With great new enemies, weapons, and multiplayer levels, why couldn't LucasArts... 

...GET THEIR SITH TOGETHER?
Review by Lee Brown

Mysteries of the Sith 
published by LucasArts Entertainment 
(You must have Jedi Knight to install this game) 

Mysteries of the Sith, like the Force, has its dark side and its light side.  The surprisingly quick-to-release Companion Missions to the well-received 3D First Person Shooter Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 expands the Rogues Gallery (so to speak) of Star Wars villains to shoot at, offers some very nice multiplayer levels right out of the movies themselves, and even gives us some tasty new weapons with which to wreak havoc upon our enemies.  However, despite that they've given us fan favorite Mara Jade to play, the single player episodes are wholly devoid of the scope and charm that marked Jedi Knight. 
 

THE DARK SIDE 
Briefly, you start the single player game as Kyle Katarn.   (It's only five years since the events of Jedi Knight but ye gods has he aged!   Sporting a shock of gray hair through his temples, Katarn has become a walking ad for Grecian Formula.)  After rescuing the Rebel Base from an encroaching Imperial Asteroid Station, Kyle gets a wild hair to go off and investigate a Sith Temple, leaving the player to guide Jedi fledgling Mara Jade through a series of several unrelated episodes before she finally decides to find out what Kyle's been up to. 

      The first glaring annoyance in the Single Player levels is the lack of rendered and live-action cut-scenes.  Granted, we understand that Mysteries of the Sith (or the unflattering MOTS for short) didn't have the time or the budget its predecessor did.  However, the non-game story is now advanced through "animations" of the same 3D rendered type characters we use for the game.  While fine to shoot at, played as a movie the awkward walking and gesturing of the characters, graceless flying of ships, and uncomfortable staging of scenes are like a slap in the face, making the unfolding story (such as it is) painful to watch.  The worst offender is the scene between Mara and Mon Mothma.  The Rebel Leader's mouth is animated like an intentionally bad Monty Python cartoon!  Certainly even the animation/cutscene style used back in the original Dark Forces was superior - couldn't LucasArts have used THAT for their cutscenes? 

     Then there is the matter of the story itself.  In Jedi Knight, we followed the compelling story of Kyle Katarn and watched (and played) him as he advanced in knowledge and Jedi power while racing against the villains that murdered his father.  In MOTS, when a surprisingly de-powered Katarn (he hasn't NEARLY the Force powers we left him with at the end of JK) suddenly gets the bug up his flight suit to investigate some far off, heretofore unmentioned Sith Temple, there has been no set-up for the abrupt plot advancement.  Katarn doesn't discover evidence of the temple while infiltrating the Imperial base.  He simply finishes that mission, then takes off, explaining it to Mara (and us) as if we've known about this temple all along from some place other than the Instruction Manual.  And never during Mara's escapades does she wonder about Kyle not checking in until its time (plot-wise) for her to look for him.  (To be fair, its not the fault of the actress chosen to portray Mara; she gives an admirable performance.   Katarn's voice is only fair - where was the actor who played him in Jedi Knight?  That's three separate games, three different Katarn actors.   Maybe his vocal chords change with his Force powers.) 

     The levels themselves are of varying quality.   Some play better as multiplayer levels - some are blatant rip-offs of adventures Kyle had way back in Dark Forces.  A Hutt captures the character, strips him of all weapons, and forces him to fight a giant beast.  Sound familiar?  In DF, the beast was the Kell Dragon (absent from MOTS); in Mysteries of the Sith, the beast is the ominous Rancor from Return of the Jedi.  While the addition of that fearsome creature is welcome, the re-run setup is not.  At another point, Mara must hide inside a crate to be transported to the villain's hideout, much as Kyle did in DF.   I half expected a Dark Trooper to show up at any moment. 
 

A DOMAIN OF EVIL... 
Of course, I was glad one didn't.  I hated the Dark Troopers.  Partially because I felt they were always too strong and fast for the original Dark Forces game, but also because they were... well, downright creepy.  They usually sprang up from the darkness and gave off chilling cries (heard the second before they killed me) that invariable scared the pudding out of me.  Sure enough, MOTS has its share of creepies, too. 

     Besides the one-time-use Rancor, there are vornskrs (helldogs if you ask me), swamp wampas(!), those awful mailocs (I really hate bugs), legions of the undead, dianogas (man, those things have creeped me out in every game incarnation from the original Dark Forces to the uninspiring Shadows of the Empire) and MOTS' own brand of dark Jedis.  The majority of these nasties hang out in the final Single Player levels wherein Mara Jade isn't bright enough to get the hell out instead of wading through a spooky, creature-filled swamp and temple in search of lost Kyle. 

     Did I mention that in these levels all of your weapons, save your lightsaber, DO NOT WORK?  These were edge-of-your-seat levels.   The downside to them?  Even a team of Jedis could not survive these levels unless they had the Force Power "F9 (quicksave)" to bring them back from the death that greeted them around each corner.  Though the atmosphere of these levels was perfect (and the final resolution good Star Wars), the levels themselves, without higher Force mana and powers and the use of energy weapons, was TOO MUCH. 
 

AN ELEGANT WEAPON... 
Speaking of weapons, several new weapons and powers made their introduction in this game... but a few were basically worthless, and came at the expense of other weapons or powers.  In the single player game, many of these were either of no value (sure, carbon freeze-gunning a trooper looks cool, but takes so long his buddies will have filled you full of blaster holes by the time you're done), or could not be found in any quantity (how many seeker rails are there in the SP game?  Two?)  And could there BE a more worthless waste of Force mana than the astral travelling of Far Sight? 

      On the positive side, there was the addition of my personal favorite, the Sniper Scope.  With this bad boy, the standard stormtrooper rifle becomes a zoom-lens one-shot kiss of death.  There was little more satisfying in the SP levels then picking off stormtroopers and other enemies at a distance with a single squeeze of the trigger.  Alas, this lovely addition seemed absent from the SP game after the early Kyle levels. 

     At least in her levels Mara did get the advantage of the BlasTech DL-44 heavy blaster pistol to replace the ever-wimpy Bryar.   This was the gun made popular by Han Solo, and has greater strength and quicker fire than the old pistol. 

     Besides the afforementioned new weapons, there are also the mostly worthless flash grenades (they blind enemies briefly) and the ability to manually detonate sequencer charges (a mild thrill at times). 

     In the Force Department, gone is Force Lightning and Force Throw, replaced with Chain Lightning (which affects multiple characters) and the oh-so-sad Far Sight.  However, three other powers are added - Force Push (perfect to knock people over cliffs), Force Projection (create a stationary doppleganger - of limited use) and Saber Throw (your only ranged attack once you hit the swamp... assuming you've chosen to have that power!) 
 

THE LIGHT SIDE 
The place where MOTS really shines is in the Multiplayer (MP) arena.  Here weapons like the seeker rails or the carbonite gun (when wielded by a skilled player who isn't me) can be a deadly ally in head-to-head competition.  Several of the SP levels, modified, make fine MP levels.  

MOTS also lets you choose "personalities" - in addition to level one through eight on the Jedi scale, you can choose pre-selected character types: 

•   
• The Scout - carries the sniper rifle, and has Force Jump, Persuasion, and Force Sight.
• The Jedi - your basic run-of-the-mill Force user, up to level 7
• The Bounty Hunter - carries carbonite gun, rifle, flash bombs and has limited Force Defense
• The Soldier - armed with rail gun, repeater, thermal detonators and Force Defense

Or you can select an MP game with Jedi levels (but no personalities) as you did in JK.  And you can now choose MP characters that look like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. 

      However, the real place MOTS MP levels redeem the entire game is in the recreation of scenes from the Star Wars movies.  Here you'll find the Emperor's Throne Room inside the second Death Star from Return of the Jedi (find the seeker rails to control this level!), the Carbon Freezing Chamber and Cloud City Gantry from The Empire Strikes Back (the chamber works, and the "picture window" in the staging area where Darth used Force Throw to pound young Skywalker into meat can be broken, in which case every one flies out the window in a gust of air like in the movie), and even the Lars Homestead on Tatooine, complete with the small model of the T-16 Skyhopper that Luke was fooling with in Star Wars: A New Hope (but don't stop to look - the concussion rifle is in Threepio's oil bath, and seeker rails are under the walkway next to the real T-16 in the next room!). 

     Unfortunately, none of these levels includes any monsters (there is a Rancor pit in the Hutt Palace, but alas, no Rancor) - however, fan-created add-on levels have accomplished that, for those willing (and knowledgable enough) to seek them out and install them. 
 

SO, DO I LIKE THIS GAME OR NOT? 
There are a lot of great additions in Mysteries of the Sith, from new weapons and powers to cameras throughout some levels (viewable on a monitor) to the use of colored lighting.  And while the storytelling, cutscenes, and level creation of the Single Player levels don't come close to matching the high standards of Jedi Knight, the awesome multiplayer levels and improvements make this a must-have game. 

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