STAR WARS™ Dark Forces (Classic, 1995)

I think Dark Forces has aged pretty well, all things considered. It was a solid "doom clone" to begin with and if you like doom chances are you won't dislike Dark Forces either. Just don't let yourself get disencouraged by the sewer level or the concussion rifles later on in the game. There's some pretty cool stuff in this game and the designers made EXCELLENT use of assets from the original movies. In contrast to doom, you can look up and down, crouch and jump. Most weapons also offer a secondary fire mode and there's some neat little gimmicks like wearable gasmasks, night sight or a head lamp. DF Features the classic labyrinth style game design and will have you look for keys, switches and even passwords. Some of the levels can be a bit tricky to figure out, but they're all well designed and feature some cool star wars locations. This is a pure shooting game. Designers back then had not yet thought about adding force powers or even a light sabre. You'll have to look for that in Dark Forces 2. There's no multiplayer either, neither deathmatching nor coop-play. This is strictly a singeplayer game. Playability on modern systems: Dosbox should do fine, but there's also been a port released recently. It's called the Force engine and works like a treat, adding comfy features like a nice old mouselook, absolutely improving the gameplay experience. I think it even lets you include mods and further planned features will include editors of all sorts.

You know, back in the days this game was quite hard, mostly because no one was playing WASD+mouse. You had to play this with keyboard only, using arrow keys to move. You'd get shot by enemies standing in corners or higher up purely because you couldn't move your field of view fast enough (to look up/down, you had to hold PageUp/Down XD). Fast forward today, I thought like trying this game again with my modern god gamer FPS skills to see how it's like. First thing first: you can't remap keys or mouse! You'll have to download TheForceEngine for that. No big deal, it works well. Alright, now that I'm in with a proper config, I'm surprised at how fast, responsive and fun the gameplay is. The guns are satisfying and fun to shoot, movement is fluid and dynamic, hard diff is challenging but not impossible. the graphics and MIDI music have not aged well though, but the gun sounds are good and very star wars'y. If you're a younger gamer, this might be a dealbreaker. But if you can tolerate it, there's 10-15hours of fun solid gameplay in there, in something that has become a piece of gaming history and star wars canon.

Very enjoyable, but The Force Engine is a must if you want to play it.

Run this game with the mod (The force engine mod). Plays better, numerous options, can save anytime you want. Standard W,A,S,D control scheme like any other current FPS. Love the star-wars music. As for that sewer level, it was a pain in the butt. I ran out of ammo and was using my fist. Make sure you are patient and use the the single shot pistol, and not the automatic all the time except on the monsters. Those sewer monsters or the trash-compactor monsters from the deathstar off the film scared the crap outta me. I read not to play hard, otherwise Jabba's ship will murder you. So I am fine with medium. Shooting enemies is like watching space balls.

Back in the 90's, I liked this game quite a bit. And I've completed it a few times over the years since then. But while the nostalgia is strong with this one, it just isn't a very good game, if I'm being honest. I love old school shooters, but this one is just incredibly annoying. The level design is designed mostly with trolling in mind and I sometimes wonder if the designers even had a stroke while coming up with map layouts. There's also an over-realiance on cheap land mine placements throughout most of the game, so I'd recommend playing on easy - just to keep your blood pressure at reasonable levels. Another bad thing is that the weapons are mostly not worth the trouble. The regular stormtrooper rifle will do fine most of the time. The pistol now and then for precision shots. Later, you will get two rapid fire energy weapons that aren't much different from the rifle. Plus some grenades that are too slow to use. Mines that are entirely poinless. And a grenade launcher that is only good in open spaces, which makes it rarely relevant. There's also some sort of slightly BFG like energy weapon, but it hits inconsistently and the damage is pathetic. And in order for you to hit with your fists, you have to practically be standing on your opponent's toes. The game sounds and looks the part, as far as creating that Star Wars atmosphere, but after a while, I'm wondering if I shouldn't be playing a better shooter instead. To which the answer is "yes".