Revenge of the Hand: MacDaddy Mike's playthrough topic part 2

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WOW.
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I played around with my visual settings a bit and it looks...better...but still not as great as I remembered it. I'm thinking that I played the game through the first time on a crappy PC, and the lower-resolution made everything look fuzzier and, ironically, more appealing. The models and especially the facial animations come off really blocky the way I have it now, and I just can't make it look better without dropping the screen resolution far below what it should be for my system. The shadows especially look terrible, but this is the first time I've ever played the game with volumetric shadows. At the very least, the gun models look awesome, and there is nothing more satisfying than shooting a stormtrooper IN THE FACE.

Two of the most memorable sequences in this stage involve a part where you overload a generator to shoot insta-kill laserbeams around the room. The beams blow a hole open in a locked door, and you then have to navigate the room while dodging the lasers to get to that hole. It's neat. Another segment has you driving around a little mouse-droid to reach areas you can't get to yet, and I think this comes up later in the game as well. I hope so, it's kinda neat.

I'm off Kejim now, and onto Artus Prime. I'm taking photos on my phone of all the level-end screens that give me my stats, so I can keep accurate track of them here.

Well...that's...better. Slightly.

Just beat stage 3, a little woozy from cold medication and I was absolutely exhausted while I was playing, and now I'm ready for an early bedtime. This stage had a lot more puzzle-solving, in a sense, at least in that you had to explore to figure out where you're supposed to be going and how to bypass any obstacles in getting there. The previous stages were a "collect the keys" and "go in a straight line" sort of design, respectively, but this one was a bit more open, having you revisit areas often and base yourself around a sort of hub. I actually died a couple of times while trying to figure out one of the main "puzzles" of the level.

The firefights in this stage were awesome, and there's a particular area where you get ambushed by two teams of stormtroopers hiding behind secret doors, but if you know where they're coming from you can put remote charges down on the other side of the doors and detonate them both at the same time when the doors open. Instead of getting my ass handed to me by an elite unite of stormtroopers, I killed them all without having to draw my blaster. Hehe. The other firefights didn't go as well as this one, and I'm now figuring out that I need to always target the officers first. These guys have ridiculous aim, absolutely ridiculous.

This is also the level that introduces these sort of headcrab-y enemies that still scare the crap out of me. Very obviously Half-Life-inspired, but I don't mind the blatant ripoff because they do what they need to do, and they move fast enough to make you waste a lot of shots trying to take them out.

Better accuracy than the last level, though I was doing great until I encountered the headcrabs, and since the latter half of the level has the facility blowing up and the screen shaking every couple of seconds, it's obviously going to bring my accuracy down. As you can see from the enemy count, this level was a lot more action-packed than the last two.

You find yourself in a bunch of tight corridors and pipes later on that lead to a series of caves where you run into more headcrabs, and by the crapton. I eventually got so stressed at trying to shoot them that I just said "eff it" and started to run past them. The caves went on forever and I started to wonder if it was like those castles in Super Mario Bros where you only get to continue if you take the right fork in the road, 'cause it seriously felt like it was going on too long, and by the time I narrowly got out of the caves I probably had twenty of those headcrabs right on my heels. It was like something out of Silent Hill.

There's another kind of neat idea later where you have to walk an officer at gunpoint to a control panel, and he'll only move if you have your gun pointed at him. I thought that was neat, anyway.

Other than that, not much to say on this one. There's something I want to say about the next level, but, well, we'll get to that when we do. I just want to get off Artus Prime already so I can get me some Force Powers.

And that's when **** gets real. You run into Dasann, the villain of the piece, and he admittedly looks a little silly at first, like one of the Dinosaurs from TV. They give you a ton of health drops right before the fight with him so you know you actually have to figure out a way to beat him, but everything you throw at him gets Force Thrown right back at you with devastating results, and there's just no way to hurt this guy. It's actually a very good way for the game to set him up as a decent antagonist. I love his voice, too. Reminds me of Tony Jay.

The stage change happened so fast I didn't get a good look at the stats or get a pic in. New low for accuracy. I keep hoping I'm going to break 50% someday.

Jedi Knight was a fantastic game by many accounts, but perhaps its greatest failing is that the Force was only ever a bonus at best, never really necessary throughout the game. There were secret areas that you needed Force Jump or Force Speed to get to, but nothing in the main objectives that actually required use of the Force. Mysteries of the Sith required you to use Force Pull to flip switches or steal keys at various points, and there were a couple of instances where you needed to use Force Jump and at least one instance where you needed to use Force Persuasion, but the rest were purely for fun. Having the Force around for fun isn't a terrible thing, mind you, but there's a reason why neither of those games ever got the acclaim that Jedi Outcast got.

This stage has you at the Jedi Temple on Yavin to retrieve your lightsaber from Luke Skywalker (sadly not voiced by Mark Hamill), after visiting the Valley of the Jedi to get yourself rather artificially infused with the Force. The first part of the level has you simply travelling to talk to Luke, and then travelling to your mandated trial to prove that you can adequately use the Force...and that's it, but I adore this part. There are no enemies, no real objectives, you're just walking around, kind of reminiscent of the opening of Half-Life, but the atmosphere is perfect. The Temple is a peaceful place where you can watch Jedi practice combat or use their skills in a training setting, and being able to walk through it here at your leisure makes a great contrast to your revisit here near the end of the game.

Luke's dialogue is my one problem with the level, as it's very exposition-y, especially for the backstory on Desann that sort of comes out of nowhere and sounds rather unnatural. Kyle's attitude is perfect throughout the scene, though, and I do like that he always calls him "Skywalker" and never "Luke". They do a good job of selling the disdain Kyle has for Luke's methods, filling in a little bit of backstory on why Kyle left the Order and gave up his lightsaber.

The first bit of the trial has you obtaining each Force Power individually and using it on small puzzles, such as pulling out ledges for ascending to a doorway or using Force Speed to make it through a timed switch, and from there you get into a couple of puzzles that mix and match more than one Force Power at a time. It took me a couple of tries to make it through the Speed/Jump section, personally, and Kyle even remarked "That one was tricky" after I finished it (I do wonder if he says that every time or depending on how many tries it takes, hmm). It's all fairly simple, but overcoming every little trial carries with it a feeling of accomplishment that you don't really get in other Star Wars games.

It's a great starting point for what will be a terrific game that uses the Force with balance in its stage design, and though I can't hate on JK or MotS for not doing this, Outcast really stands out in this regard. And now I gots me a lightsaber, so this is gonna get real good real soon.

Secrets found: 1 of 1
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Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Star Wars-Jedi Outcast - PC):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

I almost want to play it now. 

Damn it.
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Fair Lucrezia could not sate her appetite for lovers.
But I suspect she would be fine, with two or three more brothers.

Definitely try the game, though! From what I understand it's pretty cheap online (and might be on Steam or somethin' like that), and is otherwise easy to obtain, nudge nudge wink wink.

"I'm no Jedi. I'm just a guy with a lightsaber and a couple of questions."

Oh Kyle, we love you so much.

Here we're on the hunt for the gangster Reelo Baruuk, and we start by interrogating a...apparently a Chiss bartender, though I don't know why there'd be one on Nar Shaddaa. Anyway, he hits the panic button and you're surrounded by a ton of dudes and you're armed only with your lightsaber, and they've got blasters and thermal detonators, the latter of which really suck. When you're better at the Force, you can more easily just push the detonators back at them, but at this point I pretty much had to really on my speed to get through. After a tough encounter it only gets worse, and I hold that this is one of the toughest levels in the entire game.

You continue outside to the catwalks of the vertical city, and snipers are everywhere. No, seriously, everywhere. You cannot round a corner without being shot from across the level by someone you can't even see. At one point I stepped out onto a ledge and was simultaneously fried by three different snipers attacking me from three different directions. 'Granted, you get a sniper rifle of your own to use for the level, but it's hard as hell to actually hit people with, you can't move without breaking your zoom, and if it weren't for saved states my death count would be a crapload higher.

If everything went smoothly, this would actually be a really short level, but you'll find yourself stopping and restarting so often because of the snipers that it tends to drag a little bit.

Secret areas found: 0 of 6
Enemies killed: 55
Accuracy: 18.18%

Okay, I have to call bullcrap on this one. It says I fired 55 shots and that only 10 hit, but how is that possible when it says I killed 55 enemies in the level? Hell, there are more than 10snipers in this level and there's no way I killed them with anything but a shot to the face, so unless it doesn't register headshots or something, I should have a really kickass accuracy. 55 shots and 55 dead enemies. I only used my lightsaber on...maybe 10 of them. Do the math, game. Do the math!

But anyway, back to THIS game. There are a few locations you can go to from the start that effectively lead you nowhere, at least for the time being, but figuring out where you're supposed to go first is tricky and sneaky, and I don't want to spoil it here for anyone who may join me in this game later. As with the new Force Jump upgrade, there's a lot of jumping to be done here, and just as much use of the other Force Powers at your disposal. I switched back to the stormtrooper rifle for this stage as my primary weapon, as most of the snipers in this stage are encountered at close-ish range, as they stand behind these shutters that then open up and surprise 'ya as you're walking by. And there are lots of them in this stage, let me tell you.

Admittedly, I got a little lost for a while, and ended up doubling back on every area of the level at least twice before finding the one little passageway I somehow didn't see that leads you toLando Calrissian, actually voiced by Billy Dee himself (and I also just saw that Roger Jackson plays some bit parts in this game, and we'd all best know him as the voice of the killer in the Scream series). Billy Dee plays it...well...a bit casual in this stage, and I'm hoping he puts more effort into his dialogue for the rest of the game. It's always awesome to hear the original actors, but it sounds like Billy Dee was just cashing a paycheck so far.

Finally finding Reelo leads to a big showdown in a large room with turrets and a couple squads of his guards (he does a great job at hiring security), and I barely scraped by. I find the saber really difficult to use against individual enemies, as I always find myself somehow swinging the saber around them and not actually through them. I'm still getting used to these controls--it's been a long time.

Woo! I broke 50% accuracy! 'Now I've gotta aim for 75%.

Unlike JK and MotS where you get extra Force Points for finding all the secrets, you don't get anything in this game other than the benefit of whatever items you get in the secret areas. I still like looking for them.
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Attractive people love Mac's playthrough videos ~ Reliable Internet Personality
http://www.youtube.com/user/MacDaddyMike