Agreed. JK II was brilliant gameplay wise, and had some really well done ideas, but it screws up in areas where it should have succeeded. Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and Return to Castle Wolfenstein has awesome stealth levels, while JK II's stealth levels can easily be beaten by just standing in front of the alarm. Those other games have great AI, while JKII's A.I. is infuriatingly annoying. The weapons in EF and RtCW are great, while JK II's are weak. And generally, JK II's story and levels miss the mark on what made DF, JK, and MotS great games in the first place. I was hoping that JK II would take the best elements of all the Dark Forces games, and combine them with Deus Ex 1's or Half-Life's. After playing Elite Force, I'm amazed that Raven didn't keep in mind of what worked in that game. I'm guessing that Raven did better with EF because they were more familiar with Star Trek and its settings and characters. They also had the benefit of having the entire Voyager cast voice act for the game. JK II only has Billy Dee Williams as a recurring voice actor, and uses only a fraction of stuff used in the expanded universe novels about the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4. Come to think of it, it just merely makes small references to what happened in JK and DF, and doesn't have levels which revisit the Valley of the Jedi or Sulon (Kyle's homeworld). The Shadow Trooper was a great tribute to the Dark Trooper from DF1, and Galak Fyar's boss fight was definitely a clever little tribute to General Mohc. Parts of Nar Shadda are well done, and Cloud City is my favorite section, but the levels are not same caliber as DF or JK. The Reborn, Tavion, the Shadow Troopers, and Desann all fight like each other, and don't have little to set themselves apart from each other. That's what made JK's Dark Jedi so well done: they all were distinguished from each other, had their own little powers, and didn't at all fight the same way. Interestingly, JK II was done around the same time as Soldier of Fortune II, which looked like JK II but had a LOT of problems with its stealth gameplay, combat, and save system.Tchernobog wrote:
I too have a soft spot for JK, and I recently played through it again over the summer as my main machine was down and I was stuck on an old Dell D600 laptop. I certainly find it better than JK II, which I played for the first time last June following the source code release, which was amusing but did lack the depth and detail of the original.
The Dark Forces mod for JA (incomplete) is closer to what I would have liked for a DF/JK installment, though it still has some of those A.I. problems.
I think I understand what you mean by that. The management of Force Powers is a little clunky as was managing Deus Ex 1's augmentations. Force Jump can be awkward, since it is a different button from the regular jump, and you have to charge up before leaping (and get hurt if you leap wrong). The enemies have this annoying tendency to shoot lasers from other angles of their bodies instead of being straight from the gun barrel, and can be a little too quick to shoot. It is possible to be stealthy in the game, even though the AI is very sensitive and can be alert to your presence before you can lightsaber them up. Still: The Baron's Head level? You could choose to liberate Pedestrian's homes from thugs, save Pedestrians from being mugged, and even choose to kill all the aliens in the bar who are punching each other just for the hell of it. The secret areas are well implemented, and I just love exploring and interacting with the city.That being said, sometimes JK can be a bit too heavy for its own good, bogging down due to the weight of its own ideas.
But I do concur there are times when its not fun, like when I can't dispatch enemies quickly with one laser shot from my more accurate Bryar Pistol or from the Blaster Rifle before they find out where I am. And the jumping from air pipe to air pipe on that enormous Imperial tower never fails to make me nervous.
When played on the Genocide skill, Blood II does excel as a light shooter. The enemies can pop and be torn like tissue paper sculptures filled with blood and guts. It's just that when it's played on Homicide and Suicide that it's not so fun, with my ammo being chewed up fighting those freaking Shikari. And Caleb's one-liners do work very well in the game, and I like how each weapon is designed and textured and how each of them works. Going through the city levels in BII made me think a bit of Half-Life 2, especially in the second level when I entered into an abandoned playground. It took me so many years to actually play this game, and the little subtleties and effects which I discovered for the first time in Blood II impress me still. I just prefer Genocide skill the most.Blood II at least excels as a light fun shooter which utilizes much of the core dynamic that was in the original - going through creative destructible environments with a wide arsenal of satisfying weaponry and the best talkative protagonist ever to grace a video game.