Two of LucasArts old Star Wars games, namely Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and Mysteries of the Sith, are now available as a dual budget release for only £3.99 (at least, that’s what I paid for them on Amazon, the retail price is supposedly £14.99 but I can’t imagine anyone trying to charge that for these games nowadays). Both games are FPS (first Person Shooters), and feature Kyle Katarn, a character familiar to anyone who’s played the earlier games in the Jedi Knight series. Both games are rather similar but I significantly prefer Dark Forces 2. First of all the plot is more involving – a young man’s father is killed, but the consequences of this lead him on a journey far beyond the scope anyone could possibly have imagined – on a path that could take him to the Light Side or the Dark Side (you decide later in the game). The games are set slightly after the original trilogy.

(From now on I will refer to Dark Forces 2 as “DF2” and Mysteries of the Sith as “MOTS”. Rather than going into each game separately I will be looking at the basic characteristics of each game more or less simultaneously.)


The graphics are okay, pretty old-looking and quite angular even in higher resolutions. (This is true of both games.) The cut scenes also leave rather a lot to be desired – in DF2 you have 320/200 or 640x480 video capture is used, with real actors and some truly awful acting! Still, it’s a different technique to what you usually see nowadays so it quite entertaining all the same. In MOTS there is no lip-synching and it’s low res, which kind of ruins the effect. The character animation was quite jerky most of the time although the environment animation was fairly smooth. Sound effects are quite good with decent voice acting for the most part, authentic Star Wars music (can’t go wrong with that!) and ambient sound effects. They do help considerably to help create a real atmosphere in the games, I wouldn’t say either was particular superior in this department, both are good.

The action in either game is actually quite different, though the basic idea in both is the same – travel round the environment you’re in, zapping the bad guys and trying to avoid being killed, and accomplishing the current mission objectives. In DF2 you start off having to try to escape the clutches of a fiendish robot and then retrieve an information disc that will, when decrypted, set you off on your journey. MOTS starts on a planetary outpost that’s being attacked and seemingly has no chance of survival. You then toddle off to an asteroid that the evil dudes are using as a base and try to shut them down, accomplishing the tricky task of actually getting off the asteroid before you become toast along with it. Then you change characters to a promising but frustrated young female Jedi and visit your friendly neighbourhood Hutt. As you do. The levels in both games are well designed, though the action seemed to come faster and more furious in DF2. MOTS more often relied on stealth and puzzle-solving abilities, which would have been great if it weren’t for sections that seemed downright impossible even when you knew what you were supposed to do. Both games can be played on Easy, Medium, or Hard level, which mostly affects how difficult the enemies are to kill (and how accurate their shooting is). Even on Easy level I found MOTS to be quite annoying in places. The levels also seemed to be somewhat sparser than in DF2. They’re both long games – you won’t be completing either in a hurry, and put both games together and you’ve got a lot of playing time there. This along with the low price is the major reason to buy the games – on the whole they have some solid action to offer but can’t compete very well against more recent games. In every level on each game there are a number of secret areas to find, adding more game time for truly committed gamers. Personally I’m useless at finding them, rarely find more than a quarter in any level and them mostly by accident, and as long as I complete the level couldn’t really care less whether I found the secrets of not. But that’s just me, others will no doubt enjoy spending time trying to find the secret places in the game.

The game has a 15 rating, which is probably because some of the action in DF2 tends to be a little brutal. To be honest I didn’t notice it being particularly worse than most games rated 12 that I’ve played. I don’t like a lot of blood spurting about and generally stick at 12 as my maximum for games, actually I hadn’t realised this was a 15 but it didn’t seem too terrible. LucasArts rarely develop games that aren’t generally acceptable for most audiences. Not really for younger kiddies though.

Overall, should you buy these games? The answer is yes if:

You like Star Wars
You like FPS games
You’re not worried by outdated graphics
You can by it cheap

Or at least 3 of the above 4 points – I’m not a huge fan of FPS myself but I did kind of enjoy the games, especially DF2.

If 2 or less of the points mentioned above apply to you, then not really recommended.

(Because these games are so old the required system specs are not very high at all, so I’m not listing them – though you do need a 3D card of some sort! I had no real problems running them on XP except the games sometimes crashed when you saved rather than used F9 to quicksave – even though the game did crash on several occasions when I did this, the actual scavegame file was intact and loaded quite happily a few seconds later when I rebooted the game.)



Other Star wars Games

Jedi Academy (similar to the above games but better in almost every way, only the puzzle element is somewhat lacking)

Knights of the Old Republic (Star Wars RPG, fantastic storyline)

LEGO Star Wars (great 2-player action as you complete levels based on episodes 1-3 in a LEGO environment)


More Star Wars Reviews

Films

Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

Star Wars

The Empire Strikes Back

Return of the Jedi


Animated

The Clone Wars Volume 1

The Clone Wars Volume 2



Recommended: Yes