The levels of Dark Forces reminded me why i hated 90's FPS level design. When it was THE LAW that every shooter have a sewer level, factory level, grey corridor maze level, another sewer level etc.

Horrible era for level design.

I just so happen to have played through the first 3 levels of Dark Forces the other night. Have not touched it since I was 7. I enjoyed it about as much, a resounding meh.

It's a strange paradox, as the further I get the levels get simultanously better and worse at the same time. Breaking Crix Madine out of prison in mission 6 is a good example. The level just "feels" right, like something out of Star Wars, bringing to mind the escape from the Death Star in the first movie, but then again I got hopelessly stuck and had to use a walkthrough, which kind of defeats the point. Maybe I'm just dense, but how was I supposed to know, that having all the codes to the red area, the red key, and stading in front of the door to the red floor, I'm supposed to instead backtrack half the level and go through maintenence tunnels from a entirely different part of the base?

I think the lack of saving really comes to light here- if I could save I might just quit for a while, and return to it later, try to figure it out for myself. But as I can't save, I use the walkthrough to finish the damn level already.
Oh god, don't tell me there is another sewer level. One sewer level was terrible enough. If there really is another, I give up already. The rebels can go hire Dash Rendar or someone, I say fuck it.

No. Mission 3 is the only one.

So... I'm done. It was fun for while it lasted, but I finally reached my reall limit. Mission 8 is where I draw the line. Actually, the missions did get much better as the game went on, and this one was good too- until the end. It's the one where I have to set three charges in a room filled with posionous gas, and fight a dark trooper, all before my gas mask rans out of batteries. Of course, I wasted too much time running around befeore I saw where to put the charges, so when the Trooper showed up I was out of batteries, and died in a flash. And when I respawn... I'm still out of batteries. So I can only die again and again, and then it's over. Start from scratch. Thanks, but no thanks.

It's the lack of saving that killed this game for me. Otherwise it would be really good, I've actually come to like it way more than I thought. But not wuite enough to replay missions from square one.

Oh, well, fuck that. I'll move on to DF2 soon enough. Lightsabres! Save games! FMV! I hope it's goign to be as good as it sounds.

Well, you could use the cheat option in the main menu when playing. You can get killed by Gamorran Guards swinging an axe or from falling or being crushed, but you'd be immune to energy weapons.

Yes, the whole series is very good, including the first game.
It's actually the only one I've finished yet.

Yep, I'm back again :P I actually got pissed and made one more last ditch effort to finish the game... and I made it! Well, sort of. I actually resorted to cheating at the end of the last level. I'm rather ashamed of that (I was playing it on easy, for fuck's sake!), but it's such a long level, the thought of having to start it all over again was just too much. I know, super lame. But damn, I just knew I'll either see the end now, or I'll never force myself to run this gauntlet again.

But I have to say, the levels kept getting better the further I got, I really enjoyed the hell out of the level where I got captured by Jabba and got to beat a krayt dragon to death with my bare hands :D Getting onto the smuggler's ship and smuggling myself onto the Executor and then to the Arc Hammer was a lot of fun too. So I'd like to thank everyone who recommended I stick with the game and play it to the end. It was well worth it, and even though it is dated in many ways, and can be quite frustrating, it's still impressive how much fun there is to it after all these years. I hope that with save games I won't find myself reduced to cheating in the next one :D

Interesting. When I first played through it on medium earlier this year I thought that last boss fight was kind of a cakewalk with all the ammo I had saved up. ;) Sure, I can see how some may view the no-save feature as frustrating, but I actually found it very refreshing as it forced me to play better as well as actually trying to explore the maps' secrets for extra lives. I think I only had to restart one level due to running out of lives.

Well, I'm not really sure how difficult the boss would have been- I sort of cheated preemptively. I was down to my next-to-last life, and since the level was so long I really didn't want to start over, and I had no idea what's ahead. The Dark Troopers before the boss, the flying ones, were what I had the biggest problems with.

It mostly frustrated me not so much because of dying (mission 8 was really the only one I had to try multiple times), but because I could not just take a break and return to a level later. Most are short, but others took me quite some time, looking for the right switch I missed, or figuring out where to go now. I would have been fine with a roguelike "save & quit" feature.

Yes, I did it on the first try on hard. A lot easier than expected. The level itself took a few tries though, as it is quite long, and there are a lot of dark troopers. The hardest part of the two games for me was actually the first level of Dark Forces 2 on hard. I always ran out of ammo, only had the basic weapons, and no force-powers. I always had to conserve ammo and scavenge bullets, it became a survival game :P At least it made be better at finding secret places.