Fun and funny stuff

My first experience of The Jedi Knight series of first person shooters began in 1995 with Dark Forces on the PS1. I've found it quite hard to play most of them again recently. The old school focus on searching levels thoroughly and finding secrets in obscure places bored me. I also didn't enjoy the visual rather than gameplay focus of the Force Unleashed series. Jedi Academy seems to be a good balance between the two. You play as a new recruit to the Jedi Academy. You can choose from both genders and from various races form the Star wars universe. You also get to design your own lightsaber- at the start hilt and color, later in the game also whether to use a single bladed, dual bladed or to dual-wield two lightsabers. To move up the Jedi Ranks, there are groups of 5 missions, of which you must complete 4. It's good that you can skip one if you find it particularly boring or difficult. Between these groups of missions there are compulsory missions which tell the ma

This is the start of a weekly series where I look at games that are at last -50%. There aren't a huge number of big names this week but I'll look at eight games that may be of some interest if you like the genre and don't already have them. There's a mix of fairly new games and ones that are regularly discounted.                                                            Real Time Strategy The first game on my list is Offworld Trading Corporation . This RTS, which focuses on exploiting minerals, building technology and beating your economic competition, is 75% off at R139 ($14) and has a metacritic rating of 78 . Some have complained that it doesn't have huge replayability as you can use the same strategy over and over but this is less of an issue at the lower price. You may however decide to wait until the gold edition is cheaper to enjoy the expansion and extra map packs.                                [ screenshot from nichegamer.com ] Infested Planet