[k2director]

I've been playing the game for the last week and am personally pretty uninspired by the game. The graphics are beautiful (at least on my G5/ATI 9800), but the gameplay doesn't engage me.

For one thing, enemies are uninteresting in that they largely stand in one spot (or may trot a couple of steps) awaiting my sword. There's little intelligence motivating their actions, and they're hardly a challenge (especially when I can heal myself at will with Force powers).

Also, the dialogue is pretty hokey, but I could accept that from a game. But combined with the bad enemy AI

Levels also tend to gone too long. If my heart were thumping from better enemies, I could deal with this, but on all but the highest play level, the levels seem to go on and on with nothing to grab me.


I *CAN* say I really enjoy the lightsaber combat (ie, against someone else who has one), but those encounters are rare, and I've been playing for 3-4 hours already.


Am I missing something here??

[a2daj]

The further along in the game you go the more often you fight force using and lightsaber wielding foes. I love chopping them up.

[SteevAK]

I just bought it today, and I'm a little frustrated that my Radeon 9000 is chugging horribly even with the graphics turned down.

I liked Jedi Outcast, I'm sure I will like this game too [b]as soon as I buy a 9800[/b}.

Oh and the same goes for Halo. Great game, just runs like crap right now.

[mac freak]

Jedi Outcast was markedly better, I must say. Dunno exactly why... I just had more fun when I was playing it.

Make sure you turn off the option that's called "dynamic glow" (I think). At least on the PC side, it raised my framerate in the first level from ~25 to ~70 with NO apparent visual effect.

[entrox]

I like it, although I find it is /much/ too easy and too short - I finished it in two days. You're pretty much invincible after you put 2 points into force heal and the Reborn are often conveniently placed near deep chasms and cliffs. I rarely fight them with the sabre, but just grab them with force choke (this can take 2-3 tries), twitch the mouse and let go. This results in a satisfying "Aaaargh" and an instant kill.

Normal enemies like Stormtroopers are just cannon fodder and pose absolutely no threat. Shoot with blasters? Look at them and wait until they die, because the player automatically deflects all shots back to them. Incoming missiles? Just force push them back and watch the fireworks. Strangely, this is the reason why I enjoy the game so much. Slicing and dicing through a pack of wimpy Stormtroopers and watching the limbs fly, force choking their leaders and smashing them into walls until they're dead (my favourite), sucking the life out of them with force drain, zapping a whole group with lightning, grabbing corpses and using them to set off booby traps, swiftly decapitating Reborn etc. etc.

Being an absolute Jedi bad-ass is cool. I just wish there were more mindless enemies, which I can then elegantly crush. Somehow it reminds of the game-play that made the original Doom fun. I don't want no super-smart enemies, which dodge every shot or follow scripted actions. I don't want no super-tough enemies, which take half a minute to kill (except if they're rare - like the Cyberdemon). I just want an army of average Stormtroopers and epic level design, which gives you a sense of grandeur (this has always been a strong point of the Jedi Knight series IMHO). If I want smart enemies, I'll play Half-Life or something like that, thank you very much.

[Grey Cell]

I liked it, and I agree with entrox. True, it wasn't much of a challenge for the frontal lobes, but my reptilian brain was still pleasantly twitching half an hour after I slashed the last enemy into pieces...

Yesterday I spent an hour in the Ord Mantell level, where I used the cheat codes to kill Boba Fett and then spawned hordes of Reborn to see how many I could kill (without healing) before they got me. Good practice, and incredibly fun to watch.

My only real gripe is that, as with many similar games these days, I'd need at least three hands to be able to play it to it's full potential. Especially switching between Force powers is incredibly slow and annoying when I have to do it during a fight, and there are some moves I can still do only by accident.
Does anyone have any good tips on how to configure mouse/keyboard for maximum efficiency, or will I simply have to give in and get myself a joystick?

Originally posted by SteevAK:
I just bought it today, and I'm a little frustrated that my Radeon 9000 is chugging horribly even with the graphics turned down.

I have a dual 500Mhz G4, 512Mb RAM, 10.3.2 and a Radeon 9000, and I'm running it on high graphics settings with little to no problems. I must admit I was pretty amazed at how well it runs on my comparatively old system... The only time when it really slowed down to the point of becoming unplayable was when I was fighting nine or ten saber-wielding enemies at once (see above). Are you sure the problem is your graphics card?

[SteevAK]

What? You run it on high details with little to no problems? I got pretty much everything turned to low and it can barely keep anything above 25 fps.

I don't think there's anything else that would be restricting the performance. Care to share your graphical settings?

[SteevAK]

Actually, never mind. I figured out my problem. I had turned on FSAA which destroys the performance. Turning it off effectively doubled my framerates and now it's very playable.

[Tulkas]

Its a nice game.

Its a tad annoying that enemies display a huge reluctance to actually join the fight. When ya got four reborns on ya it can get pretty heated though.

Anyone know how to kill the mutated Rancor? I haven't figured this out.

[Grey Cell]

Originally posted by Tulkas:
Anyone know how to kill the mutated Rancor? I haven't figured this out.

Weapons don't work against rancors.

In a nutshell: just try to stay ahead of it (don't waste time fighting the enemies you run into, run past them and let the rancor finish them off), flip *every* switch you see on the way, and get to the control room at the end of the level where you'll find the last switch. Lure the rancor in fornt of the control room so it's standing on the conveyor belt (but be careful because it can break the glass and reach into the room), then flip the final switch and watch the rancor die.

Force speed is very useful in this level.

[entrox]

Originally posted by Grey Cell:
Weapons don't work against rancors.

Oh they do. I actually killed the ordinary Rancor in the rescue-the-prisoners level. They just have a lot of hit-points.

[SteevAK]

After playing this game a lot more I have two complaints:

1. Light saber duels are awesome, but they seem so random. It seems to require the player to not do much more than keep the reticle on the enemy and click a bunch. There were sometimes when I really had no idea how I killed the other guy.

2. The enemy AI is horrible. I don't know if this is because I was playing on a lower skill level or not. Enemies with guns have an extremely low rate of fire and it's often very inaccurate. Enemies with lightsabers sometimes just jump to their doom. Seriously, one time this dual-saber guy just leapt off a very high platform for no reason at all. It was funny to see him randomly jump and then plummet, screaming, to his death, but I missed out on the chance to carve him up. What's up with the AI?

Good game, just some strange quirks.

[Grey Cell]

Originally posted by entrox:
Oh they do. I actually killed the ordinary Rancor in the rescue-the-prisoners level. They just have a lot of hit-points.

You're right - it's possible to kill it after all. But it immediately respawned.

Originally posted by SteevAK:
1. Light saber duels are awesome, but they seem so random. It seems to require the player to not do much more than keep the reticle on the enemy and click a bunch. There were sometimes when I really had no idea how I killed the other guy.

True dat. I've given up on trying the special moves, they usually get me killed. I stick with the more "standard" moves (the ones I can do without dislocating any fingers) and quick footwork.

Originally posted by SteevAK:
The enemy AI is horrible. (...) Enemies with lightsabers sometimes just jump to their doom. Seriously, one time this dual-saber guy just leapt off a very high platform for no reason at all.

Happens to me too.

BAD GUY: "You shall die by my handAAAAAAAAAAHH!" -- splat!