So it looks like it's a choice between Prototype or the Jedi Knight collection, then. Guess it all comes down to whether I feel like running around as a Jedi or a dark superhero (antihero?) I'll have to ponder that a bit and then decide. Thanks, guys! : )
Have you played any of these games before? I'm a big fan of the Jedi Knight games, but I never finished Dark Forces (I plan to; I got to the sixth level a while ago and got stuck there, and yesterday I gave the Steam version a try and reached the third one) nor Mysteries of the Sith (played the first few levels at a friend's house). Bear in mind that JK1 has a very rudimentary lightsaber combat system, and Force powers aren't too intuitive or well implemented, but I still think it's worth playing. As far as I remember, weapons feel good and the story is entertaining. Level design can be a bit too confusing, but that's expected given the game's age. The music is what you expect from a Star Wars piece of media, which is to say nice orchestrated goodness (I hope John Williams got a nice paycheck out of this, because his songs will be forever burned in my brain).
Jedi Outcast and Academy are masterpieces in my opinion, especially the former. They are unforgiving, and even the most basic of enemies (plain ol' stormtroopers) pack a punch and don't go down easily. Until you get your saber, be prepared to die several times unless you play it
very carefully (and even then it won't be easy). But you'll feel so good once you get hold of it and start obliterating all these guys that gave you so much trouble before. And to this day I haven't found a game where superpowers felt better. I don't know what it is, but shooting lightning from your hands or choking enemies to death after pulling their weapons towards you feels fantastic, not to mention the saber handling (different attack stances, with several combos each). I prefer the story and campaign of Jedi Outcast, but Academy is a worthy successor and a must-play if you liked the former. Level design in Outcast can be a bit hit-or-miss, with some levels being incredible and others feeling like a maze where you have no idea where to go, but overall I'd say it's strong. Jedi Academy fixed this for the most part, and you rarely get confused in this sense. The multiplayer part in both is also excellent, and I lost plenty of hours of my life to JK2's bot matches (yes, both games have bots, which is a
good thing in my book).
Regarding Prototype, I found it to be an okay game, but not much more than that. It starts promising, but later on loses steam and becomes repetitive. What at first was "Whoa, this game is incredible" turned to "Oh, another one of these missions?" not much later, only to be followed by "What? The stats menu says I still have 6 missions to beat? I hate my life". Besides, what's probably the worst thing (yes, even worse than constant repetition) is that enemies seem to scale along with you. But it doesn't feel balanced, so in the end, when you're supposed to be extremely powerful, you end up feeling weaker than when you first started the game, because the enemies are
much stronger than you and take forever to die. That's something that completely killed my enjoyment of it, and instead of playing an epic ending with an unstoppable Alex Mercer destroying everything he touched, I went through a miserable experience where every single enemy was potentially lethal to me. Of course, you may enjoy this kind of games that get more and more challenging as they go, but this is NOT what I want from a superhero sort of game. In that sense, I feel the Jedi Knight games capture much more accurately the feeling of becoming ever more powerful, and despite pairing you with equally-leveled lightsaber-wielding enemies, you never stop feeling like the living weapon of mass destruction you are.
Anyway, I hope these opinions of mine can help you, if not make up your mind, at least have an idea of what a fellow GAFfer thinks of these games. I'd go with the Jedi Knight franchise pack, but Prototype isn't bad at all, and may be worth a try if you are interested. I wouldn't recommend it myself, but I can certainly see how others could enjoy it more than I did.
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