STAR WARS™ Dark Forces (Classic, 1995)

It's literally DOOM with a Star Wars skin and more story. So what's not to love? If you love Star Wars, check. Did you love DOOM? Check! Did you wish DOOM had more story? Check! Honestly, this is a fun shooter game; that mixes in some story to give you that Star Wars feel through and though. Very enjoyable game.

Dark Forces isn't much more than a Star Wars take on Doom but this is still one of the best of its era. The levels are quite large with multiple objectives, vertical platforms to scale, and cool Star Wars iconography spread throughout. The missions take Kyle Katarn throughout all the major environments you'd hope for and I love seeing classic weapons and enemies in sprite form. The interstitial cut-scenes with full screen pixel art telling the story elevate the game above other Doom clones

Why is this my fav? Because you aren't using magic and being a one man army like other Jedi games. All you got is your wits and equipment. My ideal Star Wars game would be Boba Fett in first person in an open world setting, with contracts the galaxy over and having proceduraly generated planets so you never see the same place twice, along with 800+ planets - To live Star Wars like it should be lived. Too bad the people at Star Wars assume we all want to be a Jedi Master and haven't figured this out yet. Until we get that, this is as close as you will get. You are just a well equipped Merc here with your biggest piece of equipment being a personal shield... But that won't save you if you don't have your wits if you play on hard like I do. Add in a real 3D engine, not the originals 2.5D, and full on MIDI instruments from a MIDI engine with a great Soundfont and this is a great game! Always was a great game as I played the heck out of it back in the day but now it is like it should be. Linux users: - The Force Engine: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/theforceengine (for automated building). Other distros may need to do manually. - QSynth MIDI engine: https://qsynth.sourceforge.io/ To make it perform flawlessly, I had to set the MIDI driver to alsa_seq, Client name ID to pid, audio driver on the Audio tab to alsa, sample rate of 44.1khz, and the audio was a bit scratchy at 64 buffer size so I increased it to 128 and it is rock solid. Note you will need to select the MIDI engine in The Force Engine to use it. - SoundFont: https://www.mediafire.com/?zo8l3dgf2989266 - This has some great instruments. If you want a comparison, the 2nd half of this vid should convince you: https://youtu.be/-UwhEyxFrns

For the past year I've been getting into old PC shooters I never played before as a Nintendo/Sega kid in the 90s. For anyone else looking into these old games, this game is a great starting point. For new players I'd almost say its mandatory you get The Force Engine source port. It essentially a mod that makes the game run in 1440p (or 1080p, or 4k), adds true mouse controls and fixes the controls to feel smooth and modern. And it's free. While the level design can get a little obtuse compared to Doom 1/2/64, Dark Forces is still probably one of my top 5 old PC shooters of the 25 or so I've played in the last year. I read the patch notes and saw that there are even a few subtle minor map tweaks the Force Engine port added to make certain things less confusing, so I only had to look up what to do a couple times on YouTube. There's tons of fan made maps too, lots of content in this purchase.

Dark Forces is a very old school "Boomer Shooter" that's set in the Star Wars universe. The story is actually quite good for the time and cutscenes between missions are well done. Unfortunately, the engine doesn't support very complicated gameplay so missions are more or less just "kill everyone and go to the end, sometimes backtrack to the beginning". Remember, that Dark Forces came out in a time when there was no horrible Star Wars Prequels, no stupid "improved" Special Editions of the original movies and people were hungry for Star Wars content. Luckily, LucasArts delivered, and Dark Forces, X-Wing & TIE Fighter are still some of the best Star Wars games ever made. The protagonist Kyle Katarn is a great character that grows in the sequels. I do recommend to check Dark Forces out. It's an important piece of gaming history and still quite fun.