The Gaming Den

Star Wars video games as a whole are so fucking sweet that my spit hurts. Even for Star Wars games that I think were deeply flawed on some level like KOTOR2, I'm still glad that I played them.

LucasArts, you guys rule and your games made my childhood. Especially Shadows of the Empire. I didn't give a shit that the game had really slippery controls (especially with the jumping) -- after I got to fly with a Jetpack in Beggar's Canyon shooting down Boba Fett's slave ship with missiles that game made me a fan 4 Lyfe.

Force unleashed is fun almost entirely from playing with the physics engine. (that and being a sadistic jackass with the force.)

Dark Forces was literally the first FPS I ever played, before Doom. I love the shit out of that game, but most recently when replaying had to look up FAQ style how to beat level 6 and it's fucked up maze of corridors and elevators. No idea how I did that as a child.

Also does anyone else who played it remember the hardest part of the entire game, after beating the dark trooper, using that stupid time sensitive doors closing thing? The only way I ever beat it was that if you kill all the enemies outside, and then get crushed in the last door, you spawn outside.

My favorite level is level 4 on the outside, with all the chasms and passages.

I also really liked the subsequent Jedi Knight games, and Jedi Academy. Force unleashed style fun 10 years earlier. Force Grab, the most broken thing in any game.

Wiseman wrote:Force unleashed is fun almost entirely from playing with the physics engine. (that and being a sadistic jackass with the force.)

I liked how the telekinesis was an integral part of the game and you could just -do- the shit. Peel open doors and force-lift people without button mashing or really losing energy.

A year or two ago I finally got around to playing KOTOR (first one), and then I did a whole planet of stuff, and I got to the second planet and became a Jedi and I was thinking "yeah now i can do important jedi stuff!"

Then I got a quest to kill some space wolves that were attacking a space farm lately.

"oh, this is just Baldur's Gate in space. huh. well." and then I never played the game again.

But X-Wing and X-Wing vs TIE Fighter were cool.

I saw an old vector based star wars arcade machine that had the deathstar canyon run, it looked really good. The machine was broken though so I couldn't play it.

Super Star Wars was fun.

I was thinking of getting Jedi Academy, how is it? Would it be worth going to acquire on steam?

Download and try the demo for Jedi Academy. I haven't played the demo myself, but the game has a lot of combat in it and playing the demo (unless it lacks lightsaber combat) should give you a good idea of whether or not you'll like the game. I loved the combat, so I enjoyed the game a lot. There are some fun levels with lava, bottomless pits, a desert level where you ride those things from the endor chase, and a sky train. And yes, like Kaelik said, maximized Force grip is extremely broken in any place with an insta kill hazard nearby, and once you get higher force push levels, you can grip someone as high as possible and then push them even higher so that it's deadly even on a featureless plane.

Edit: Forgot to mention, Force Absorb is also ridiculously broken. It's basically immunity to other peoples' force powers and at the highest level it also refills your mana bar when force powers are used against you. There are some Sith who don't have lightsabers, so if you have force absorb enabled you can stand in one place and yawn while they shoot lightning at you, and then one shot them with your lightsaber once they fill up your mana bar. Heal is great and unlike Drain isn't dependent on having other people nearby. Protection is handy if you want to be able to walk through lava, but it's mostly just a 'for shits and giggles' thing and is completely unnecessary to play the game. Force pull and push are both awesome but you get them anyway. It's fun to jump really high and (maximized) force pull a bunch of stormtroopers up and then reposition the camera so that they all fall down behind you shortly after they land. Bind hotkeys to the force powers you use most often as this isn't automatically done by the game and cycling through the wheel is slow.

I really enjoyed the Rogue Squadron N64 game, it challenged you throughly, even if ye weren't going for those gold medals (which even now, and as a kid...screw that). Shadows of the Empire was pretty great, I know I had played the first level on Hoth quite often, as well using the cheat to control enemies (like the Ice Yeti's).

I liked Star Wars Rebellion. To this day probably one of the best space RTSes I have ever played. Really simple but rewarding resource management, combat tactics changed the outcome a fair amount, but if you had enough stuff you could still bulldoze. My one complaint was that characters did too much, so it ended up being a lot less about the ships.

Oh yes, the N64 Star Wars Games were boss like hell back then.

Archmage Joda wrote:I was thinking of getting Jedi Academy, how is it? Would it be worth going to acquire on steam?

I thought it was excellent, but it's the kind of game where you can die really easily and want to quicksave a lot. One or two laser sword hits can end you, and fighting enemy jedi moves pretty fast. There's also some tricky platforming. If those are both fine with you, definitely pick it up.

I'll recommend playing Jedi Outcast before Jedi Academy. Academy has faster combat, but Outcast is no slouch. You should definitely play Outcast first if you'd like to play both though, as it happens before Academy. They share the same engine though Academy has a few improvements. The downside to Outcast is that you don't have a lightsaber for a few levels.

Yeah if you are going to play Jedi Academy, play Dark Forces II and/or Jedi Outcast first.

The only better thing about Jedi Academy is that you can progress Force Grip to 3 right away, Outcast has better levels and story, for what little that matters.

Did anyone play that one Star Wars: The Phantom Menace game for the PC that functioned more like a classic adventuring game but was top-down and more focused on dialogue and combat than puzzle solving?

If you did, could anyone tell me if that was actually any good or if it's just my memory playing tricks on me? I remember that game being surprisingly fun, all things considered. Lucasarts kicks ass up and down the streets so I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to make it so.

If you're talking about the game I dimly remember rocking my socks off for actually having dialogue options, something which blew my nine-year old mind, then...Well, I have nothing else except nostalgia to contribute because I was nine, but I also thought the game was pretty good. Even if I never got past Mos Espa.

Jedi Outcast had great lasersword fights, and with some practice you could develop really good skills.

Jedi Academy made combat faster, and added the new lightsabers, and broke all the combat system in the process, without bothering to fix it. Combat became far more random and far less balanced.

I played Shadows of the Empire again and ended up getting /most/ of the emblems (except in Prince Xizor's palace, because fuck the Gladiator) and I had a ton of fun... but my biggest complaint about the game is that it's too damn short.

That game really needs at least one more on-foot level and two more outer space levels. The vehicle design is probably the coolest thing about Star Wars (though you could make a very strong case for the outfit and character design, Jedi mythology, and/or escape sequences) and those three flying missions weren't enough to wet my whistle.

I'd love to see a remake of that game that smoothed out the level design, better graphical design, had an improved camera, better jump physics, and a few more levels but that ship has probably sailed by now.

Where the fucking fuck is my kotor 3 god damn, for reals.

Kaelik wrote:I liked Star Wars Rebellion. To this day probably one of the best space RTSes I have ever played.

Hell, yes.

I almost beat Super Return of the Jedi, but I couldn't get past the last mode 7 stage, it made me too nauseous.

Oh damn, the SNES games.

The AVGN put it best: they're hard as all get-out, but they're just hard enough to make you want to try again instead of giving up. I only sank a few dozen hours of my life into that series with rentals -- my next-door neighbor must've racked up at least a hundred.

One of the things I really like about the SNES Star Wars is the sheer variety with level design. On the one hand, it makes it that much harder to beat, but on the other hand it not only helped it feel more like the movies but also increased the longevity of the games.

My favorite part about the Super Star Wars series is how ridiculous some of the enemies/bosses were.

I mean, come on, Ugnaught Death Machine!

I don't know if this was mentioned yet, but there was a Japanese Star Wars game for the NES that puts Super Star Wars to shame. How do is do so? Well, for one thing, one of the platforms is just a sperm whale spouting water. Oh, and Darth Vader turns into a scorpion, skeletal pterodactyl thing, a shark, and a Wampa.

There were only two good things that came out of the Star Wars prequels. The first was Palpatine being generally awesome (he was the only character that got better rather than got worse, somehow, by some miracle). The second was that N64 podracing game.

OgreBattle wrote:I saw an old vector based star wars arcade machine that had the deathstar canyon run, it looked really good. The machine was broken though so I couldn't play it.

rofl, I played that on the 32x. Oh man. (Yeah, I had one. Yeah, it was pretty terrible, but it had a couple great games that I have yet to see get new releases.)