'Star Wars Battlefront II' news: 14-year-old game allegedly does lightsaber better than the modern FPS

Promotional image for "Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy"Steam

Website Eurogamer adds insult to injury in the "Star Wars Battlefront II" debacle, as the game's lightsabers are criticized for being poorly done.

According to the gaming website, the lightsabers that the heroes use in-game, whether they're Jedi or Sith, are too short. Apart from aesthetics, the game also gets criticized for how it handled the iconic franchise weapon since they new versions apparently function more like neon batons in the game instead of melee weapons which can cut through anything.

This was made even worse due to the fact that lightsabers in-game have been done so well in the past, even before "Star Wars Battlefront II." One such good implementation of the special weapon was back in 2003's "Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy" game, developed by Raven Software. The function of the lightsabers in the said Jedi action game is much more than aesthetic, as it interacts with the environment, particularly when colliding with solid objects. This was seemingly overlooked by the developers of "Star Wars Battlefront II."

As suggested by Eurogamer the older game gave the lightsabers in-game more weight and importance. It did also note that this may be due to the fact that "Jedi Knight" is a Jedi-focused game while "Star Wars Battlefront II" is a first-person shooter (FPS). Since "Star Wars Battlefront II" is primarily an FPS, where players experience being a soldier in the "Star Wars" universe, most of them will be wielding blasters instead of lightsabers, with the exception of a few lucky enough to be able to play as one of the heroes.

Additionally, "Star Wars Battlefront II" is a multiplayer-focused game, so it has the added burden of gameplay balancing, where lightsabers being faithful to the movie version and being used to kill everyone in the blink of an eye may pose some balancing issues which need fixing.

Still, those who want to compare the two games themselves can try out "Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy" on Steam for a low price. It also currently has an overwhelmingly positive review rating with 94 percent of 4,061 user reviews being positive.