During my many hours playing online, I've come across a number of gamers who think that online play is the way of the future and that single player games will soon be a thing of the past. For anyone who has this view I have but seven words - Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. You see, this game is something so special that it can decisively be labelled the "best thing since Halo". And let's be honest, no higher accolade can be awarded an Xbox game.

Our story begins long, long ago in a place far, far away (sorry, it had to be done), four thousand years before the events portrayed in the Star Wars films. And we get straight into the action. You awake on a Republic ship that is under attack and your bunkmate guides you through the ship, fighting as you go. This first level serves as an excellent and exciting tutorial, and whilst the overlong dialogue seems a touch out of place under the circumstances, it doesn't detract from the feeling of excitement. In this respect it is a tad reminiscent of the way you are thrown into action at the beginning of Halo. After reaching the bridge, you realise that Bastila, a powerful Jedi whose abilities could prevent the Sith conquest of the Republic, has already escaped. Your bunkmate tackles a Dark Jedi to allow you to make your way to the final pod, which you share with the ship's commander, Carth. The next thing you know, you awake in a dingy apartment room. Your escape pod crashed on a planet called Taris and Carth carried you to safety. But the Sith fleet has quarantined Taris and is searching everywhere in an attempt to find and kill Bastila, so you must now decide whether to find and help Bastila or just find a way off the planet. That's right, I said that you decide.

One of the best things about Knights Of The Old Republic (KOTOR) is that you get to choose your path by choosing your actions. The more you do to help people, the more you move towards the light side. But if you are selfish, mercenary and destructive then you will lean more and more towards the lure of the dark side and this affects the events of the story and the way people react to you. Personally, I feel too guilty being unkind, even in a game, so I went for the whiter than white approach - at least the first time around. But because you can choose your actions as well as one of three classes (Scout, Scoundrel or Soldier), each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses that have a bearing on your abilities and character development, there is plenty of incentive to replay this game more than once.

And what a huge game it is. A massive, gargantuan mammoth of a game, the biggest game on Xbox yet (with the possible exception of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind). You become the central character in a massive conflict between the Sith forces and the Republic and Jedi, caught up in a grand destiny upon which the fate of the whole galaxy may hang. This epic story spans several planets, including the desert world Tatooine and the Wookiee homeworld Kashyyyk (no, it's not a typo, the Wookiees like using consonants so much that I'm beginning to think they're the missing link between our ape ancestors and the common Welshman!) But for now, we begin on Taris and it soon becomes apparent that the only thing desirable about this planet is its spaceport and the shuttles that are leaving. The place is a real hole, full of unpleasant representatives from many worlds. It is divided into three main areas; the Upper City where the wealthy humans ignore the plight of the poverty stricken and alien prejudice is rife, the Lower City where a furious gang war is being waged and, worse of all, the Undercity where a population of outcasts barely survive, destitute, starving and at the mercy of a terrible disease that turns humans into flesh-eating animals called rakghouls. Yep, it's not really a tourist hotspot but until you can find a way through the Sith blockade you're stuck there. Better get to work then.

KOTOR has everything you could possibly want in an RPG, adventure and action game, so it's hard to know where to begin. Taris is a good starting point and a good example of the variety of the action and quests in this game, because it will take ten hours of playing time at the very least before you find your way off this world. Upon leaving your apartment and walking the corridors of the block, you meet a number of alien and human citizens. You can talk to every single one of them and whilst most just reply with a cursory remark, some will have a full conversation with you. As you talk, you are given a number of responses to choose and these generally are polite, indifferent or downright unpleasant. Here is a major part of whether you become a light or dark Jedi, as what you say greatly affects the outcome of things. If you show compassion, understanding, generosity and go out of your way to help others then you gain light points. However, if you are uninterested, scathing, provocative and uncaring then you gain dark points.

The easiest way to demonstrate just how much there is to KOTOR is through examples in Taris. You soon meet a woman called Dia and if you are nice to her she tells you that a bounty has unfairly been placed on her head. You can offer to try and persuade the man that placed the bounty on Dia to retract it, do nothing at all, or kill her and claim the bounty for yourself! These are drastically different choices and they occur in almost every situation you encounter. There is always the opportunity to help others out of the goodness of your heart and there is never a point where you don't get the option to force people to pay you for your services. This gives a tremendous sense of freedom and even when following the good path you can still laugh at the outrageous choices and threats that are available should you suddenly feel a little dark.

On Taris there are many, many troubled souls to help along your way to finding Bastila and the tasks you can take on ranges tremendously. You witness several fights that you can get involved with on either side, such as saving a rebel alien from the Sith troopers, giving a marked man the money to repay a debt and you can even help one alien to fake his own death to get the local crime lord off his back! In the gang war you can go on a raiding mission into one gang's base to retrieve the other gang's prototype accelerator for use in the upcoming swoop race. In the Undercity there are people that need rescuing from the fiendish rakghouls and a crazy old man wonders if you might be the one who can lead the impoverished Undercity dwellers to a fabled Promised Land. The amount that happens on Taris alone is simply amazing and the number of NPCs (Non Player Characters) and the complexity of their dialogue is awesome.

This brings me along to one of this game's best features - there are nine playable characters to meet and each has a distinctive personality. They consist of three Jedi, a Republic soldier, a mercenary, a Twi'Lek girl (you know, those blue and green dancers with the long head tails), a Wookiee and even a couple of droids! Each one is an interesting character and has their own story and history, which is explored in depth as the game progresses, through a series of conversations where you can find out more about your companions and strengthen your friendships with them, or run them down and drive them away from you depending on your choices. This is a great addition to the game and the more interaction you have with your companions the more you come to genuinely care about them and feel that they are your friends (sad, I know!) Once someone has joined you they are available in the Party Selection screen, but you can only take two companions with you at any time, so choose wisely.

The graphics are very good and although they're not quite as good as Halo, this is still one of the very best-looking games on Xbox. The dingy grey cities on Taris do not do the game justice in the graphics department - it's not until you get to the rural beauty of Dantooine that you realise just how awesome the graphics are. Go out to the plains and stand still for a moment. Every blade of grass blows individually in the breeze whilst trees sway realistically in the background. The sun shines in your eyes as you look towards it and your shadows are cast long in the evening light. The clouds drift through the beautiful sky whilst flocks of birds and the occasional giant manta fly past. Whilst the outer backdrop isn't as complex, it still gives the effect of plains rolling as far as the eye can see. It truly is picturesque and with ambient sound effects such as the wind, birdsong and the rushing water of a stream, it creates a very atmospheric feeling. Every world is spectacular in its own way - the gigantic forests of Kashyyyk, the deserts of Tatooine, the majesty of the ocean world Manaan; it's all so complete and convincing.

The graphics engine that takes care of all the characters is a very good one and certainly better than that of our beloved Halo. The faces of certain characters are a bit artificial looking but even the worst ones are still more highly detailed than any other Xbox game you'd care to mention. Eyes blink and react, whilst each character's jaw, lips and mouth move realistically as they talk. The aliens are particularly cool and it's great fun talking to the Hutts that you meet (yep, those big slugs were around back in the old times!) and the Wookies, which are two of the few familiar faces that make you feel a bit more at home. The animation is excellent all round and when you and two other Jedi warriors charge into battle with your lightsabers flashing and whooshing it is a magical experience. There are a range of foes that you come up against, including all manner of droids, unfriendly native wildlife such as large, wolf-like creatures, giant insects and even a Rancor beast, various human and aliens guards, bounty hunters and more. Each is as detailed as the next and most hold at least a couple of surprises in store for you.

The sound effects are up to the very high standards of the graphics too. Every blaster and ranged weapon has an authentic sound as the red and green laser blasts fire whilst swords clank and lightsabers whoosh just like in the films. All the effects we know and love are reproduced perfectly whilst the technology of the time gets all the appropriate sound effects for automatic doors, ship engines and so on. Meanwhile not only is the dialogue generally both interesting and intelligent, but it is also very well voice acted too. I detected the distinctive voices of a couple of favourites actors of mine amongst the many characters - listen out for Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar from Babylon 5) as Darvik and one of the Jedi Council at the training facility and Ethan Phillips (Neelix from Star Trek Voyager) pops up too. The soundtrack is as good as the John Williams score of any Star Wars film too and the orchestral music is by turns tense, light-hearted, exciting and full of dread in all the right places. The music in the various bars and cantinas is also very evocative.

There are a number of mini-games to play during the game, including swoop races, shooting enemies from the cockpit of your spaceship (which is reminiscent of the good old Millenium Falcon) and Pazzak. Ahhh, Pazzak, what a fantastic game. It's like a futuristic version of Blackjack where you draw cards with the aim of reaching twenty but over is bust and the highest wins. Throw in your side deck, four cards that can increase or reduce your card total using their face value and you've got just enough options to bring in a significant element of skill and judgement, so it's thankfully not all down to luck. Man that game is addictive and in every bar you'll find someone who'll play you for money - don't blow it all on gambling though and remember, chasing your losses is a mug's game!

One of the most sublimely designed inventory systems I've ever seen contains all the information you need about your party of warriors and more, presented in a way that is incredibly clear and easy to understand with the controller used fully to make navigating the various screens dead easy. The inventory also provides several key functions that make the game much easier to play. There is a record of recent dialogue so you can look through it if you've forgotten something, an excellent map facility with markers of key locations and your all-important journal, which keeps a record of all your quests and the people you've met that have asked you to help them. This is updated every time you take an action that affects a quest and is vital for keeping track of what you need to do next.

There is a lot of character development for all nine party members as well as yourself. As you progress through the game you gain experience, not only for battles but for main and secondary quests as well. This takes you through a series of levels where you must allocate points to your attributes (things like your strength, dexterity, stamina, wisdom and so on), your skills, your feats and your force powers for those that have them. There is a set of skills for you to build up, including things like computer use, persuade, repair, stealth, demolitions and healing. It is more expensive to upgrade some skills than others, depending on your class. Generally it's best to focus on a character's strengths and build them up to their maximums. There are a whole range of feats to gain, with everything from different ranged and melee weapon attacks, styles and specialities to your toughness, defences, battle techniques and much more. The Jedi powers are split between light and dark and include healing, force fields, super speed and jumps, mind control, stasis, disable droid and many more. There is so much to do, learn and use that the depth of this game is almost endless.

Each member of your group must be kitted out with all the latest weaponry and armour to increase their performance in battle. You can equip body armour, headgear, gloves, arm shields and even neural implants, if you've got the technology to use them. There is a big range of weapons too, falling into the two categories of melee and ranged weapons. Melee weapons consist of shock batons, swords, vibroblades, staffs and of course lightsabres and there are both single and double-handed varieties. Range weapons consist of your basic blasters to ion, shock and disruptor pistols and rifles and more. There are also a range of grenade types to throw as well as mines that you can lay to trap your opponents, with varieties including frag, ion, concussion, shock, plasma and poison gas.

The combat itself is a real-time system but it is not a case of controlling your players and learning moves to execute - it is a menu-based system and you can pause the action at any time in order to switch weapons or command a character to use a force power on an enemy, heal themselves, activate an energy shield and so on. At first it is a little disappointing not to be dodging and strafing but this is an RPG and because every weapon, piece of armour and item affects the result of combat, combined with the skills, attributes, feats and force powers, it encourages you to take an interest in gaining as much experience as possible and getting all the best items and weapons, which are more usually retrieved from the bodies of your fallen foes or half-inched out of lockers and crates than actually bought at the local dealer! But, I digress, as you will do in the game itself many times. The combat system is very simple and intuitive to use and it's also very satisfying, especially if you run into a fight and get slaughtered only to try again with a new approach and win the day. It's not long before the system becomes second nature and you whip through the options with ease. Because of the ingenious on-screen mini-menu system, there are no menus to trawl through in battle, you just switch between characters selecting whatever action you want with ease and pausing whenever you need to. It really is the most elegant system I've ever seen.

The high quality presentation is reflected in every aspect of the game and even the loading screens have pictures and little factoids about the current state of the galaxy. The auto save system is perfect and you can load and save at any time too, meaning that you can save after big battles or lengthy cut scenes so you won't have to go through them again should something around the next corner get the better of you. There is so much more to say about KOTOR (and it's all good) but I'll leave you to discover the rest for yourself. All I can really say is that this game captures the magic of the original Star Wars, taking the spirit of that universe but building up an almost entirely new one with only a few nods to what is to come. Do you remember the feeling you got when you first watched Star Wars and were blown away by how convincing, unique and complete the vision of the galaxy seemed, from the alien languages to the computer displays and ship designs? Well KOTOR brings that feeling flooding back, and then some.

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic is an epic story of good versus evil on a grand scale, which perfectly captures the adventure and excitement of the original Star Wars trilogy (not that a Jedi craves these things…) It looks wonderful, sounds excellent and the gameplay has tremendous depth in the completeness of the world, the amount of character development and the storyline, which is a very good one and takes a few very unexpected twists and turns before the end. The combat system and the inventory are next to perfect, meaning that you can sit back and be swept away by the engaging and compelling grandeur of the experience. This is the best game of the year so far and an absolute must have for every Xbox owner, so if you don't have the credits available then you'd better head down to your local store and put that Jedi mind trick to good use. You know what to do - just gently wave your hand as you calmly say "I've already paid for this game…"

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).