Star Wars™: Jedi Knight™ - Jedi Academy™

I doubt that swinging around a light saber will ever get old, but other than that this game has not much going for it unfortunately. I won't hold the graphics against it, since the game is from 2003, but the writing is just bad, and the level design isn't much better. Some missions like the speeder chase are downright terrible. Not to mention that many of the missions (and particularly the long ones) are just endless corridors where you fight the same enemies over and over and over again.

One of my top 3 Star Wars Game of all time.

good

Action game with lightsabers and your standard “evil Sith want to destroy all the Jedi” Star Wars plot. You can choose your character's gender and pick from a handful of different (alien) races, plus you get to decide what colour your glowstick – I mean, lightsaber is. Other than that, there is one choice towards the end where you decide whether you want to be good or evil, and get a different ending depending on what you do. It starts with you as an apprentice at the eponymous Jedi Academy. Apparently you accidentally built a lightsaber, which doesn't really come up again. You go through the tutorial, or Jedi training, where the game - I mean, Jedi Master teaches you about general game-play, combat – either with guns or with your saber – and Force powers. The combat is fun enough, and as usual, Force Lightning at higher levels is OP as hell (also fun). You're usually fine using only powers and the lightsaber, although some later enemies are easier to deal with by shooting them in the face with massive guns. The game dragged on a bit. At first you do a few seemingly random missions; there is a list from which you can choose, but you're pretty much required to do all but one of them before the next story mission comes around, and so it goes on. 4-5 missions, plot, 4-5 missions, plot. Granted, the missions are also sort of plot-related, but don't move anything forward. Levels are varied enough, though later in the game I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out where to go and what to do. Combat, while mostly interesting, gets a bit repetitive (and clusterfucky) once those damn Sith show up. Overall I'm kind of “meh” about the game. I liked it at first, but even though it's only 8-10 hours long, it overstayed its welcome somewhat. Bonus points for letting me kill myself with a tree and fail a mission by tossing a lightsaber at my ally, though.

While it is commendable for LA to have made a game with a possibility of real lightsaber combat, as the game progresses it gets more boring due bruteforcing through droves of pushover lightsaber-wielding opponents and increasingly more unlikely construction of jumping puzzles. Overall a weak 3, closer to 2. The worst game in the Jedi Knight/Dark Forces series.