Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy first released in 2003, and it was good, and its innovative and still-unique lightsaber dueling mechanics garnered a fanatical group of players that have kept up the game for nearly 17 years. Just this week developer Aspyr Media re-released Jedi Academy on PS4 and Nintendo Switch with updated controls for modern consoles, and it seems like the game’s appeal is still strong—plus, the general multiplayer modes are fully functional. It does everything the old PC game does. It also does these things perhaps too well, including apparently accidental crossplay between PC and console, because by direct-connecting to the IP of the unlisted console multiplayer servers PC players are able to join those games. Some of those players just want to hang out with new blood in an old game. Others are deploying cheats, trolling, and fighting as unfairly as they can. The contrast between keyboard and mouse advantage, plus more than a decade of gameplay knowhow, against how Jedi Academy controls on consoles is not pretty. It is, in fact, kind of a slaughter. Here’s a pretty mild example:
Some console players are understandably furious, asking for the IPs of console servers to be hidden. Other PC players are decrying the cheaters and toxic players invading console servers, instead trying to welcome new players into the JKA community. Responses to Aspyr’s latest tweet is a good example of the kind of social media turmoil going on around the game right now.
Want cheats? d-pad up, d-pad down, click left-stick, click right-stick, click left-stickMarch 27, 2020
PC Gamer has reached out to Aspyr for comment, but no response was received before this story was published. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is available on PC via Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, Origin, and probably lots of other places too.