A Jedi "knight" may not crave those things, but many young computer gamers do.
So, am I going to review a computer game? Not precisely. Rather the culmination of visual media that was injected into this particular title, and how it resonates with people.
The cut scenes for this computer title were interesting. The were in the spirit of the films, but also were dumbed down a shade for a teen to twenty-something audience. Which is odd, since a lot of the players were also in their thirties and forties when this title was released. So, was there another marketing agenda operating here? Quite probably.
The game itself regards gun for hire Kyle Katarn who stared in the previous title "Dark Forces". There you essentially played a DOOM clone with Star Wars trappings. The experience was a very fun one, if somewhat vanilla flavored due to the limits of PC technology at the time. Dark Forces 2; Jedi Knight, as can be expected, continues mister Katarn's tale into the days of when the Alliance is doing some house cleaning with the remnants of the Galactic Empire.
The cutscenes are geared to bring to life some of the spirit of adventure from which the films this game is based on draw. But they falter some with some over the top acting, and of course the production values are regrettably low for a Star Wars title. Actors are costumed, then shot against Blue Screen with computer generated sets to make up the rest.
I remember the loads of debates going on about the title, and specifically why it was that the cut scenes weren't living up to cinematic expectations of the Dark Forces gaming community. Well, simply put, they are films aimed at older children, but children nonetheless. Ergo the acting and everything else is what it is. This being the case, and the unreasonable demographic analysis of the computer game market at the time, the mass hard core audience that has supported the title faithfully were let down some by unnatural and low age thesping.
All in all the staging for the small video vignettes were quite spartan. Whether this was meant to offset the gaming experience or it was due to technological limitations of encoding video at the time, I'm not certain. But the video sequences, in my not so humble opinion, could have been a bit more. The title itself was, for a time, PCGamers all time best game ever out of a list of top 100 games. DF2 was given the best finishing coat at the time, but a little more would not have hurt.
As for the game itself, it was very robust and playable. It told another Star Wars saga with some interesting twists, and carried with it a very spiritual theme. The big rival at the time was ID softwares Quake-2 (which I also bought and played), but at the time I preferred the Star Wars setting to some over the top gore-filled game whose pedigree included titles like DOOM and Quake.
Jedi Knight was a watershed moment. It took gaming seriously, and added a character whose force-felt allegiances and leanings were pretty ambiguous. Me? I loved the game for the pure size and scope of the single player game. And spent more than my unhealthy share of hours in various multiplayer games on the old dialup MS Gaming Zone.
Jedi Knight didn't spearhead video and film scenes included with games, but the title and company showed how they can better accentuate and highlight salient and important dramatic points in a gaming like context.
The graphics are a little dated, but if you're a die hard SW fan, then maybe give this a whirl on your CD drive.
