Last week, I dropped by the Cube Club one more time to check out a few games that I missed the first time around, and Jedi Knight II was one of them. I never played the original, so I was a little unprepared for an FPS set in the Star Wars universe. In general, I have mixed feelings about the game so far.

As soon as you begin, you are introduced to the game by a typical Star Wars text scroll and an FMV of the main characters approaching their destination. Unfortunately this video was in poor shape. The picture was blurry, low-detailed, and really just had a generic feel to it. So once I got to play, I wasn’t too surprised to find that the graphics really weren’t up to par at all. Textures are repetitive and blurry or blocky when you get up close. Characters seem to have very low polygon counts, and the animation wasn’t impressive either.

However, I was quite pleased with the controls. The C-stick which is used to aim is automatically inverted so that up is down and down is up like you would expect in airplane. I still haven’t really adjusted to the more straightforward aiming used by some shooters. What I also found pleasing was that I had total control over where I aimed. There was no auto-center or auto-aim feature pointing me in directions I didn’t want to go.

So, I was playing as some forgettable Star Wars character named Kyle Katarn who has a female partner who is even more forgettable - I can’t remember her name – and we were raiding an imperial base. Since security was rather tight, I had to be creative about getting through some of the doors. The main door had to be opened by activating a nearby cannon and blasting away. Then I came to a hallway full of locked doors that had me stumped at first. I headed back to the elevator shaft and found that the elevator had already risen back up and that I could access the ventilation system. I made my way around and dropped through the ceiling onto a guard in the control room. From there I just flipped all the switches and opened up the doors.

That was about all I got to play, but despite its lackluster presentation, the game does show some promise. I certainly wouldn’t mind playing it again. I even saw someone using a lightsaber as I was walking by later that evening.