John Walker takes a look back at LucasArts' first-person shooter, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, in this week's retrospective from Eurogamer.
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And by crikey, it's good. It's very, very good. It's so good that you can only look down at the ground, shake your head in confusion, and slowly pen a letter to LucasArts asking them what the hell they were thinking when they abandoned FPS development and handed the reins over to Raven. With this, Dark Forces, and indeed the enormous Mysteries of the Sith expansion, LucasArts demonstrated a rare and brilliant skill with a genre that's so often so mediocre.
My favourite FPS game. I still remember running around in the fuel station and just admiring the level's design, really felt functional (although why they needed it I'm not sure).
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Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
Man, I wasted so much time with those games. Hunting down ever secret in every level was necessary if you wanted to get more Force points to spend between levels.
I'll agree, no idea why they passed things off to Raven, but at least Raven did a fantastic job for the most part. The latter half of Jedi Outcast and the entirety of Jedi Academy nailed the "I'm a Jedi" gameplay almost perfectly. Admittedly, that was five years and a lot of technological improvements later, but still.
This was one of the first shooters to have 'enemies' on the screen that you weren't suppose to shoot, moral choices made that could impact the outcome (dark or light side) and some truly stellar level design. If Half-Life never came out, I'm quite sure that Jedi Knight would enjoy its place in history instead.
I saw these up for sale through Steam the other day -- brings back a lot of memories
Ya you got that right, this was such an advanced game for its time also. i think it really launched multiplayer gaming. i didn't know of any other game in that time that could play so nicely online. Jumping into LAN games and Microsoft gaming zone for some light saber battles.
My favorite memories are definitely in the Nar Shaddaa (sp?) levels, I believe. The huge city, high platforms, blowing those three eyed dudes off to die screaming with thermal detonators. I don't think you had force powers yet there, but if so I bet it was also fun throwing them off... Good times indeed.
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Gamertag: JMKennedy
360 Playing: Rock Band 2, Forza 2, Madden 10, others. If I'm on I'm probably up for a game, even if its different from what I'm playing.
The best thing about it at the time, to me, was how different it was to the FPS's of the time. Quake 2 and Unreal were mostly about corridors, with some outside areas, while Jedi Knight levels could be huge open areas, and with Force Jump you could bounce all over the place. It was great.
