Star Wars: Jedi Knight II – Jedi Outcast launched today on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. This is a re-release of the 2002 PC, Xbox, and GameCube adventure that doesn’t include the multiplayer. But that’s not the only thing developer Aspyr left out of the Switch and PS4 ports. The studio also didn’t include the option to invert the Y-axis for the camera controls. This makes Jedi Knight II unplayable for a significant number of players who play games the correct way.
I reached out to Aspyr about this issue, and PR pointed me toward a post on the studio’s forums. The company acknowledged the problem, and it says it plans to get this fixed quickly.
“We hear you regarding adding aim inversion to the game,” reads the message from Aspyr. “We’re working on an update now, and it should be available on both Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4 in the coming weeks.”
What kind of freak inverts Y? This kind of freak!
I understand that most people play with direct Y-axis controls, so you may not have sympathy for those of us that do. But I assure you that you know people in your life who invert Y. And I guess now is a decent time to explain why some of us do it.
Playing “inverted” (or “superior,” as I like call it) is one of those quirks that a lot of gaming fans developed over the years. I picked up the habit because I went from a flight joystick to the Nintendo 64’s analog stick. For a flight stick, you pull back to fly up and push forward to dive down. So it felt natural to translate those skills to the analog stick.
The actual easiest explanation I’ve come up with is imagine that the analog stick is sticking out of the top of the character’s head. You push forward to lean the head forward to look down. Here’s a good visual explanation of the difference. Figure A below has the analog stick inside the characters face. Figure B, meanwhile, has it on top of their head. I guess both are valid, but I’m 36 and won’t change now.
Above: Don’t put analog sticks inside of characters faces.
Regardless of intimate details of my controller perversions, I couldn’t play a game on controller without inverting Y. So I’m glad to hear Aspyr is working on it for Jedi Knight II.