Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

Genre: First-Person Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: There are multiple Star Wars bundles on Nintendo Switch. If you want a breakdown of which bundles contain which games, please check this page.)

Jedi Outcast is a classic First-Person Shooter originally released in 2002, itself the sequel to the two Dark Forces games and following the story of Kyle Katarn, now a former Jedi who abandoned the force after nearly being tempted to the dark side, but dragged back into it when the remnants of the Empire are found to be working on a plan that could shift power back in their favor.

Even after all these years, it’s still a delight to relive this story, full of familiar characters like Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrisian, set in the era after the original trilogy (but presumably, if it were actually canon, before the events of The Force Awakens). However, as a character Kyle Katarn and his sidekick Jan Ors are both interesting enough as characters that it’s wonderful to follow their story, as well as to watch their interplay both with classic series characters as well as each other.

Sadly, the rest of the game hasn’t aged quite as gracefully as the characters and the story. Graphically, this version of the game is an improvement, with nice framerates and a good overall resolution, but these enhancements only make it clearer how ugly some of the game’s textures are, as well as the simplicity of the character models. This is probably the best this game has ever looked, but we are still talking about a game that is a few years away from the two-decade mark.

While the visuals are understandably primitive, it is the gameplay here that has aged even more poorly. Movement is stiff and awkward, and at the same time over-reactive and overly fast. Kyle at times seems to glide around rather than walk, and while I credit the game for adding in gyroscopic aiming, there are other issues that get in the way of this game’s controls. Most notably, I noticed that the movement controls have a huge dead zone near center-stick, meaning you’ll likely jump from standing still to running instead of a smooth transition. On top of this, while there are options to adjust vertical and horizontal sensitivity both on the analog sticks as well as the motion-sensing, there is no ability to re-map the game’s button layout, and this game uses a really awkward layout that takes a lot of getting used to.

Even worse than that is the level design in this game. Repetitive levels that don’t make any logical sense are bad enough without being forced to backtrack into those maze-like areas without any sort of map. Plus, you’ll often be forced to take a path that’s far from obvious, as if the game’s designers took areas that would otherwise be used to house secrets and instead made those areas necessary to visit to progress. If you played the original version of the game this may all be old hat to you, but if you’re new to Jedi Outcast, you’ll pretty much be forced to use a walkthrough.

Even more frustrating than this is that there are multiple points where you can easily get automatically killed, and players who don’t save regularly will find themselves losing a ton of progress due to one wrong step. This game does have an auto-save, but the times it kicks in are far and few between, meaning that you absolutely cannot count on the auto-save to back you up.

Ah, and then there’s the game’s beloved lightsaber battles and force powers. Yeah, don’t expect to use those any time soon – you need to get through a sizeable chunk of the game’s campaign before they become available. Most of the time, you’ll be using blasters, and wow, are enemies in this game sponges for blaster fire. You begin with a chargeable blaster, and even in the game’s “Padawan” easy mode, enemies can take a fully-charged shot and keep going without even flinching. You can get in a head shot on a storm trooper without them even reacting. In easy mode! So very frustrating…

Despite all of Jedi Outcast’s many, many, many flaws, it is still a charming game. The story is great, and it does justice to the universe it’s set in, with memorable characters and an interesting story. But the gameplay here has aged very, very poorly, and I’d say that only those who were the biggest fans of the original release will find this game to be worth their time today.

tl;dr – Jedi Outcast is a First-Person Shooter originally released in 2002, now cleaned up and ported to the Switch. The characters and story are as classic as ever, but the gameplay has aged very poorly, with terrible level design, bullet sponge enemies, a stingy autosave, and a slew of other problems. It’s still a game that’s full of charm, but by today’s standards it’s hard to enjoy this game.

Grade: C-

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