrate more on wasting some enemies.

As far as bugs go, I've only noticed two. Loading a checkpoint will sometimes crash the game. This can be annoying when you die, and then go back to reload, only to have to load a save farther back than a checkpoint. The other is minor, as the load dialogue has a limit and doesn't list all of your saves. Deleting an old save will show your new saves.

The force powers are really neat. Push, Pull, Mind Trick. Push is great when you see enemies standing on a ledge (hee, hee). When I saw the force lightning pop up on my powers list I thought "Oh yeah!" I spent far too much time choking and force lightning stormtroopers once those abilities got to level 3.

Voice acting is reasonable. Billy Dee Williams does the voice of Lando! The voice of Luke bothered me, but I'm not exactly sure why. I noticed a few times in the game where the soft voice of Kyle didn't carry well, or didn't seem to fit the mood.

Sure there are a few shortcomings, but you get to play with a lightsaber. You get to kill Stormtroopers, You get to play with a lightsaber! (did I mention the lightsaber yet?)

this game is great but be careful on the system specs for the game, it sas you need a radion graphics card but i have a ATI Rage 128 and it works fine with some glitches. If you have a system with a radion or better go for it the game is great.

I too had great fun with the PC version. The only low-score I give it is in the cut-scenes, they are very poor. However, I hear they improved it on the Mac version.
The reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is I wish I could have stolen a TIE fighter or do some kind of piloting. I also wish that I could have gone through the game with 2 or 3 other players-- Minor qualms.
You will find yourself spending more time just looking around at all the beautiful "Star Wars-esque" locations. All levels are excellent, except for the mining area, which is very poor.
I cannot say enough how fun the game becomes once you get your lightsaber, that is the most excellent weapon in your arsenal!

I have played this game many times, and I just love it! Of course, I have only played the PC version, but I heard this Mac OS X version will be even better! You are given an arsenal of blasters, laser rifles, grenade launchers, and of course, your ol' reliable lightsaber. A variety of force powers are presented, such as pushing away enemies with the flick of the wrist, lightning that comes from your fingertips, "force choking", and of course, jedi mind tricks! (messing with people's minds is fun, remember?!) Many familiar areas from the Star Wars universe are scattered throughout the game, and there are hundreds of stormtroopers, Imperial officers, and Sith Lords (just to name a few) that are just asking for a lightsaber whuppin'! The only reason why I gave this game a four-star rating was because of some difficulties like cheap deaths and some hard-to-do techniques with your lightsaber, but that is the only thing! (and it only relates to my skill at games, anyway) When this game is released, BUY IT! It's the coolest Star Wars action/shooter experience!

I am by no means a hardcore gamer, but for any fan of shooters, this is a great one, and it gives you a chance to get away from just shooting a bunch of goons (in this case, stormtroopers). Instead you can run around with a lightsaber and hack everything up ( I did this rather gleefully). For a game as old as this one is, it looks good, I'm not sure how it compares to a game using an unmodified Quake III engine but it looks almost as good as Star Trek: Elite Force 2, which is undoubtedly the best Quake game out there.

I played the PC version of this game first, and completely fell in love. Not even this amazing game, however, could keep me from buying my even MORE amazing PowerMac G4, but when I saw the game was released for Mac I pre-ordered it, and love it. The single player game is wonderful, the OpenGL graphics are absolutely beautiful, especially if you have a high-end graphics card as it will take as much video bandwidth as you can throw at it. The multiplayer version is compatible with the PC online server community, so don't worry about not having anyone to play with. GET THIS GAME!!!! By the way, It hasn't crashed on me at all in the first week...

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is one of the first games I bought for my Mac. Gameplay is challenging and fun! The single player storyline is entertaining and pulls you into the game and keeps you there. After a slow start with no Force Powers or light saber, you really will begin to feel like a Jedi Knight. Kyle Katarn's character is one of the best characters I've seen in any game, and could easily be a film character in a Star Wars movie. Some of the most memorable levels for me are fighting as a Jedi alongside Jedi Master Luke Skywalker against a half dozen or so Reborn Dark Jedi, fighting criminals in Nar Shadaa where you really must make use of your arsenal of cool weapons, and the two key battles against Tavion and Desann. I have other, newer games, but Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is the game I keep coming back to play.

The multiplayer matches are fairly standard Quake 3 Arena fare, with one exception, the one-on-one Lightsaber Duel. You may think you're a Jedi Knight after dispatching hundereds of storm troopers and Dark Jedi in the single player game, but the real creative battles happen in Lightsaber Duels against real people online. Just please remember to fight with honor and bow before combat.

Jedi Outcast has reasonable system requirements will play well on any modern G4 or G5 Mac. It plays great on my PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz.

Let me start off by telling you people why I gave this game four stars instead of five. There are a few which are not really bad things about the game, but more about how it runs. First, this game is very, well, overpriced considering it came out last year (even though it just recently came to the mac). Another problem within the game itself is if you do not have hefty system requitrments, then this will run a bit slow. I have a iMac G3 with 256 MB of ram and a 500MH. The computer is about one and a half years old. The only real time that the game will start to stall is when there are seven of eight men shooting at you, so I guess it could be a lot worse. One other thing that really bugs me is there is no compass, which means if you forget to hit a swich, then you will have to go hunt it down. Those are my only complaints with the game. I mostly like everything else, but let me tell you the best parts of the game. The controlls are very nice. The classic mouse and arrow keys set up. If you have a scroll weel on your mouse, that makes it even nicer when you swich you weapons, which leads me to another great thing about the game. The weapon selection is just great. You have everything from your plain old blaster to the lightsaber. I am also very fond of the force moves that you are able to do. I have not gotten that far, but I know the story and it is great. The visualls could be better, but that is not what makes games great. I recomend playing somewere else before you spend the 50 dollers on it. Overall, very solid.

Dark Forces was my favorite first-person shooter (FPS) for a long time. I still play it occasionally, and was upset about LucasArts not porting the first Jedi Knight game to Mac. My bitterness is at an end however, having longed for, rushed-to-buy and now completed Jedi Knight II -- a terrific game with loads of great weapons and Force powers. I haven't played the multiplayer game yet, but here is my evaluation of single player mode:

Good things: (1) First and foremost, as with Dark Forces, there is an actual STORY with mission objectives that tie in to a larger purpose. Unlike most FPS's, where you just kill everything in sight and push whatever buttons present themselves, there is a plot here that makes sense. (2) The settings are terrific -- 24 levels that take place on ships, planets, city streets, the Jedi Academy, swamps and more -- filled with lovely graphics and extraordinary detail. (3) Humor. One reason I can't wait to play again is that I was so anxious to get through the game the first time that I sometimes didn't wait to hear the often funny conversations between Storm Troopers or their dressing down by officers. (4) The weapons and tools are great, with primary and secondary functions that have you changing tactics just for the joy of trying different modes of attack. Seeker drones and assault sentries are fun to use, but they are nothing compared to the great Force powers, which have three levels of power that are upped as you make progress through the levels -- Force Push, Pull, Grip, Lightning, Speed and Mind Trick are a blast to use, and add dimension to your strategy. The light sabre is great fun and you can become as adept as you want to with the magnificent number of moves and saber styles available. (5) Many of the same bad guys as in Dark Forces, but in better graphics and with more challenging moves. Great new villains include the camouflaged Swamp Troopers and Admiral Fyyar. (6) The ability to choose between first- or third-person perspective is awesome. (7) The game is very stable. Running on a PowerMac G4, I never had one crash. (8) The cut scenes added dimension and moved the story along, and they integrated seamlessly with gameplay. (9) John Williams music makes you feel like you're in the Star Wars universe, and sounds in general are used to good effect. (10) Billy Dee Williams voicing Lando Calrissian! (11) Enemy death throes.

Bad things: (1) Unlike Dark Forces, there is no map function, and I found I really missed that. Levels are sometimes HUGE, and I'd have liked to have had some reference. (2) The secret areas were not very exciting, usually just containing a few supplies. (3) Sometimes voices were garbled or masked by the music and there was no way to hear what Kyle was muttering to himself or repeat what message had come over an intercom, for example. Unlike cutscene dialogues they were not subtitled. (4) The climactic battle with Evil Lord Dessan was less interesting than an earlier encounter with Fyyar. (5) I found it was difficult to maneuver when I used Force Speed.

But these are minor quibbles. The game is wonderful. I'm ecstatic that it was ported to Macintosh. I've made it through one time and look forward to playing it again. And again .... and again ....