STAR WARS™ Dark Forces (Classic, 1995)

I only played the demo for this game back in the 90s. So, as I play it now I am not looking back at it through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. Nor am I going to give it a pass, just because it's Star Wars. When it comes to story and puzzles in FPS games, I am reminded of a John Carmack saying- "It's like the story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not as important." Came into this game expecting a pure FPS game. Boy was I wrong. Game has some extremely annoying puzzles that completely block your progress until you finally guess at the right thing to proceed. All the time I am wondering when the action is going to start again. Some of these puzzles are specifically designed to waste a lot of your time while you flail away, wondering when you're going to get to shoot something again. Oh, and you can only save the game between missions. So, there's no saving the game before trying to jump to some distant ledge. Dare to make a human mistake and you will suffer for it. There are times when there are way more enemies than there is ammo. There is no kill count at the end of the mission like in other FPS games, so I guess you're not meant to take out all enemies like in most FPS games. These are just some of the examples of bad game design decisions that went into the game. Of course, this game was made back in 1995 before they knew the internet was going to be as big as it is. Back then, many game devs purposely made games quite cryptic, hoping to sell clue books or hint books for extra cash. To this day, I am thankful the internet put an end to that.

It's fun, don't get me wrong. But it's not just Star Wars DOOM. The levels aren't the best, with many of them using very similar colors that make it confusing to walk around. There aren't many enemy types, and the types that exist just aren't super different from each other to be exciting. The AI is either very bad or extremely accurate with grenades as soon as you turn the corner. But my main gripe with this game comes from the difficulty. Easy is dead easy. Normal is still very easy, and you know you'll get through it. On Hard I had the most fun until the game started laying mines everywhere. No, really, everywhere. Mines in a row, mines around corners, mines where you're gonna land, mines behind boxes, mines under items, mines in secrets. For a fast-paced game like this...it really slows you down and is pretty infuriating. I ended up blazing through Normal and had an okay time. I don't think I would replay this game.

Bought this version in a nice carton version, when it first came out and could sold it reaching mission 3. I got stuck due to a switch puzzle in a sewer and couldn't solve it. In this time era the other business was to sell guides in form of books. This time it ends in mission 6. Starting on level of difficulty middle, I later switched to easy. There are checkpoints instead of saving and only a few amount of lives for each mission. In mission 6 I had to use a cheat, because I didn't have enough ammunition and had to open doors with firing on special switches. I hate using cheats. To get to mission 6 I used the help of youtube vids as guides. Then I saw the solution to finish mission 6. You have to crawl into elevator shafts and garbage presses, which could be an innuendo to the movie star wars 1, which later shall be star wars 4. It is brainsick like the gameflow and puzzles in dark forces. When I saw this, I stopped playing again. Maybe I will come back later for the last time using cheats the whole game? In case of this I won't be able to change my review at gog. It's a shame, the programmers were all liars: why can't a game be easy on easy and hard on hard? Narcisstic love for their own product? Life is too short for a bad game concept. Why do you need beta testers? It is not allowed just to play having game fun: you have to do what the programmers want you to do. I wished there would be a community, which could make a playable and good game out of it. Pros: - authentic and pure star wars feeling. Playing it, is really amazing cool - fine story and presentation, good video sequences - state of the art graphics and diversified environments for a dos game - very good soundtrack, but I had to turn the music low due to nerving repetitive loops - playable without mouse only with the keyboard, which is hard, but manageable - big variety of weapons Cons: - weird puzzles - brainsick level of difficulty - not being able to save destroys the whole gameflow

amazing game utterly awful controls

I guess this would be a very great game, if not for the more than aweful controls It looks cool and stuff, but imho unplayable. If there'd be a way to modify the controls (you can't change them!) it could be fun... May be a Joypad would make it enjoyable, but I won't buy one just to play a single game. It can't be that hard to implement an option to alter controls. Every game allows that...