- Joined
- Jan 14, 2011
- Messages
- 2,846
It has always baffled me as well how people could rank Academy so high whilst the true order of the games is Dark Forces 2 > Outcast >>>> Academy
To me, Academy felt extremely floaty in terms of gameplay all while it dumbed down everything there was about Lightsaber combat and also negating any other gameplay with other weapons. Worst offender is probably how you could get off all the combo moves with just random spastic clicking of buttons. Unlike in Outcast. In that game, if you wanted to do overhead spin, roll stab or any other move it actually required timing and aiming whilst in Academy it was all "hit them roughly in very flexible timeframe and you pull it off".
Outcast was a good game on it's own terms but no game overcomes Dark Forces 2. From it's cheesy yet extremely Star Warsy live-action cutscenes to level design that is most likely never surpassed to this date to some of the best movement physics in any game this game just oozes both class and quality. And that's even without touching it's combat where every weapon has it's place and purpose, with their alternate functions offering various forms of approach and meaningfully so because:
Lightsaber, it's not actually OP weapon of the prequels. It's the meaty, heavy weapon it was meant to be. Without proper handling you were simply better off using weapons. Whilst DF2 does not have fancy combos it overcomes it by the fact that you actually need to have some perspective and capability to actually handle it. Manual aiming for shots taken at you instead of auto deflect, unable to deflect overwhelming fire, to be effective with beyond normal weapons you need to utilize the Force Powers. It's just all out best implementation of the original idea of Lightsaber.
DF2 just oozes Original Trilogy from every orifice (even if cheesier) and does so while being extremely competent game on it's own right that should be ranked far beyond the linear shit like Half-Life 1 which it actually preceeds by a year or so.
