Hot Mods 23/12: Jedi Academy
Some games are adopted by the mod community because of their unique engine providing the perfect framework to adapt to new kinds of games, while others offer a great deal of freedom within the source game to inspire players to expand and improve upon the original. Star Wars: Jedi Academy is somewhat unique, however.
Contemporary mythologies are a prime source of inspiration for modders – not least of them being Star Wars. So the theme of Jedi Academy immediately captured the community’s attention. Jedi Academy uses the Quake III: Team Arena engine, so it does make you wonder why modders don’t simply go straight to the Quake games if they’re looking to create a new game that requires this engine’s particular abilities. But Jedi Academy is a game that’s built on modification itself, by the original developer, and that holds significant appeal.
It uses a modified version of the Quake III engine, which essentially provides modders with a shortcut to features such as close quarters, sword-based combat, along with the kind of special effects capabilities that lend themselves so well to a Star Wars themed mod. So in many respects, Jedi Academy doesn’t provide a framework for multiplayer based FPS games, as the Quake III engine does, but solid foundations for crafting intricately detailed Star Wars themed games – and that’s precisely what modders have done.
Star Wars: Movie Duels
http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-movie-duels
Although Jedi Academy is rich in Star Wars lore, it clearly avoids the details of the films – for obvious reasons, really, but that doesn’t change the fact that you want to play as Qi Gong Jin and face off against Darth Maul. After all, that was the only reason to take any interest in The Phantom Menace.
Anyway, all Episode One bashing aside, Star Wars: Movie Duels re-engineers Jedi Academy to take you through all the lightsaber battles you saw in the new trilogy. The glorious, Technicolor fights from Episodes One, Two and Three bring a total of ten new maps to the game, along with full cinematics and difficulty levels.
Each new level is also split into three parts – allowing you to play them out from both the Dark Side and the Light, as well as a Challenge system that works as a kind of in-depth survival mode.
If this mod turns out to be of interest, you’ll be excited to hear there’s also a Star Wars: Movie Duels II in the works, which aims to expand the premise to include the unofficial ‘rise of the Empire’ story, set between Episodes Three and Four.
The Open Jedi Project: Enhanced
