Reviewed: May 19, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Lucasarts

Developer
Raven Software

Released: March 28, 2002
Genre: Action
Players: 16 Online / 32 LAN
ESRB: Teen

8
10
10
8
8.7

System Requirements

Over 25 years ago those words impacted the world of motion pictures and have prefaced eight movies – soon to be nine (yes – I’m counting the three special editions), and countless video games. Those familiar words have once again returned to my PC in the latest release from Raven Software and Lucasarts; Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.

Jedi Outcast is the latest title to add to the already overwhelming flood of FPS games being released since the genre was born. While it brings nothing new to the table, it does offer several things lacking in most of the FPS titles thrown at us each month.

First and foremost, Outcast offers up a story that is worthy of a movie screenplay. Told through gorgeous cutscenes – some pre-rendered and others using the game engine graphics, you are held captive throughout the entire game by the engrossing narrative. The acting is topnotch despite the obvious absence of Mark Hammill, and it won’t take long before you are immersed in this game so deep you won’t be able to stop until the closing credits.

But everything isn’t just quite perfect in this new saga. Along the way you will fall prey to several pitfalls that the design team didn’t manage to avoid when making this title. Some of these are puzzles that are simply impossible to figure out while others are rooted in sinister level designs.

Level design is pretty standard stuff with complicated maze-like interiors and vast outdoor levels. Everything is linear. You are guided around by a series of locked doors, dead end canyons, etc. that keeps you from straying too far off the beaten path. This takes away from the freedom of exploration, which makes finding all those hidden secrets that much harder.

The first several levels of the game are very reminiscent of the previous Jedi Knight games. You are fighting a lot of storm troopers with a variety of laser weapons. Most weapons have primary and secondary functions and your arsenal is amazingly large and diverse. Of course, around level three you reclaim your lightsaber and if you are like me, you won’t even use those other weapons again with the obvious exception of the sniper rifle.

This is perhaps my biggest complaint about the entire game. The lightsaber seems to create a very imbalanced combat situation in almost every encounter from the time you get it until the end of the game. Sure there are exceptions like the boss battles, or when going up against walkers, but in normal ground level combat, nothing beats your saber.

Your energy blade has the uncanny ability to deflect most incoming fire, and while many of these deflected blasts bounce into walls, many will hit the person doing the shooting resulting in their demise with you doing nothing more than standing there. Security druids that take dozens of laser blasts to kill are destroyed with a single boomerang toss of your lightsaber.

Your lightsaber becomes even more devastating once you start combining it with your Force Powers, especially when you use the Force to warp time so that you are exponentially faster than your enemies. You can zip into a room and lay waste to an entire squad before they even know what hit them. The effect is much like the "bullet-time" effect in Max Payne, and is also used to show slow-motion death sequences in saber duels or whenever Kyle dies. The effect can be toggled in the options.

There is nothing so wickedly satisfying as using Force Pull on an enemy to yank him up close then swiping him with your saber, or pulling a weapon from a storm trooper’s hands then striking down the helpless drone. I often questioned Kyle’s possible flirtations with the Dark Side as he would electrocute an entire room of storm troopers with bolts of energy, much like those used by the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.

Of course combat is only about 80% of the game. Jedi Outcast features puzzles that range from mildly annoying to “where can I download a walkthrough?” Nothing in Outcast is obvious. You are given very broad objectives at the beginning of each mission and that’s it. On a few occasions Kyle would voice a “clue” that was about as vague as the puzzle itself.

Perhaps one of the hardest puzzles was the Communication Array on the Doomgiver. You had to enter a 3-symbol code to solve the puzzle. Each code was a different color and the terminals to enter these codes were in pod-like stations suspended in a bottomless pit. Picture a 9x9 grid of pods – much like a 3D tic-tac-toe board. Only a few pods are connected on each level, forcing you to make daring and precise leaps from pod to pod and level to level to find and flip the correct switches. To add additional insult is the placement of officers in many of the pods who logically have NO WAY of getting there. It took you a level 2 Force Jump to reach that pod.

My second biggest complaint is the sheer amount of jumping puzzles in this game. Come on guys – this isn’t Mario Brothers! If the aforementioned Communication Array puzzle isn’t bad enough, there is another puzzle where you are riding a hover-platform around the side of a circular chamber. Two storm troopers with rocket launchers are shooting at you from above and no matter how hard you try and how fast you snipe them, they will ALWAYS manage to blow-up your platform forcing you to jump to the anti-grav devices on the wall then make daring leaps to the opposite side of the chamber.

Fortunately there is a QuickSave option, so you can save after every successful jump if you want. Speaking of saving and loading, aside from QuickSave and QuickLoad, normal save and load times are horrendous. I brought down the console after a few typical loads and it will tell you how many seconds it took. My best was 38s but more often that not it was over a minute; sometimes two, and I have a screaming machine. Fortunately, once you are in, QuickSaves/Loads take under 10s.

Any my final real complaint about Outcast is some of the quirky levels. I can think of at least a dozen locations where I was totally stumped and didn’t know where to go. Only after consulting the notes that came with my review copy did I realize “there was a ventilation grate I should have shot 6 rooms ago and gone through a vent to get a password”.

Perhaps the single worst flaw in level design logic was the first mission in the Yavin swamp. I had just cleared out the first landing pod and had no idea where to go. Even after consulting my notes/hint sheet, which spoke of a “small waterfall in the rocks”, it took me nearly 20 minutes to find the tiniest of trickles coming from the cliff with a submerged passage underneath. Perhaps finding this would have been easier if I hadn’t been using my lightsaber. It is nearly impossible to see anything underwater in the third person camera view.

There is a bit of variety in the gameplay. On a few occasions you get to take over gun turrets, both on the ground and on ships. You will get to take control of maintenance droids and R5 units and take them into locations you cannot go yourself. There is even one level where you take command of your own ATST and lay waste to a canyon full of enemy troops. These little diversions are spread out just right and break-up what would otherwise become a monotonous game after 10-15 hours.

The models and textures are perfect and look like they were taken straight from the Lucas archives. I was stunned the first time a saw the detailed storm troopers walking around in fluid motion. When you shoot them they die in a variety of spectacular animation worthy of any professional stuntman.

Rooms range from tiny cramped crawlspaces to enormous chambers filled with pulsing generators and glowing lights. The carbonite chamber on Bespin is perfectly recreated and I was expecting to hear the hiss of Darth Vader when I first entered. The real-time lighting is stunning casting colored glows on you and other objects. I was surprised that my saber didn’t light up more of the surrounding area, but I guess that is what my night-vision goggles were for.

There are tons of special effects including some of the best particle effects I’ve seen. There is nothing more amazing that seeing some of the final lightsaber battles with a dozen Jedi all swinging multicolored lightsabers at each other. There is just an amazing wealth of subtle detail put into this game.

The dialog is excellent in both the cutscenes and the ambient chatter during the game. I highly recommend that you restrain yourself from barging into areas with storm troopers and hide around the corner listening to their conversations. There is some truly excellent and humorous dialog to be found if you take the time to listen.

I was surprised to learn that Billy Dee Williams returned to voice his Lando character, but not nearly as surprised to learn that Mark Hammill did not. The character of Luke Skywalker plays a substantial part in the narrative of this game, and the fact that Mark has become known for his voiceover work on computer games as well as animated television, it was mildly disappointing to say the least. I will give props to the actor who did do the voice of Luke. He nailed the timing and tone of the Skywalker character to near perfection.

The music is pure Star Wars from the opening theme to all of the musical sequences that are cued to the action in the game. It’s pure John Williams’ magic, and it never gets old no matter how many times I hear the Imperial March or the triumphant music during the closing credits.

Your mileage may vary on the single player game depending on your skill and the difficulty setting you choose. I played at the normal level but look forward to returning as a Jedi Master soon. Everything is linear and the story unfolds the same way each time, so the only thing that will change will be the challenge.

The multiplayer version of Jedi Outcast comes as a separate EXE, much like the Voyager: Elite Force game from last year. I have no problem with this, but some may not like having to load a new program to switch game modes. Personally, I don’t bounce between single and multiplayer on any given game session, so it was no big deal for me.

The standard Deathmatch and CTF modes are present as well as a Duel Mode that allows only two Jedi to exchange saber swipes. This mode is fun for the people playing but boring for those that are sitting around waiting for their turn in the arena. Capture the Ysalamiri is another great game that lets players try to capture a small lizard that will limit the use of Force powers.

Force powers can be selectively “purchased” before each game and there are special multiplayer-only Force powers you will not find or be able to use in the single player game. You will have as much fun using these, as you will your lightsaber.

For those of you who don’t have a decent connection to the net or simply shy away from human contact, you will be pleased to know you can use bots for opponents. They can be used to round out a team or use them as your entire opposition. The bots are very challenging and use unique AI to offer distinctive tactics when they engage you in battle.

The multiplayer module for Jedi Outcast is sure to breath extended life into this title, even if you play it alone against the computer. It’s worth it just to play around with those extra Force powers and check out the multiplayer exclusive levels like the Death Star!

This rounds out a perfect “hat trick” for Raven Software that started with Soldier of Fortune then Voyager: Elite Force, and now Jedi Outcast. I can hardly wait until Soldier of Fortune 2 arrives later this year.

Meanwhile, I will be growing stronger in the Force.