Okay, so, now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to something more positive.
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Which is of course actually Dark Forces 3. The name of this game annoys me nearly as much as Rambo III did. It wasn't Rambo III, it was First Blood III. It went First Blood, First Blood Part II: Rambo, and then it should have been First Blood Part III. But instead, they decided to call it Rambo III, despite there never having been a Rambo II, and and Rambo having been a subtitle. The same with Jedi Knight. First was Dark Forces, then Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Now suddenly it's Jedi Knight II. It should be Dark Forces III: Jedi Outcast. But that's just my pet peeve. And not even to mention that there was another Jedi Knight game in between. Although I heard that one(Obi-Wan) sucked.
Anyway, on to the actual game. Well, except for the first couple levels, this game is pretty fun. You get to play around with a lightsaber, you have some decently cool powers, and level design is only kind of annoying. The first couple of levels are insanely difficult, though. Although maybe if I were better at saving, I'd get more skilled and then the levels wouldn't be so hard. See, one of my major problems when playing games is that I forget to save unless the game prompts me to, so I'll be playing, and things will go wrong, and I'll die, and I'll lose the last three hours of play time, and I'll just get frustrated, and quit and not play the game again for like a year.
The truth is, despite the fact that it's nearly all I ever do, I'm really not very good at video games. On stuff that has simple patterns, I can usually do fairly well, it's just a matter of timing, and I'm pretty good at timing. Any kind of AI, though, generally the only way I can win is through luck. And god forbid I should go up against a human opponent. I am apparently completely transparent and predictable, while being caught completely by surprise by pretty much anything my opponent does. And I don't ever seem to improve, no matter how much I play. Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah.
Once you get your lightsaber(in what is by far the most entertaining level in the game, if you ask me; no combat at all, all puzzle-solving), the game gets considerably easier. Well, except for the first fight in the next level after you get the saber. That one's a bitch. For me. Your mileage may vary. The game is also a lot more fun from this point forward, although for the life of me, I can't see that there's any actual strategy to use in lightsaber duels. You just turn on speed and run around like a headless chicken while swinging your lightsaber around like crazy, and reload every time you die.
The game is gorgeous, I'll definitely give it that. Although don't use volumetric shadows. Maybe it's just my video card, but mostly volumetric shadows just made everything really ugly.
Overall, I really like this game, despite being terrible at it and never having finished it.