STAR WARS™: Dark Forces Remaster

I think it's kinda unreasonable to expect people to pay $30/£25 for an almost 30 year old game. Even adjusted for inflation, I don't think my dad paid that much for his CD copy. I think folk would be better off using The Force Engine, a new reverse-engineered source port of Dark Forces made by the same guy who created DarkXL. It has GPU rendering, widescreen support and high resolution support up to 4K. And it's completely free, as long as you own a retail, Steam, GOG or Origin/EA Play copy of the original game.

There are mods for the original game, but i do prefer this remaster. It's exactly what I expected, excellent remaster by nightdive studios. I will keep supporting nightdive studios because they bring oldschool fps games that I love back to life. Keep up the good work! Now, please do a remaster of dark forces 2!

Not a whole lot has been done to the game- this is a remaster in the true sense of the word, not a remake, so the graphics, while much less blocky, are still primitive and pixelated, items and bodies are still 2D sprites that turn so they're always facing you, textures are still applied in such a way that a wall full of computer monitors looks more like computer monitor-themed wallpaper that might cut off in the middle of a screen if that's where a wall happens to end, etc. The music hasn't changed and the only extras to speak of are a few pieces of concept art and one playable prototype level that's largely made of components from the first actual level arranged slightly differently. The main improvements are that the graphics don't fade into blurry clumps over distance and the controls have been modernized a bit. And that's huge. Being able to clearly see more than 10 feet in front of you makes a big difference in how enjoyable the game is, and having a standard WASD/mouse wheel control scheme makes it much more comfortable to play. It renders the old version of the game completely obsolete, since you're getting almost the exact same experience without anything altered unnecessarily. There is one other big improvement, which is the cutscenes- the ships all look gorgeous while being true to the original, and while the painted-style characters look a little blurry and offputting, they're no worse than the original versions. The music was great from the start, so keeping it the same is no loss. My only complaint is the price, which seems too high for a bare-bones remaster of such an old title. I appreciate the effort put in, but for that price (well, probably slightly more) I'd expect something closer to a full-on remake more along the lines of the System Shock game from the same company. This is a well-done remaster worth buying, but it's still a fairly short, simple game without a ton of content. Buy it when it's on sale.

You can only call this a perfect remaster if you have no experience with the original game, as so often with Nightdive. This time they screwed up the music. The tracks start out fine, but within a minute go off the rails because of timing issues. If that is not fixed, this is a botched release. The new sprites are stellar though, really a great job on those! Cutscenes are a mixed bag, some impressive, others now look like comics, but these can be toggled so not a problem. Best way to play Dark Forces is still dropping The Force Engine onto the DOS version. You've got more options and all the great fan missions working perfectly (still doubtful how well that will work on this version). I suppose, if the new sprites can be used in TFE, then that will be the ultimate version, because it's the only advantage the remaster has going for it.