Thursday, March 03, 2005
Jedi Academy First Impressions
Well I have "unwrapped the shrink" so to speak on Jedi Academy and have played the first couple of levels. So here's my early take on this game.
First, the graphics. Pretty good but not great. I realize this is an older title. I have the game set to maximum eye-candy and it still looks kind of, hmm... stark. But it is colorful, I'll give it that. The models movement is kind of robotic or forced, though, they don't look very smooth. Facial modeling is not bad, I guess, for a game its age. So far I haven't seen much of the environments, a jungle, a temple, and Mos Eisley space port. I hope that there is more interesting stuff to come later on.
The sounds and music is pretty good. Voice acting is very good. And the plot so far seems interesting. I really like the fact that we get to meet up with familiar Star Wars characters like Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca. Also Kyle Katarn from the earlier Jedi Knight games.
Controls are a bit difficult for some reason. I'm finding it hard to control precisely where my character is moving and especially where he's swinging his light sabre. Jumping was seriously troubling compared to console action games like say Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which had very intutive controls. So far there's only been a little bit of jumping but I get the feeling that it's coming in bigger doses later on. Aiming. Don't get me started. The reason Storm Troopers could never kill Luke & company is that they are so inaccurate.
The Force Powers though, are really sweet. You get them right at the start, which is different than some other Jedi Knight games, and they come in very handy. You can Force Push, which basically can shove things around, you can Force Pull which lets you trip levers and things remotely, you can do Force Speed, which makes you faster, or you can Force Jump and jump much higher. Also Force Sense lets you see hidden things. I've decided to go Dark Side on this guy and so I can also do a Force Grip (like Vader did in the movies) where you can choke the living crap out of your enemies.
More details as I progress through...
First, the graphics. Pretty good but not great. I realize this is an older title. I have the game set to maximum eye-candy and it still looks kind of, hmm... stark. But it is colorful, I'll give it that. The models movement is kind of robotic or forced, though, they don't look very smooth. Facial modeling is not bad, I guess, for a game its age. So far I haven't seen much of the environments, a jungle, a temple, and Mos Eisley space port. I hope that there is more interesting stuff to come later on.
The sounds and music is pretty good. Voice acting is very good. And the plot so far seems interesting. I really like the fact that we get to meet up with familiar Star Wars characters like Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca. Also Kyle Katarn from the earlier Jedi Knight games.
Controls are a bit difficult for some reason. I'm finding it hard to control precisely where my character is moving and especially where he's swinging his light sabre. Jumping was seriously troubling compared to console action games like say Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which had very intutive controls. So far there's only been a little bit of jumping but I get the feeling that it's coming in bigger doses later on. Aiming. Don't get me started. The reason Storm Troopers could never kill Luke & company is that they are so inaccurate.
The Force Powers though, are really sweet. You get them right at the start, which is different than some other Jedi Knight games, and they come in very handy. You can Force Push, which basically can shove things around, you can Force Pull which lets you trip levers and things remotely, you can do Force Speed, which makes you faster, or you can Force Jump and jump much higher. Also Force Sense lets you see hidden things. I've decided to go Dark Side on this guy and so I can also do a Force Grip (like Vader did in the movies) where you can choke the living crap out of your enemies.
More details as I progress through...
