Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast review

Posted by Thomas McGuire on May 07, 2002
Developed by: Raven Software     Publisher: LucasArts

Buy Jedi Knight II at the lowest price.

Graphics

Jedi Outcast uses Quake 3 Arena engine, which has been used in multiple hit titles such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and previously Raven’s own Voyager: Elite Force.

Sticking fairly rigidly to the visuals of the films, Jedi Outcast looks rather pleasant. Character models in particular are all rather excellent & the animation is similarly superb. Weapon models are all good as well, again much like what you’ll see in the films. In particular the AT-ST walker model looks rather splendid.

Raven took some time to add some little touches, some fine subtleties that make the game a bit more immersive. Two good examples I can think of are related to the Lightsaber. The first one is rain. In the swamp level the rain is just pouring down, the swamp water rippling with each drop and rather nicely you can also see rain droplets turning to steam as they come into contact with your Lightsaber, with a small audible hiss as droplets make contact with it. Another Lightsaber touch that it scars/burns through anything it touches, not just when you attack a model.

Textures are also nicely detailed for the most part & the game also supports the use of Shaders on supported Graphics cards for some enhanced effects. Stray weapon fire from various lasers also leave nice little sparks as they hit objects. By far the nicest detail to me though is that models actually have teeth.

Death animations are varied enough and many rather cinematic in style, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated, e.g. Storm Troopers spinning through the air. The Lightsaber offers the “gory” deaths, what with limbs being cut off with great ease, somewhat like in Soldier of Fortune, though without the gore, e.g. I’ve never seen myself cutting anything other than part of an arm off. Much like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault there’s no blood to see really, this seems alright though and as regards the Lightsaber it’s fair to assume the heat it generates would cauterise the wound. One of the best death animations I saw involved slicing the hand of a Storm Trooper and watched as they dropped to their knees grabbing onto arm which suffered the removal, groovy!

During fights themselves the game will usually pit you against several opponents at once, taxing your graphics card not to mention the CPU. This can lead to some great imagery as you fight your way through a dozen or so foe. Cutting them up with the Lightsaber or using force powers to throw/pull them from where they stand or whatever. There’s also a Max Payne style slow-motion circular camera pan around Kyle as he kills certain enemy, though this in some cases can be a lot more irritating than good to see.

Performance wise, the game runs pretty well with the system I used:

• AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.2GHz

• 256MB PC2100 DDR RAM

• SoundBlaster Audigy Player

• Creative 3D Blaster GeForce 4 Titanium 4400

• IBM Deskstar 75GXP Hard Drive – 30GB

• Windows XP Professional (Thanks AZZO)  

Tests were carried out using the Demo available in the Multiplayer component of the game, settings used can be downloaded here.

Still, on average frame rate above 65 is all tests is pretty damn excellent and those of you with even faster CPUs should see a greater benefit if you have a GeForce 3 class Graphics card or newer installed.

Select Jedi Knight II - Storyline, Enemies and Gameplay Graphics and Performance hit tests Audio impressions (and how to improve it) Music and Final Thoughts

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