Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Hey, it's Star Wars 30th year celebration. I have to talk about something Star Wars-y, and this is the choice for the day: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game.

Kotor, as it's frequently abbreviated on the forums, is a fantastic role-playing game for PC and Xbox, set in the Star Wars universe about 4000 years before the events in the movies. I prefer the PC version because there are a lot of mods (game modifications) out there to make the game even better--a lot of these can be found at Lucasforums in the Kotor section or KotorFiles, among others. There are a lot of choices for you to make in the game that alter play, sometimes signficantly. You get to determine whether you are going to be good or evil and be a lightside Jedi or a darkside Sith Lord.

This is an older game so don't expect Oblivion-level graphics, but it's still pretty good. I play it for the story anyway, so I'm not that worried about how pretty it looks. The characters can be a bit two-dimensional, unless you talk to them frequently to get their histories and side quests. The dialog is terrific, especially for the witty Jolee Bindo and the smart-aleck assassin droid HK-47. If you're into the story aspects of games like I am, you'll want to play the game several times just to hear all the different things they have to say.

Combat is relatively easy to do (especially after a few tries at it). It's turn-based, so you don't have to worry about memorizing keyboard combos or worry about choosing the right attack mode at the right moment. You can choose several different attacks and Force powers, and it'll queue them up for you. I like the fact that you can pause the game at any moment, make your choices, and then unpause and just watch what happens. I prefer it over action RPGs because I get so busy pressing buttons and keyboard combos with those that I can't pay attention to what it actually looks like on the screen.

The storyline is good, the game has a lot of replayability (I've played it a number of times and still see something new each playthrough), and the combat isn't overwhelmingly difficult.

From a mom standpoint--the language is clean and the combat is not gory, though there is a lot of killing to do. Good and evil are easy to differentiate. There are a couple romance options, but there's not even a kissing scene. The romance dialog paths are optional in any case. Some of the puzzles may be a little difficult for younger players because they involve some math knowledge, but there are ways around that. In all fairness, the game is rated T for teen, so it's not really fair to ding them for not making it elementary level. There's also no game incentive to solve things in creative ways--the only way to gain experience points to level up your character is to kill the enemies. If you sneak past them or find some alternate way around them, you don't get any experience points.

We play together with our kids, and while they may not always be able to do the actual keyboard functions well, they can make dialog and combat choices with no trouble. I also found that when I'm playing, the pause function makes it very easy to stop the game and leave if there's some Real Life problem I need to check out immediately. That way, if I'm in the middle of a battle, I don't get penalized for stopping in the middle of a fight to go put a bandaid on one of my kids' boo-boos. I also don't have to worry about inappropriate language being said in earshot of younger kids.

If you like Star Wars or role-playing games, you'll like this game a lot. If you like both, you'll love this game, maybe as much as I do. :)

Adult game-play--5 tech-silver sheep (out of 5)
Appropriateness for kids--4.5 silver sheep (only because a couple puzzles are hard and you do have to kill a lot of things)
User-friendliness for parents--5 silver sheep