really makes you feel like a jedi knight because your bodycount ends up being comparable to Duke Nukem even if you dont go dark side (huhuh What An Mess). also does more interesting stuff in regards to "ThreeDee Level Design" and traversal through said levels than whatever your favorite babyproofed bingbingwahoo title from the past 25+ years happens to be, hence why the gaming essay writing elite subscribed to GameMaker's Toolkit, whose ideal of an involving action-adventure is likely Wind Waker rather than Hexen, will tell you it's confusing+Stupid&BAD (quite unlike Them). Kyle Katarn can jump like Goku and straferun as fast as the earlier mentioned action man powered up by steroids (far too powerful to be canon, just like Kotor2!!!!) which is why You should treat "independent thinkers" who put le biggest badass doomguy on a pedestal with the disdain&disrespect they deserve.

Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II is a very good sequel to the original Dark Forces game. I started the game years ago and got pretty far, but took a long break and forgot most of it. I ended up restarting and using the fan-made remaster mod that adds new graphics.

This game (and the rest of the series) takes place in a very interesting era after Return of the Jedi, with the Imperial Remnant as the main enemy faction alongside some alien thug/mercenary types. The FMV cutscenes add a goofy low-budget charm to Kyle, Jan, and the 7 Dark Jedi they face off against.

Gameplay feels similar to Quake, but with more realistic-ish locations that feel appropriate for their use. Weapons are varied, although I found the grenades to be awful to use, with no way to indicate how hard you will throw them other than knowing how long you held the mouse button down for. I also did not use the land mines at all, not even out of curiosity, they did not really serve any purpose. The conventional firearms were all satisfying to use though.

Perhaps the most exciting addition to Kyle's arsenal are the lightsaber and force powers. Through the first 2/3 of the game, the lightsaber's ability to block blaster bolts is too unreliable and you lack the force abilities to back it up, and so it is just another tool in your belt to use when appropriate. By the end of the game it is the only weapon you will really use, enhanced by various force powers. The actual saber combat is fairly simple: light attack, heavy attack, and directional swings. It is not yet at the level complexity that would be achieved by the later Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy games. Force powers are handled in a bit of a frustrating way, in that they are gained via a point system, and you get points from finding secrets in levels. In my case I'm not great at secret hunting and only ended up fully upgrading a couple of powers. The interesting thing about the powers is that they are split: light side powers, dark side powers, and neutral powers either side can use. The game uses a morality system to determine which powers you will be able to access (and which ending you will get).

As mentioned before, the levels make sense for what their in-universe purpose is: a town makes sense in its layout and so does an imperial base. This, however, does not stop some classic FPS shenanigans from happening, especially towards the end where one or two imperial bases feel needlessly complex. In one instance I just noclipped my way to the end rather than spend more time running back and forth to find progression.

Overall Dark Forces II is a very worthy successor to the first game. Even better, it is a very fun look into the EU that really makes me want to dive into various Star Wars games, books and comics that feature original stories.

Inventive level design, top notch FMV-powered presentation, and a full Jedi arsenal elevates Dark Forces II above its already great predecessor.

While there are occasional snags on some less than intuitive moments, the level design is generally fantastic with plenty of verticality and well-executed platforming, and focus on objectives over keyhunting. Exploration is a joy as there's no shortage of secrets, and the environments simply look and and sound excellent. The addition of a lightsaber and force powers add a lot to the gameplay of standard missions, though the one-on-one duels are frankly better in concept than execution.

It may be easy to overlook nowadays, but Jedi Knight goes beyond being just a great Star Wars game for its time; it's one of the best shooter campaigns ever. Play it!

I believe it was PC Gamer that called "Star Wars- Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II" the best game ever made back in the day. Maybe it was a different magazine. Regardless of which rag said it, it was hardly hyperbole at the time. FPS games were still young and often offered fun, but brainless key-fetching, enemy-blasting, and not much else. Jedi Knight was all of that, too, but it brought a lot of new things to the djarik table.

An emphasis on verticality and a liberal use of interlocking, Rube Goldberg-esque platforms, steel beams, etc. all made the game’s levels stand out and made you feel smart for finally reaching the end of their enormous, often ingenious labyrinths (one also felt smart for correctly saying its mouthful of a reversed, "Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3" situation of a title). It also didn't hurt that, unlike Dark Forces 1, Jedi Knight has NO SEWER LEVEL. No, the aqueduct level is not a sewer. Don't even try.


Kyle Katarn (at the beginning of yet another large and complex level):
"There's got to be a better way to make a living."


I always connect this game and "Thief II: the Metal Age" in my mind, despite their gameplay being completely different.
The reason for this is their utterly huge and masterfully designed maps and overall quality packages as a whole are some of the best of the 90's. True "filet mignon"s amongst other fun, but less masterfully prepared cuts of beef. Even years later, Dishonored 2's exploration of verticality in its equally clockwork and complex levels owe a ton to Jedi Knight. Again, this is a good or bad thing all depending on your tastes.

This kind of level design could easily be cited as a pro or con depending on one's taste. It's all still admittedly labyrinthine, a trait often less than desired in an FPS, bringing to mind hours wasted lost in samey mazes. Turok 2 would be one where its maps equally impress and outrage me in this department. Jedi Knight is not innocent in this regard, itself, and occasionally its dated qualities (though not as numerous as you'd think) will occasionally have you feeling tempted to enter the "thereisnotry" code to skip to the next level, even though you've completed 90% of the one you're on, but something showed up in the final stretch that is just too plain dumb to keep retrying. Even if you give into that temptation, there's no shame in that. There is, however, great GREAT shame in writing off this game as a "relic of the past," "no longer canon", "jank", or whatever lazy label one might use to justify the deeply disturbing mistake that is not playing this game.

A single player epic with (mostly) smart level design, planet-hopping adventure, and FMV cutscenes that (Boc the Twi'lek and Jarek's lip-licking aside) are genuinely charming and well done (and not in a "so bad it's good" way, either. Stop with that. Embrace liking things that may not be perfectly executed due to budget, but have more heart in them than most Star Wars media in years. Stop with "guilty pleasures", too. Unless you're looking at Hermi Odle's OnlyFans or something, screw feeling guilty. Just like something if you like it!) and on top of all that, multiplayer!

It was definitely a runner up for best PC Game ever at the time and, you know what? Kriff it. Still is. Always will be.
If you have the patience for the occasional, brief annoying maze or poorly signposted next step to take (there's more than a few "leaps of faith" and tightrope-walking platforming that should NOT work in an FPS but with Quick Save/Load at the ready, it does!), you will find a true classic here. I don't know where to put this fact so I'll just say it here...the game's title and options menus, etc. have an overall aesthetic and accompanying illustrations that resembles the "Tales of the Jedi" Dark Horse comics, which objectively rules and is magical.

Before Jedi Knight, Dark Forces was an undeniably entertaining but by-the-numbers Doom clone. After Jedi Knight, the excellent Raven Software would take the story of Kyle Katarn in new directions. For my money, Jedi Knight the First (aka Dark Forces, the Second) is a landmark game and better than both what came before and after it in its series. This is saying a lot, as the entire series is of a noteworthy level of quality. Great Star Wars games are not particularly rare. Great Star Wars games that are also simply great games in general are a bit more so. Jedi Knight is one of these. A mandatory play.

Did I mention you get a lightsaber?


Hologram of Morgan Katarn (presenting his son with Qu Rahn's lightsaber):
"Use it well. Use it for good."

I feel like they finally got to stretch their 'Star Wars' muscles with this game when the developers were given the reigns on this project.

The first Dark Forces game was just a bonified Doom modded port but with Dark Forces 2, the gameplay felt a lot more in line with the I.P. and felt a bit more fleshed out as far as world building goes.

The added lightsaber combat system that still to this day feels better than some recent Star Wars game combat mechanics, and the 90's FMV cutscenes add a timeless feel to every playthrough.

jedi knight is certainly a game
dark forces was one of the best star wars games, and even one of the best first person shooters of all time, but does this one live up to its legendary predecessor? well not quite. its a game that really shows its age and could do with... maybe not a remake, but certainly a remaster, something nightdive could do. little things here and there would go a long way to improving this game, mostly in the controls department. you get so many weapons, along with items and force abilities and you need to either have specialized hotkeys for each one, or scroll through them one by one, along with keys to use each category. you cant even use the mouse wheel to scroll through weapons in the base game (theres a fan patch but for some reason it didnt work for me so i was stuck using q and e to swap like a SAVAGE), and good luck remembering which key does what. it's legitimately a crippling flaw of the game and honestly trying to go through everything you have in the heat of a gunfight just bogsthe game down so much. i ended up never really using my explosives (half the weapons you get are explosives) because of just how situational they are and by the time i manage to get the right thing out, the enemies have already scattered.i end up using the same 2 weapons the entire game
beyond the weapon problem, the game also leans more on the "where the fuck do i go" and "how the fuck was i supposed to notice that lever without this guide telling me about it" end of the late 90s fps spectrum. theres always going to be at least one moment in the level where youre just completely lost and wondering if youre even in the right area. theres some cool and interesting levels in here thankfully, but beyond a couple of levels with cool visuals, the actual level design seems rather uninspired
as for bosses... well they all force you to use lightsabers and... they all kinda suck. some are ridiculously easy, and others you'll spend like 8 minutes on dying over and over again because you just cant hit them with the lightsaber. its a jank mechanic that just never feels right, i feel like the cooldown between swings is far too long and it ends up making the combat feel delayed and sluggish, and this is at its worst in the final boss fight
there were also some annoying inconveniences like DIALOGUE BEING TIED TO SOUND EFFECTS DESPITE THE SFX BEING STUPIDLY LOUDER THAN THE DIALOGUE WHY DO OLD GAMES DO THIS?! i could barely even understand what was going on in the story because of how much of a mess the audio was.
oh yeah theres also force abilities... i only ever used jump because guns seemed more practical than the offensive ones. pull seemed useless. i couldnt use light side abilities because i went dark side for killing innocent people and droids. and i didnt even bother with getting speed or whatever the other one was.
honestly its not a bad game but... it doesnt live up to the first

Previously - STAR WARS: DARK FORCES

Dark Forces was an unexpected pleasure in a lot of ways but I think the real surprise there is that it was genuinely innovative in its space when it came out, not just in its tech but in its approach to level design and narrative conveyance in the shooter space. This was especially impressive as Lucasarts’s first foray into a crowded genre. I theorized before that even though Dark Forces was in development before Doom came out, it was probably influenced heavily by Doom’s success, and it didn’t see its own release until after even Doom II hit store shelves – that’s a long time for a game like this to be cooking in the early 90s, even considering this license and its unique baggage. Playing Dark Forces II, then, made me feel like that hunch was uhhh extremely correct, because rather than feel like a real sequel to its predecessor, Jedi Knight is ALSO a game that has the vibe of a trend chaser.

This isn’t like, a dig or anything, of course; video games were changing very quickly in this era, and so were the tastes of their consumers. I imagine that in a post-quake world it would be a lot harder to sell another relatively straight Doom clone, even one that iterated on something as transformative as Dark Forces. The 3D-ness of the game omnipresent here, but I’m not also comparing it to stuff like Turok or Goldeneye, which it also arrives hot on the heels of, because it also has another strongly defining mark: PC Exclusivity. There’s shit happening here that would be just outright impossible on consoles in a way that even a compromised port couldn’t solve, like when Dark Forces 1 hid a lot of keyboard commands in a pause menu and scrapped most of the lighting effects on the PS1. Part of that is that there is a set of active powers that are if not necessary to completing most of the game, then at least necessitate real time action to implement properly. But everything being fully modeled, including your guy, for important reasons, puts a lot of demand on the game too.

That’s to say nothing of how much straight up video content is crammed into this thing; these cutscenes are already compressed to hell, they could not pull a Resident Evil 2 to put this on an N64 cart, I don’t believe it, Jason Court’s beautiful face would not survive. The mere presence of those live action cutscenes is itself a mark of the game’s inextricable Pcality. Jedi Knight arrived in this beautiful, crystallized moment in time between gamers foolishly deciding that pixel art was for losers but also 3D graphics couldn’t like, make a face look normal yet where a lot of PC and PC-adjacent console games were doing live action FMV instead of producing CGI cutscenes like they were doing on the PS1. Even as early as this game’s own expansion pack the following year we’ll stop doing this shit (that one might be a budget thing but 1998 is also the year of Metal Gear Solid and Half Life delivering at-the-time acclaimed stories entirely in-engine with puppetted models and it went fine!). So for only one beautiful game and what cane only possibly be a total of like 40 minutes of footage we get all these idiots rendered in beautiful live action, the closest thing to a Real Star Wars Movie this sleeping fanbase had tasted in fifteen years and buddy it fucking rocks.

Returning characters are definitely THEMSELVES but the VIBE is so so so different when I’m supposed to still take Kyle Katarn as the New Republic’s edgy buddy who does the dirty jobs but he is no longer the world’s most square craggy set of pixels but instead now 34 year old Jason Court with his feathery hair and loose shirt with a PERFECTLY TRIMMED neckline on his beard, saying all the same kinds of things he said in the previous game but looking vaguely confused most of the time and all gravitas totally consumed by an all-encompassing frat bro vibe that is iconic to the character now but obviously not intentionally and isn’t present in any other depiction of him. Every single character is like this, not at all embarrassing because of the complete and utter commitment that every actor brings to being a little bit silly. The very clear standout is main villain Jerec, played by British character actor Christopher Neame with an intense enthusiasm and dedication to just being a weird little freak, never saying words the way you would expect him to, getting WAY up in people’s faces, doing a lot of weird fucking sighing and moaning and just all around relishing being The Big Bad Final Boss guy in a way that truly you don’t get to see very often. But everybody in this game is like this, from his number two, the mysterious (and mysteriously accented) Evil Woman Sariss, whose choking gasp of “……….WHY” after she accidentally cuts one of her compatriots in half is burned into my brain; to Boc Aseca THE CRUDE (their appellation, not mine) whose thing is that he’s just a freak and whose actor is extremely dedicated to doing a Crazy Guy Laugh; to my personal favorite loser in the game – YUN, THE DARK YOUTH (again, I did not name him this), who is possibly the most homosexual character ever committed to Star Wars as a franchise, from Rafer Weigel’s smirking, foppish performance to the way Yun fights Kyle exactly one time and is immediately so committed to him that he would die only to give Kyle a chance to get murdered later rather than now, and Kyle spends the rest of the game fighting with Yun’s lightsaber! That’s gay, dude!!

All of these losers are introduced by a narration from uhhh, some guy? Some jedi guy who gets murdered by Jerec in the intro to the game and who is also guiding Kyle along his journey in spirit. The plot of this game is that Jerec extracts the location of the mysterious Valley of the Jedi from Kyle Katarn’s dad, and then kills him. This drags Kyle into a race with Jerec’s order of Dark Jedi to find the Valley, a burial ground for many ancient jedi whose residual spiritual energy Jerec vaguely plans to absorb so he can vaguely achieve godhood. Along the way Kyle is guided to resume the jedi training we didn’t know he had quit earlier in life and hone the force talents that Darth Vader comically hinted him to have at the end of the first game. There’s ultimately not much here, with basically the same structure of big cutscenes every three levels or so and occasional quips from Kyle during play, but everything is so endearing now that it’s performed with the verve of low budget CGI sets designed around real actors doing c-tier expanded universe novel plots that are kind of just playing the hits of what the residual Star Wars audience of 1997 would want to see, but it’s legitimately better than like, MOST live action star wars content including a lot of stuff in movies that have budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars; more exciting, more entertaining, more fun to engage with, even as it’s also very simple and goofy. When Star Wars was nothing in the culture it could be anything too, and when it was this sometimes, that’s good for me.

It sucks how much I dislike everything else then. Level design is I think tangibly worse across the board, with the new engine affording an expansion in scope from what was previously possible and an iteration on some of the trends of the previous game but blown out beyond the range of what I can personally handle. I’m constantly lost in Jedi Knight’s bigger levels, partially because they are often bland to look at but also because they quickly become confusingly maze-like, less in a way that emulates Id design philosophies and more in a way that emulates motion sickness in me. This is exacerbated by the puzzle design, which was I think on the whole pretty well done in the first game, but is now leaning towards absurdity and obtuseness. There’s a ton of shit in this game that’s just there to Get You, and maybe that’s a timed level with hidden routes that make it much more doable or alternatively fuck you if you mess them up, maybe it’s hidden switches, or chutes that lead to a previous part of the level with nothing to do but wander your way back to the place you jumped down from. A lot more fiddling with switches without knowing exactly what they’re doing and making leaps of faith both metaphorical and literal in Jedi Knight.

Most offensive to me is the implementation of force powers. The powers themselves range from extremely situational to feeling borderline necessary to invest in. Some things come up rarely but in key moments like skills that specifically counter the skills that only the seven Dark Jedi bosses will use on you, but others like force speed and force jump fundamentally change the way you’re interacting with the world all the time and in a game where even with a lightsaber you’re gonna spend most of you’re time shooting guys in a late-90s engine, Strafing Faster is basically the best power up you can offer, while a fully upgraded force jump breaks the level geometry in ways that ARE intended but FEEL like you’re getting away with something, always a tricky balance for a developer to strike. This is all good. My big problem is that your upgrade points are directly tied to how many of the Level Secrets you find in each level and this sucks huge shit dude. Those things are deviously hidden a lot of the time and buddy I’m not gonna look up a walkthrough for Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight come onnnnn. This is the other half the puzzle design feeling more hostile, everything in the design feels just a little more hostile in that way that late 90s Lucasarts was just starting to get a little like, okay guys settle the fuck down. We all love the story and aesthetic in Grim Fandango but nobody’s acting like every single puzzle in that game doesn’t suck huge shit and the same thing is happening here.

The lightsaber itself is the biggest tangible addition to the Act Of Play and it slots itself into your repetoire beautifully; hugely empowering, completely transformative, and uniquely applicable to the way you interact with the world, it works on everything and everyone basically exactly the way you would hope that it would. They’re really smart about how they work around it, too, though. Creating a lot of situations with tight corners and narrow halls and enemy layouts where darting around in third person with a killer sword makes the most strategic sense and feels correct, often being subtly nudged into pulling the bad boy out, but just as often being so outnumbered or outgunned that the lightsaber becomes a liability and a more flexible set of weapons is more situationally practical. The lightsaber never feels like a crutch and it never feels useless, they tune the enemy distribution almost perfectly around it.

My last conflicted thought in the sack of conflicted feelings that is Dark Forces II is the game’s approach to its ludonarrative. I had a lot of praise for Dark Forces’ dedication to created a sense of place with the constraints of its level designs and game engine in addition to its cinematic elements. I’m less thrilled with Jedi Knight. There are levels here that are similarly impressive on that front, including the opening cityscape where you begin in the backrooms of a bar and make your way out of the seedy underdistrict of a busy metropolis that feels lived in, or a later level where you’re evacuating a ship that’s in the process of destructing. But then very shortly after this Kyle must visit his childhood home to, among other things, retrieve his father’s lightsaber, and we discover that Kyle was raised inside of a fuckin reality-defying labyrinth that would explode euclid's brain were he unfortunate enough to lay eyes upon it, one that barely resembles something people could live in at all, and that it's populated by dozens and dozens of tusken raiders, an offshoot of humans native to another planet entirely and not known to have ever left it, and you as Kyle will murder all of them. Really inconsistent with that shit!

That moment sticks with me as especially odd because this game does do something that I think is very cool and good, which is Have Two Endings tied to a morality meter. Unlike most video games at the time and still today though, Jedi Knight doesn’t tie your morality to big binary choices that you make for Kyle; rather it observes your behaviors – are you shooting the unarmed civilians that populate the game’s city levels? Which force powers are you using? You can see which way your meter is leaning but it’s entirely determined by this stuff rather than any big story moments where you’re an active participant. Then, when the big story moment comes along where normally you would make that choice, it’s taken out of your hands and Kyle behaves according to how you’ve been acting the whole time. You’ve already made the choice in your persistent behavior. That’s sick! So it is especially funny to have the friction of this stuff bumping up against the scene were a hologram of Kyle’s dad solemnly bids that his son use that lightsaber he’s just been given for the sake of good, as Kyle stands among the corpses of a ton of guys who didn’t really do anything wrong except move into a gigantic abandoned compound and then defend it from an attacker, having just committed basically the same action that only five years later will be implicitly depicted as the thing that cemented Darth Vader as on the path to nigh-irredeemable villainy in the short term of his life lol.

That kind of encapsulates my thoughts about Jedi Knight. There’s not nothing worthwhile here; there’s a LOT worthwhile here, actually. The game is really consistently doing cool and interesting things, it’s just that every one of those things is constantly matched or overshadowed by something that sucks or unfortunately the part where you have to play the game?? Which contains pockets of joy but the primary impression I’m left with is tedium. There’s fun to be had here but given the hoops I had to jump through to even get this bad boy to work on my computer I don’t know if there’s all THAT much more fun that you’d get from just watching all the fucking incredible cutscenes on youtube.

Next time - Mysteries of the Sith

Someday - Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast i think that's what it's called god the fucking numbering on this series goddamn

Fue la primera vez que podía ser un jedi en un ambiente 3D.

No sólo eso, las cinemáticas eran como ver una película con actores reales (aunque muy mal actuadas). Kyle Katarn se volvió uno de mis personajes favoritos de Star Wars. Me fascinaba explorar los niveles y encontrar secretos, nuevas armas, elegir los poderes jedi y la música de John Williams perfectamente ajustada a los momentos de acción.

Un gran shooter y un gran juego de Star Wars.

It may not be the very best shooter from the 90s, but it deftly combines the elements of a great FPS game and a great Star Wars game in one. The highlight of the game is, of course, the lightsaber and Force powers. Being able to run faster, jump higher, and push and pull your enemies, all the while hacking things apart with your laser sword made for a unique experience at the time. Couple this with solid level design, a universe that feels lived in, and a compelling story, and you've got one of my very favorite games. Sure, future efforts have improved on lightsaber combat and Force usage, but it's an admirable early attempt. Also a rare case of being able to take diverging paths near the end, which not a lot of games were doing yet. Most people probably prefer its followup, Jedi Outcast, but this is the tops for me!

This game is a great campy fun time with occasionally frustrating moments. The FMVs with actors and costumes and 90s CGI are very fun to watch, with some characters giving decent performances, and others just hamming it up. This was an improvement over the first game, which had a huge text dump for exposition on each level. As far as gameplay goes, it does take some time to adjust the controls to be something a bit more modern from the archaic 90s control scheme. X is jump for default, which should tell you something for resetting these to something more comfortable. One thing that is always interesting about these older games is how the level design and secrets can be both simultaneously great, and also the most frustrating thing in the world. Gaming visual language hadn't really been fully developed at the time, so there were several times where I was left confused on how to proceed, as there was a ledge or hole that I was meant to go through that didn't seem obvious as the correct solution. With the introduction of Force powers, there are some stages I'm not even sure what the correct solution was, because I was able to use force powers to jump into/over something after I couldn't figure out the "right" way to do it. But with the understanding of these things, I can't hold it against the game, and would recommend to those who enjoy retro FPS games.

Dogshit game. Levels are barren and spiraling into this loony world where compelling design is completely forgotten. The first Dark Forces didn't have many good layouts either but it hid its flaws by sticking close to the Doom design it was aping. Levels go on for way too fucking long and towards the end became worse than some of the most labyrinthine boomer shooters I've played.

Guns feel terrible. Enemies deal too much damage and overwhelm you. There is not much good mechanically about this other than going 3rd person and swinging your noodle arms around with a lightsaber. Not even going to try and play the expansion which is apparently worse than this.

One of these very underrated games which at the time set a new staple in the genre. Being released prior to Quake II, this game features environmental storytelling, hours of quality FMV story, and full support of first and third-person modes which you can change at any time and abilities.

Being made on a new advanced 3D sector-based engine it was a huge milestone for Lucas Arts. Production of the game was quite a high budget for the time - with tie-in books and concept art made the way Lucasfilm did it with the original trilogy of Star Wars movies and in the end lots of its parts have this "Ralph McQuarrie" aesthetic.

This game is also interesting being made with atmosphere of the 1990s Expanded Universe and its perception of post-endor and old republic before Lucas did his prequels. The game also features no movie locations or characters and does not even mention them, having its own atmosphere and its own story - the story of Kyle Katarn.

Sadly, physics, gunplay, and AI in this game are very janky, the same as force abilities. These were early steps for LucasArts in full 3D FPS and it shows that, don't expect smooth gameplay like from Quake 2 or Unreal. The game also doesn't work well on modern systems because of its old graphics API support and other issues, thankfully there is a modern open-source engine replacement for it which works smoothly.