Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Xbox One X Enhanced Preview

The Star Wars Jedi Knight series was always a blast and it evolved quite a bit across the various entries. It truly hit a strong point with Jedi Academy offering something fresh and full of personal creativity. You were able to become your own sort of force user as you either followed a light or dark path. This all took place during the time that followed the Original Trilogy and you trained directly under Kyle Katarn. Luke Skywalker was present as well being a leading aspect of what was going on. It was a narrative driven entry, but one that also offered multiplayer.

There was the option to play with bots, or others online. Obviously the online multiplayer doesn't work at the current moment, but the local bot play is still fun to play. With this Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Xbox One X enhancement you're getting a 16x pixel count on the premium console whereas the base version enjoys 4x. It looks impressive featuring widescreen and being an early look at cutscenes and face focused acting. That may sound odd, but you can see the details being delivered during the cutscenes as they were attempting to make it seem real, for the time.

I recall selling my first copy as I had given up on the Original Xbox when the online service had shut down. I never thought I'd need to play the games again and having it on PC, I was satisfied. Still, there's something nice about having it on the console and it looks amazing with a proper aspect ratio. The world looks fantastic here with Jedi Academy. The skyboxes were limited and basic making them hold up better than similar titles. They opted for more of a straight forward look which helps make each area still come across as sharp today. They're even better now actually with the colors and edges really coming out. You just mostly need to look past the simplicity. The character models look fairly decent, but the lightsabers truly still stand out and pop in the 4k resolution.

The customization options for different lightsaber combinations and characters was fantastic, it may seem limited by today's standards yet it still is awesome. You could rock the Maul blade, have two or just be classic with an orange glow. The multiplayer is a blast against the bots with a number of modes and they put up some decent competition. It may not be as great as playing against others like you still can on PC, but it fills the void. When it comes to the campaign it was an interesting experience as I haven't played it in years. It may not be to most complex of things with fairly straight forward worlds to visit. Still, there are many iconic locations and the story carried a number of traits that were so early for the time. It's an impressive title, one of the best Star Wars games and it's sorrowing that we haven't seen something resembling this since.

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