Star Wars: Jedi Knight Gold Pack for Mac OS X, Mac OS X Intel Reviews

Aspyr gave the Mac gaming community an unexpected, but pleasant surprise with the re-release of some classic Star Wars games optimized for Intel Macs. The Jedi Knight Gold Pack includes Jedi Outcast (Jedi Knight II) and Jedi Academy on a single DVD. These are not Universal Binary games playable on older PowerPC systems — they are Intel-only and play smoothly when tested on a 2009 MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard.

If you’re a fan of Star Wars gaming and haven’t tried these titles, they are definitely worth picking up for a retail price that’s significantly lower than most Mac games. You’ll get a combination of FPS and third-person lightsaber-wielding action wrapped up in two solid 20-30 hr. campaigns featuring the expanded universe hero Kyle Katarn. Many other familiar characters, alien species, and locales make appearances throughout both games, and the graphics and authentic Star Wars environments are still pretty impressive after seven years. It’s amazing how much detail Activision and Raven were able to squeeze out of the Quake 3 engine at the time.

Even with Intel native support, there are still a few missing features that would have made this package feel more “updated” for contemporary gaming. The first is a lack of widescreen support from within the games. You can tinker with the config files to achieve the desired resolutions and aspect ratios (instructions on most widescreen gaming forums), but it would have been more helpful for novice users to have widescreen settings available in the game menu.

The more glaring omission is the lack of online compatibility with PC servers. Aspyr’s Mac ports of Call of Duty 4 and Quake Wars ET are also Intel-only and allow you to play on PC servers for some great online multiplayer action. I was hoping the Jedi Knight games would also enjoy this luxury with the Intel update, but you can still only play online with other Mac users. This is unfortunate because (as of this writing) there are still 250+ active PC servers for Jedi Knight at any given time. The Mac server list is practically empty and it would have been nice to tap into a larger online community.

Overall, this is an excellent update to a classic franchise that new generations of Mac owners are sure to enjoy. Hopefully, this will lead to more entries in the Jedi Knight series and more Mac ports of popular games.

I’m a longtime Mac user, as well as an avid PC gamer. The scarcity of games available for Mac (a situation that has only recently been ameliorated to an extent) has been a long-standing source of frustration for Mac gamers. Now, Mac gamers have reason to rejoice with the release of this “Jedi Knight” bundle, containing two of the best first/third-person shooters ever released: “Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast” (2002) and its sequel, “Jedi Academy” (2003). These games were created by Wisconsin-based developer Raven Software, and received universal acclaim from critics and fans upon their release.

Don’t be put off by the fact that these games are a few years old — the graphics and sound in these titles are excellent and hold up well, and the gameplay is stellar. In both of these games, your character is the newly minted Jedi knight, Kyle Katarn. The game allows you to switch between standard first-person shooter perspective and third-person perspective; the latter is useful for when you are wielding your lightsaber against foes. Numerous force powers are available for your use, such as force speed, which slows time down, “Matrix”-style, so that you can dish out a lot of damage, healing, lightning, choking, pushing and mind tricks. The implementation of these powers in the gameplay is superbly done. You can also throw your lightsaber at foes. Trust me; until you’ve thrown your lightsaber at a group of Imperial Stormtroopers, then fried them with Force lightning, you can’t call yourself a Jedi. Of course, there is also a full complement of “regular” weapons available for your use, including blasters, laser rifles, sniper rifles, thermal detonators, etc. “Jedi Academy” offers a few new features, including the ability to choose your lightsaber color, and wield a double-bladed lightsaber.

These games really put the player right in the middle of the “Star Wars” universe, and you’ll truly feel like you’re a part of the action and the story. Just be sure that your system can play these games. These games are for INTEL MACS ONLY. System requirements (which Amazon should really put in the product description) are as follows:

OS X 10.5 or 10.6
Intel CPU
CPU speed of 1.8Ghz or faster
2 GB of RAM or more
665 MB hard drive space
ATI Radeon X1600 video card or better, or Nvidia GeForce 7300 or better
128 MB video memory
(Note: integrated Intel video chipsets are NOT supported — you need a dedicated video card).

Hope this helps. Happy gaming, and may the Force be with you.

Note that the product alert says that this game does not work with OS X Lion. I didn’t notice the line and mistakenly thought this was perhaps a recompiled update of the code for current systems.