...Before Guardrails Were Invented

[lederhosen]

[BTW, possibly the saddest single sentence I have ever found on the Net is this one: "Please note that these tutorials DO NOT teach you how to make a functional lightsaber."]

So, now that we have new computer up and running (the three PCs in our house have been named Violet, Klaus, and Sunny), da_norvegicus has been playing Jedi Academy (when he can prize me off Warlords IV, that is).

It's been amusing watching him figure out effective combat strategies. There are two major types of adversary: Guys With Guns (who, true to the movies, are about as physically menacing as the average Letter to the Editor) and Guys With Force. Most of the latter have light sabers of their own, and they're the ones to beat.

Now, there are two ways you can do this:

#1: Build your own weapon, a unique reflection of the Jedi you are. Do you want the speed of a single light saber? The versatility of two? Or the menace of a double-ended one? Master a dozen different combat techniques, close in to fight with them, and demonstrate the superiority of your sword-fu, parrying their blows and dancing around their guard until, after a long and tricky fight, you strike the death-blow, whereupon time stops for a moment and the camera swings around the two of you, Matrix-style, celebrating your swordsmanship.

#2: Lure them to the edge of a long drop, then use the Force to push them off.

...some days, I'm so proud of him.

Comments

[ex-cerebrate131.livejournal.com]

But Jedi not combat-effective are! Killing enemies not so important as poncing about with big magnetic bottles of plasma!

*grin*

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

#1-variant, as observed in Knights of the Old Republic, which I understand to be a similar game: Go as Evil as possible as quickly as possible, spike your Force meter so far to the Dark Side your entire body breaks out in dry-lakebed like cracks, concentrate all of your experience points on turning yourself into the baddest-ass Jedi Death Machine possible, with the additional benefit that, as a Dark-Side warrior using Drain Life, every opponent becomes a medpak on two legs. Watching my brother go all flying-blades-of-fury on hapless opponents was *lots* of fun.

(One particularly fun episode (no spoilers) found Our (anti-)Hero ambushed by several tough mercenaries armed with powerful rapid-fire blaster rifles, all of whom opened fire at once on him. Our bad-ass didn't even break a sweat calmly whirling his blades around to swat the literally dozens of incoming bolts out of the way while leaping down and going all Zatoichi on the hopelessly outclassed goons...)

[thorfinn]

Mmm, KoTOR light side is just as effective on that front... Jedi Defense (blaster bolt batting yay!) is a "neutral" power, and Guardian healing is just as good (if not better than, 'cos it hits the whole party) drain life.

Unfortunately, you don't get to push people off cliffs in KoTOR, but the right weapon and critical bonuses means that you do generally get powerful enough to smack down most anything in one or two hits.