Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

I get the feeling that Raven Software rested a bit too much on their laurels instead of giving gamers a refreshing new Jedi Knight experience.

Does a great job recreating the epic lightsaber duels that most of us have come to love, but the big question is will gamers be willing to play through the first few mundane missions in order to get to that point? Initially I would have said no, but I was drawn to keep playing regardless of how bad I felt the visuals were, and even as the framerate chugged along at a snail's pace.

Jedi Academy was a solid game on PC, but sadly, the Xbox version falls far short in nearly every regard. [Holiday 2003, p.85]

Decent enough while it lasts, but not exceptional in any way. It's the sort of game you play through once and never pick up again -- in fact, the default difficulty is easy enough that this cycle can complete itself in a weekend if you give it some effort.

A slight disappointment. While it continues on the storyline, and brings back some familiar characters, it just fails to improve on an existing idea. All of the new ideas which were created specifically for this game just don't really cut it.

Translation problems occur in the flight from PC to Xbox, and the smooth style that made Jedi Academy irresistible fun on the PC is now clumsy and awkward.

We're even less inclined to accept the messy control system, the often dreadful AI, the questionable animation, the less than stellar visuals, the fact that following the dark side makes no real difference to the game, and the overall feeling that it's just not that exciting.

This game experiences such highs and lows, it's as if three separate teams worked on it. [Dec 2003, p.60]

Jedi Academy is exactly what it claims to be at bare minimum; the latest installment of the Jedi Knight series; nothing more.

These visuals are mediocre at best and not up to par with today's Xbox standards. [Jan 2004, p.156]