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Tuesday 3 April 2012

OpenGL errors lead to hate; hate leads to the Dark Side

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Knight Academy (4/5)

It was with some trepidation that I wiped the dust from my Jedi Academy disc. It had been my mainstay entertainment since I was a nerdy teenager and girls were more of a mystery to me than they are now. It was my beloved, my darling, my precious but most importantly of all it was an opportunity for me to undertake my dream of becoming a Jedi without having to have awkward conversations with my parents about why I needed a brown colored toweling robe. Now just under a decade later I am pulling it off the shelf again to rekindle my dreams of being an intergalactic hero. It also provides me with the opportunity of screaming wookie calls at the top of my lungs without annoying my significant other (well not too much). But this is not a blog for nostalgia. I'm not playing Jedi Academy because it's "retro", I'm playing it because if I were to approach my computer with a Skyrim disc in hand it may well explode and I have no interest in pulling embedded circuit board from out of myself for the next week.

Let's begin, as many people who grew up with only 56kb modem connections did, and take look at the single player campaign. You play Jaden Korr an adrogynous avatar upon which you can choose to be a male or female character - or more importantly you can play as a twi'lek in leather short shorts. As the opening movie would suggest you are the quiet type who just wants to get down to some studying, those luscious head-tails swaying in the Yavin breeze...(Stop it! - Ed.) and are accompanied by the rather too excited Rosh Penin for whom this whole experience is approaching the orgasmic. For whatever reason, reasons which are not alluded too, Jaden Korr (your character, keep up!) has already constructed a lightsaber and this is quite handy as you will soon be thrown into action. The general gist of the first mission sets up the main story: The apprentice of the Dark Jedi from the last game, called Tavion, is harnassing some evil power with a staff of ancient origin in order to summon the power of a long dead Sith Lord who has been dead for almost all of the Star Wars canon. Using the power of the staff to syphon the force into her followers in what can only be described as an angry pegging metaphor, Tavion hopes to finish what her master could not and rule the galaxy. Much of the campaign, when you're not taking part in training missions and you will, is devoted to stopping Tavion.

Your relationship with other members of the Academy are indifferent at best however our dear, darling Rosh Penin demonstrates his severe dick-itude in the earliest training mission sending a fence-o-bot 5000 to slow you down. Right, so you're the needy asshole that's going to be an enemy later on then? Several missions later not only is Rosh captured but is indoctrinated into Tavion's cult spouting the usual "I'm not really evil, it's just a power thing baby and the Dark side is sooooo powerful". After a battle with Rosh and three cult members who resemble a pyrotechnics display at an Iron Maiden concert, Jaden reports back to the Academy that Rosh has fallen to the dark side. So far, so Star Wars. 

The final part of the game is devoted to stopping Tavion in her Dark Side ritual on the Tomb world of Korriban and, you guessed it, there is that am I good am I evil last part of the game choice you'll have to make. This choice is something of an irrelevance. You can pick and choose between using light and dark side powers as you advance through the game because Kyle Katarn (yes, he's back for an appearance) spouts the bullshit of "it's not the powers it's how you use them" completely overthrowing thousands of years of Jedi training. Putting my angry nerd away (the Ewoks lived on Endor's forest moon not Endor!), the choice of being light side or dark side becomes really a matter of roleplay as no significant changes are made to the game. In the final assault you'll fight everyone Jedi and cultists if you pick dark side and just cultists if you don't. There are no bonuses, no advantages to being light or dark side, as throughout the game you choose which powers to upgrade anyway. I could force grip like Vader and still choose to be the ideal embodiment of galactic Bhuddists wielding laser katanas. You only get a slight telling off by Skywalker for not choosing the hippy, sorry, light side powers and I'm sure I can live if someone who generally got pussier as the movies continued is slightly disappointed in me. But hold up, you know all those amazing key combos you designed for your force powers? Twisting and wrenching storm troopers in half? You can forget all of those because now we're moving onto the Multiplayer!

The multiplayer experience is a fairly segregated one. When you're not searching for a server which'll send your ping through the roof, you're looking for one where the players speak English. Don't get me wrong I like pierogi as much as the next guy but the multiplayer experience feels like an update of the Rosetta Stone Polish/Hungarian software. Many of the servers are devoted to free for all and normally have a number of players from different tiers of playing. There are the kata noobs who use the force powered lightsaber attacks which is generally frowned upon. The kind of players that will come up behind you and kill you whilst you're watching a duel to up their arbitrary kill score - and believe me it is arbitrary. This pracitice is known as laming and, like using katas, it is frowned upon by the general community. What the fuck? I feel like I'm in some online gentleman's club. The rest of the players are divided into those who know the mouse hacks and those who don't - those who do are normally unbeatable by those who don't. So if you find yourself on a server with nobody but those types of people it'll get frustrating very quickly. Much of your experience online will be either being a mischevious cunt and "laming", "saber gunning" or worse, or you'll be running away from those people because you won't be the guy who knows the mouse hacks. There is a system for guilds on JKA but it has seen better days. Poor communication means that you won't get online at most of the same time as your guild members and there aren't any significant guild events anymore.

Now for my final summing up. To this day I still love JKA and it has provided me with brilliant gaming experiences - accompanied by an awesome modding community, but its multiplayer has seen better days. However the game mechanic is there it just needs the right type of player. So if you're reading this having played the game back in the glory days, wipe off your copy and come back. The game you loved so well needs you again. If you're new to this entire game, firstly where have you been?, and secondly go buy the game. Either way I'll see you in the Tatooine bar. 

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