Online play once again saves an Xbox Star Wars game that doesn't quite live up to its name.

Ah yes, the Star Wars game. A console genre unto itself, almost. LucasArts has put out so many titles based on their parent company's most famous product that you could build a decent-sized console game collection just by purchasing all of them alone. It's been tough for gamers to sidle up to this "genre", though, because the games swing like a giant pendulum when it comes to quality -- for every must-play like Knights of the Old Republic, there are two or three games like Bounty Hunter and Super Bombad Racing. You have to pick and choose from the genre very carefully, or else you'll buy something that will turn you off LucasArts products forever.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, released about this time last year, was generally agreed to be on the upper end of the Star Wars-game spectrum. While it was unoriginal and had control problems, it stayed true to the movie world and (for a short time) was considered the best SW game that wasn't about flying spaceships. Jedi Academy, the direct sequel to Jedi Outcast, is more of the same, basically, with a few Xbox Live online modes tacked on for good measure. It doesn't stand out from the pack one bit, but it gets the job done -- which would be good enough, really, if Knights hadn't already spoiled your desire for less ambitious titles.

The last Jedi Knight game starred the singularly unlikable Kyle Katarn as he dropped his mercenary job to learn mystic arts under the tutelage of Luke Skywalker. This time around you play Jaden, a bright young spark whose appearance you're free to customize -- you can make him/her a rugged LucasArts game hero, a luridly purple Twi'lek girl, and quite a bit in between. Jaden is a new entry into Luke's Jedi Academy, and he's also the school's most promising pupil, as he somehow managed to cobble together a lightsaber of his own without the Jedi training that's normally required. (Jedi Outcast fans are undoubtedly smirking right about now -- one of the biggest complaints they had about that game was the lack of any lightsaber weapon until halfway through the story.)

Jaden's education takes him through 18 missions, each in its own environment and each taking about half an hour's worth of gameplay. You choose which mission you want to take next, and completing these tasks earns you new Force powers, as well as extra lightsaber techniques. It's a pain to sift through these Force powers in the middle of battle (you have to use the directional pad), but it's a necessary skill, as the classic Push and Pull forces are needed for many of the game's platform-y puzzles.

The variety in Jaden's missions is impressive. Some of them are pure ass-kicking on top of transporters or on the ice planet of Hoth, while others are a bit more original -- one of my favorites features Jaden hunting down ship parts on a desert planet while a huge worm tries to make him his breakfast. This variety alone makes Jedi Academy a nudge more engaging than Jedi Outcast, but it's also enhanced by enough references to the Star Wars films to make movie nuts weak at the knees. Luke Skywalker talks to you all the time in the story scenes, of course, but you'll also get a chance to run missions with (and against) Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2, and Star Wars geek idol Boba Fett. One mission even sends you into Darth Vader's castle -- bet you didn't know he had a castle, did you?

Full marks, then, go to Jedi Academy for faithfulness to the Star Wars universe. And now, the rest of the game... oh, dear, here's where the Star Wars genre always gets into trouble, doesn't it?

The main problem with Jedi Academy is that it doesn't quite seem complete. The graphics use the same engine Jedi Outcast used, and to be honest, they're worryingly out of date by current Xbox standards. The environments are large but lacking in detail, the character animation is very awkward, and while the game looks okay in the screenshots, things seem far cheaper in action. In fact, when you play Jedi Academy in first-person view (used when you're wielding a gun), you'll find that the game looks more like a two-year-old PC shooter than a modern Star Wars game.

There are also some difficult control problems. I can forgive the trouble with choosing Force powers, but more worrying is fighting with lightsabers. There's very little strategy to fighting with sabers in this game... in fact, despite the double-bladed sabers and new skills you can learn, actual dueling mostly amounts to frantic right-trigger mashing. Whether you actually win or not seems more random than anything else.

In conclusion, then, Jedi Academy by itself is "just another" Star Wars game: decent enough while it lasts, but not exceptional in any way. It's the sort of game you play through once and never pick up again -- in fact, the default difficulty is easy enough that this cycle can complete itself in a weekend if you give it some effort. Just like with The Clone Wars last summer, though, LucasArts has immediately added playability to this game by including a wealth of online support. If you've got Xbox Live, the extra modes along make Jedi Academy worth a passing glance. The control and saber-battle issues don't magically fix themselves online, of course, but the new modes -- especially the team-based Siege contests, where you compete to defend or invade a base by any means necessary. The Xbox Live games make Jedi Academy worth at least a rental to online players, but otherwise, this game's worth it to Star Wars fans only.