Yeah I remember the demo level being so hard the first time I played it. Didn't help that I was using a keyboard only because I was used to playing wolf3d and doom where it was impossible to look up anyway. If I play a game these days and die as many times as I did then, I just stop playing and move on to something else. But at the time it was just so awesome. The level was so big. And I was in Star Wars. I had played Dark Forces and enjoyed it until it got too hard (also keyboard only); it was only years later that I actually beat DF (with help from internet walkthroughs). It just wasn't as great to me as JK.

This year, especially due to playing through all these old JK/MotS SP levels, I've started to really think why I've always preferred MotS to JK.

(Also, every complaint about MotS' colored lighting is pretty dumb IMO, because colored lighting is what Unreal 1 did the same year and which more or less every 3D game has done ever since)

1) After playing Shadows of the Empire like mad in 1998, I started wondering how other Star Wars games were like, and I'm quite sure that the first one I tested was the demo for MotS. Which led me to buying MotS first and only then realizing that I needed JK as well.

I did play JK's demo before getting MotS, though, and for some reason I didn't really like it at all. Perhaps it felt "clinical" due to not having colored lighting and I had already "gotten used to" MotS anyhow. Alas.

2) MotS really was in many ways the epilogue to the Thrawn Trilogy. Come to think of it, the Thrawn Trilogy really was the "official Epilogue Trilogy" back in the late 1990s. Maybe it still is to some people. But the Thrawn Trilogy elements being around in MotS was a definite bonus at the time.

3) MotS had far more elements from the SW films and Expanded Universe than JK did. In fact, JK is extremely self-contained and thus has its own unique "take", or so to speak, on the SW universe. I always liked how MotS had 3D models for the Falcon (or YT-1300 Haberdasher whatever), A/X/Y Wings etc. in it, thus giving the editor a wider selection of ships than "let's re-skin the Moldy Crow". Not to mention having Vader, Luke etc. as MP character models (and more SW Trilogy related MP levels, not to mention the secret Bespin level) and so on.

4) Due to having game engine powered cutscenes, MotS was in a way more suitable for SP levels due to having animations and the like for it, which led to most great JK/MotS SP levels being for MotS.

5) There probably were/are other reasons.

Of course, nowadays I (still) do think that Dark Forces was the most Star Wars-like of all the Star Wars games (not only does it have Vader in it, but the dianoga in level 3 acts like it does in ANH, the second level has skeletons lying around in quite the Owen and Beru fashion, Jabba just happens to capture Kyle at one point etc.)... which is why it's a shame that the Mos Eisley UE4 tech demo will only remain a one-level tech demo, because its gameplay (even without any enemies) just emits "this is what a late-2010s Dark Forces could be like!" all over the place. Alas, 'twas not meant to be.

But yeah, JK's cool too. Even though for a long time it was "fashionable" around here to bash JK for some reason, it's actually a pretty good game. I just still kinda prefer MotS to it.

However, it annoys the hell out of me when someone goes all "hey, remember Jedi Knight? Classic game!" on some other forum/place, and then I'll find out they're talking about Jedi fuc*king Outcast or Academy. Boh!

On reddit, JO or JA will get a regular shout-out in a "favorite games ever" thread, but never JK. They're probably just young and confused.

JO wasn't bad.

Just the level design. The enemy placement. The weapon balance.

Still waiting for Celebrity Jedi: Jedi Academy 2: Jedi Outcast 3: Jedi Knight 4: Dark Forces 5 to come out.

I thought that JK's level design was great, hard for JO to compare to that.

For example the one where you run on the palace rooftops after defeating Yun, or the falling cargo ship, or any number of others really.

And even Dark Forces was pretty amazing in terms of LEC's excellent sound and production quality--like FGR said, it felt the most Star Warsy.

Thrawn trilogy was early to mid 90s, not late 90s. I also always felt that Dark Forces had the best Star Wars feel and I also always remember enjoying Rebel Assault 2 perhaps more than I should have because it was the closest thing to a new Star Wars movie we had at the time. Although I enjoyed Jedi Knight quite a bit I was always disappointed at how they retconned Kyle Katarn.

True. For me it was the late 1990s, though, since I got into gaming and Star Wars (but not hygiene) 'round December 1997.

Obligatory reminder that Raven/LEC/company deemed this level worthy of being included in the official release of Jedi Academy:

That looks like a Sim Copter screenshot.

Also the JO level that takes away your guns, with huge, wide open areas full of snipers with instant-vaporize rifles.

Also the JO level with forced stealth, which shouldn’t have been in the game at all, but at least should have been within the first few levels instead of at the end of the game when you are as powerful as a god.

Also the JO level with instant death platforming. And the JO level with the hidden grate you have to slash to find the exit. (lol, “the”)

Do you (any of you) consider Jedi Academy to be good/great? I've mentioned here probably several times over the years that I got to some desert level with maybe some crashed ships or something with, like, Dune or Tremors giant worms or something? Yeah, it's been a long time. Anyway, is that a campaign or multiplayer level screenshot above?

JA was "nice" (with that "Coruscant" level from the campaign being the worst one). It had some good custom SP levels made for it, though, even if the best of them will forever remain unfinished.

I always get a kick when one of the old members like him poke their head in here.

JA was like... ten people each made their own JO mod, and then they bundled them together without really doing anything to make sure the levels were the same quality, fit together, had a coherent overall story, etc

I think they wanted to move onto Quake 4. I thought the level design was better and the game a lot more polished ... but I can't remember a certain unique level from the campaign.

I loved JK, still do. I loved MotS even more.

Man, I still have this unfinished MotS project. It was pretty damn cool.

JO and JA weren't as good, though I really loved that level in JO where you had to platform down these huge stacks of containers. It has greatly inspired some of my JK projects, which are also sadly unfinished.

While JO/JA have problems, I think the lightsaber combat was the best of all the SW games, new ones included. Otherwise, it's hard to overlook the flaws. Other games make the lightsaber a bat or melee QTE thing.

g_saberrealisticcombat 1 will always have a special place in my heart.

+1
After I discovered that, I don't think I ever played SP without it again.

DF Kyle Katarn came across as a bad ass. JK Kyle Katarn, made even worse by that book trilogy we're talking about in that other thread, was a completely different character. That change always annoyed me. It would be cool if the character as portrayed in DF turned out to be the one in Shadows of the Empire but he came across as too much a good guy. So, while of course I still like JK, I think it sucks we never got a true continuation of DF's Kyle Katarn. But at least there's Star Wars 1313.

Kyle was in Shadows? I thought it was another guy named Dash Flavorsprinkle or Dash Spaceguy or something

It was Dash Rendar but that character was closer to DF Kyle than JK Kyle was (IMO).

There's a good Manveer Heir interview where he talks abt how Raven (at least Wolfenstein-era and earlier) didn't really have game designers. They sort of decided what weapons to put in, the systems people implemented them, and then the level artists...made levels.

A lot of that stuff makes sense in hindsight, haha.

sim copter was the **** though. did you ever find the easter egg that made everyone gay?

I'm pretty sure I didn't find anything in that game, haha. I just remember circling around wondering what I was supposed to do. Then again I was like 8 so what can I say....

I think I may have put out a fire or two.

Does that confirm my suspicion that one of the first things those guys did with the project was to make the saber combat system super awesome, and then do everything else? lol

And when you think that they probably had early internal builds to play with as they made the rest of the game, this XKCD comic sort of takes on new meaning.

It is highly recommended to not take Spook up on his offer to find easter eggs from SimCopter when he stops next to you on the street in his van.

MotS Kyle was probably more consistent with the DF version of the character, whereas with DF2 they prolly coulda cut back on the amount of shampoo and blow drying when it came to Jason Court's hair (if they wanted him to come across as some kind of hardened mercenary).

Whether in DF, JK, MotS, JO, JA or really anywhere else, I always found Kyle to have as much personality and interesting character as an asparagus.

Aside from ToaM 2: Behind the Mercenary, of course.

Kyle Katarn / Dash Rendar are both just pretty bland copies of Han Solo anyway.

At any rate in the reboot they'll get rid of all the white males and replace them with Rhodesians such as Greedo.

greedo shot himself first

Oof, you just couldn't have turned this thread into yet another Massassi-brand reddit mirror, could you

sry

I do find it interesting how Massassi's way of (probably) mocking those types is "I know - let's parrot everything they've said in here!".

ANYWAY, I regret just having gone to Wookieepedia and checking Kyle's article out. Reminds me of how much I hate post-JA SW EU (well, not just that, but in the post-JA case the dislike-o-meter is at 100%).

I mean, JA wasn't great or even that good, but compared to everything that followed it (chronologically in the SW EU) it's a friggin' masterpiece. No matter what the Sequels have going on in them, I'm actually glad that the SW EU got torched.

I remember reading the EU book where they fought the third Death Star (or was it the "zeroth"? Like a prototype or something that got left behind)--as if it wasn't enough that the second Death Star was already a bland ****ing awesome copy of the original.

I just loved that in the SW:CCG there was actually a Death Star card, and if you put a superlaser on it you could blow up enemy ships during a battle.