Star Wars: Dark Forces

When this game was coming out, I was so excited. I was looking forward to playing a 3D game set in the Star Wars universe. After playing Doom, this turned out to be even better. You can jump, you can crouch, you can look up and down, and you have ten different weapons instead of seven. Also unlike Doom this is more of a thinking-man's shooter. You don't just shoot enemies throughout levels, you solve puzzles like flipping switches and finding codes to unlock certain doors. OK, that's still like Doom but like I said, it's better than that aforementioned game. Plus, we get the saga of a former Imperial who is looking to do work as a mercenary with the Rebel Alliance. My only beef with the game is that there is no in-game save feature. It only has a between-missions checkpoint and nothing more. Hey, it's better than nothing, right? Plus, the music is good. And the enemies are numerous and there's more than just Imperials. Give them all you've got!

This Shoot 'm up has good level design and interesting locations, perhaps giving one of the best atmospheres of the early shooters, though the fact you cannot save ingame will frustrate the player quickly and will make him stop playing. Still, a good game, which introduced jumping to the First person Shooter.

Set around the time of the Original Trilogy, the evil Galactic Empire is working on a project that might win them the war. Battle robots, power armor and jet packs. You have to gradually uncover how and where, and you'll blow up a number of the facilities to cripple their production. The future of the New Republic rests on your shoulders. Are you up to it?

You take on the role of the Han Solo-ish Kyle Katarn(Jameson, smooth, charming), a mercenary working for the Rebel Alliance. Along the way, you will be flown to and from(sometimes in-engine!) the many, memorable and varied locations(including a Mars-like planet, one made up of ice where you can use Cleats for traction, the big city of Coruscant… and a prison where you'll have to free and rescue a spy who's been sentenced to execution!) by the even snarkier Jan Ors(Eccles, pragmatic, but does care about him), your pilot. You used to work for the other side, and thus have inside information, and the two of you met before this starts. She gives briefings, and is a role model for girls, albeit you may still have to rescue her, a mainstay for the series, most of which is solid. Various familiar faces, places and occurrences will pop up, and it's one of the ways this does get fan-servicey. It doesn't quite detract from how this captures the Star Wars feel, look and sound in every aspect, one of the only exceptions being a brief voice-over. We open with a text crawl, there are MIDI versions of the John Williams music, and everything this has that is original to it fits.

Among the 20 types of enemies(including some Boss ones) you'll fight are Stormtroopers, officers of different rank and color uniform, ceiling turrets, and, for some reason, those bipedal pigs from VI, and droids: Scouts(from start of V), practice(Luke blindfolded) and Interrogation… even a one-eyed snake! Get your mind out of…wait… no, get your mind into the gutter, they live in waste. It's the one from the trash compactor. There's also the three-eyed, orange alien. You do combat almost purely these soldiers, not yet scavengers or Cantina-style scum. There's even Mouse Bots! And I swear, they're leading you to where you need to go to progress and the like – I kept hoping I'd come across some digital cheese to repay it with. This gives you equipment vital to your success: The head lamp and infra-red goggles let you see in dark rooms. The too specific and rarely used air mask that protects the player from areas with toxic atmosphere, and one I've described above. Many inventory items run on batteries which can be found. Save them up! You may need more than you expect. Same goes for ammo, shield, health… there are some plot-forwarding cut-scenes, where everyone looks like real people, although limited animation at any given point, they stand still and talk, maybe turn to face each other, point to something, etc.

Other than aforementioned attributes and it not being horror, this is similar to the first two Doom and Quake titles. It is not a mere clone: unusual to FPS' of the time there are multiple floors, duck, jump, swim(not underwater, on the surface), and the ability to look up and down. For that last one, you do use keys, and this does, today, take getting used to, but once you have, you find it's Organa-ic, it's comfortable. This all allows greater complexity, and levels can contain, and be, real mazes. You have to watch carefully, press tons of switches in the innumerable secret bases and the like. This is aided greatly by the optional map overlay that fills out as you go, which can also be fully accessed, along with objectives, percentage of discovered secrets, etc. Unfortunately, this has sluggish, slippery and uncomfortable controls, and this makes the, for the time, mandatory, jumping puzzles more frustrating than they need to be. In general, this can get too tough. It has three difficulty settings and is, as it should be, challenging on Easy. You choose before, and can look up the highest won of, any individual mission(this auto-saves between them, you can't do so during them) from the Level Selector, which appears when you start up and any time you abort. This has a profile system. You "activate" completing when you're ready to, so can look around before doing so. The extra lives make perfect sense here, giving you another chance, with the same stats and re-spawning close to where you died.

You have 10 weapons, several of them cool and offering alternate fire. Blaster pistol, powerful ones, assault rifles, SMG's some of which have a secondary fire that's like a shotgun, etc. Leia threatens to use a Thermal Detonator, once, and each entry in this medium has its own interpretation of how great the threat was: in this series, essentially a regular hand-grenade. Battlefront: a small to medium-sized explosion. In the licensed Episode I game, it's a freaking' small nuke! In this, you can have them explode on contact or have a short fuse. You can set mines like that, for proximity – and look out for those of others! Blow up foes, they'll fly into the air a little! Same for beating them with your fists! Actually, those are too effective considering the rest of this, it's like with its contemporaries, mêlée is crazy, in those other ones, that makes sense. You can stunlock others. There is no co-op or multi-player. This is only 9 hours long, and there is relatively limited re-playability. Where Jedi Knight 2 has a little bit of not-very-good stealth, this one warns you of such yet doesn't deliver. This gets the obligatory sewer out of the way early. The graphics and sound are immersive and good for the time.

There is a lot of mild violence and some disturbing content in this. I recommend this to any fan of the franchise. 7/10

This is a great game. There is no better way to say it. Although there is some cruelness to Ewoks. The story line is original while still including some classic elements from Star Wars. Kyle Katarn is a great character and the sequel expands on him to an even greater degree. Also the Dark Troopers are just too cool especially the Final Boss Dark Trooper.

Rated T for Violence.

I have had Star Wars Dark Forces for many years now.When I was seven I played this game and Full Throttle all the time.For 1994 when this game came out it was a great first person shooter which was loosely based on the original three Star Wars films.However instead of playing Luke Skywalker you played as another person but Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers from the Star Wars movies.When I got my Windows XP along with Full Throttle this game did not work so I have not played this game in a very long time.You basically go through levels killing stormtroopers and other baddies with the weapons you have.Star Wars Dark Forces is a very good game for its time but today its just mediocre with many elements in the game such as graphics being dated.

7/10