Overall really strong old-school FPS that uses the Star Wars iconography and style very well. This game probably has the most in-game story out of any of the 90s FPS games that I've played. The little mission briefings really do help the game feel like more than just a collection of levels. The small animated scenes are also quite good.

Gameplay holds up great as well. There is a good variety of weapons and enough different looking enemies to last the whole game. Progression is general straightforward and less maze-like than other old-school FPS, so generally, there is less frustration of not knowing where to go. That being said, there are very rare moments where you must crouch under a tiny crack in a while, that you may not even see, in order to progress. The crouch is used so infrequently that it does not occur to the player that it is necessary.

*Beat with 2024 remaster

Pretty alright overall. Feels the most "doom 1" compared to other "doom-likes" of the era (which makes sense, we were only 2 years removed from doom 1's release) and I mean that for the better and worse.

Story isn't much, but it works for what it is. Cool for someone like me who grew up with the prequel era to see the origin of smaller legends aspects like the Dark Troopers and Kyle Katarn as a character.

Combat is pretty good too for the most part. Almost all the weapons have a use up until the final levels, save for the fusion cutter (it never did the damage I felt it should've) and the mortar canon (with how close quarters most encounters are in this game it feels more like an easy way to kill yourself then anything else).

Biggest thing that makes this game fall down a good few notches is the level design and the lives system. There's a few good streightfoward ones here and there, but the game'll also throw some labrythian mazes and the odd puzzle every so often which is a real pace breaker. Doesn't help how there's no real conveyance in most instances in terms of where to go with how most areas look the same. The later half of levels also like to get really annoying with enemies being thrown (namely nar shadaa with all the thermal detonator dudes) and ESPECIALLY the mines. Seriously, on the last few levels they're placed in such cheap locations and have an explosive damage range that I swear is much larger then it appears to be. I'm glad I played on medium because I know for a fact levels like nar shadaa would be red dicking me on hard.

The lives system is the only aspect I downright don't like and I wish ND changed with the remaster. You start every level with 3 lives, and you respawn at a pre-determined point in real-time as you die, prodeus-style. Most of this game on medium is pretty comfortable save for the last few levels, and I just felt this was unnecessary more then anything else. I only had to restart two levels (Jabba's Ship and the final level) because of how cheap the enemy placement was. Sure, you can find more lives through secrets and whatnot throughout the level, but I don't understand why they couldn't have put in a more conventional quicksave system, at least as an option for people. Other then that, pretty fun, but definitely make or break for some people.

I've played Star Wars: Dark Forces on two separate occasions over a year apart now, but each time I start this up, I get to the sewer level and give up after being lost for close to an hour. It was only after I dropped this for good today that I'm hearing that the sewer level is infamous for making players do that. Well, I understand your frustration now, my friends.

That said, the last time I dropped this game, I wanted to play games chronologically starting in 1995. This one released February 15 and was therefore the first on my list. As a retro newcomer of sorts, this game understandably looked very bad and getting to grips with its controls (Page up/down to look down or up respectively, 5 to reset view) and its level design had me uninterested pretty quickly.

This time however, I had already started my challenge well over a year ago in 1990, so I have over 100 retro games and even more time-appropriate expectations before going into this. So how does Dark Forces compare to its contemporaries? Actually pretty well.

Star Wars: Dark Forces takes the FPS / boomer-shooter genre, accepts its fate as being called a doom-clone in every single review made for it at the time, and adds adventure game elements to it, as well as the looking up and down mechanic I talked about in the last paragraph. The adventure game elements consists of actual cutscenes and mission briefings that actually give you story details as well, which is really nice.

In doing so, the game actually brought the genre forward in a meaningful way at the time. In addition, the maze-like levels known to players from Doom I and II at this point are 'mazified' even further by adding additional floors and overall complexity to them not found in boomer shooters before this point. For the most part, I appreciated this. The complexity also means that you can more easily get lost, and I think in that regard the devs misunderstood complex for stupidly obtuse in certain levels, like the aforementioned sewer level. Add to that that in that particular level there is lots of darkness and limited amount of battery power for your NVGs and it can get pretty frustrating unnecessarily. The very low resolution in this game and poor framerate doesn't help matters as you try to figure out where to go.

Everything you can make out despite the resolution does look pretty appealing though, especially if you're into Star Wars. It often actually looks like you're in an enemy base instead of room after room with same-textured wall after wall. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Doom plenty, but when talking about bringing something new and improved to the table, Star Wars: Dark Forces does that in the visual design of its levels as well. Enemy design is another part of this. The game obviously has the immediate unmistakeable Star Wars enemies in the Stormtroopers (and Darktroopers, which is a new enemy type introduced here) as well as all the officers and commanders of the Empire you will find waiting for. But that's not all, as there are probably 20 or so enemies in the game in total, from Droids to turrets to those disgusting Dianogas in the sewer level.

Star Wars: Dark Forces will be remastered in February 2024, which means I'll definitely revisit the game at some point next year. If you're into Star Wars and don't mind retro gameplay, this game is definitely going to be a blast to the past that is well worth experiencing with that updated package.

I remember playing this game back on the PS1. The main character is a badass who works as a Merc for the Rebellion. Due to this flexibility, he isn't a main part of the alliance, but he certainly prefers it than working for the empire.

The story to this game is you play as this character during the events of Star Wars Episode IV, and V I believe, it has been a while since I completed this game. The first mission involves you doing something none of the other Rebel Infiltrator's had done, retrieve the blueprints to the death star. As any Star Wars fan knows, the plans are what revealed a weak point in the Death Star's defences and the leader even mentioned how they lost many men attempting to get that information.

You are then called in because a Rebel base when silent from an attack, but this was no ordinary attack as the entire base was taken out and if it was a army, they would've seen it coming and evacuated or at least shot many of them down before going into hiding. It's then revealed that one of the most interesting enemies of the Star Wars franchise is created here. The Dark Troopers. Commando Troopers that are far more powerful and destructive than you're average trooper as they can take out entire bases by themselves.

Many weapons you get are references to the ones from the film such as blaster pistol, blaster rifle, Thermal Detonator and quite a few interesting and creative weapon designs.

It's well worth a play if you can get a hang of the controls and remember how Lucas Arts used to make years ago as this was during the age they made adventure games and before they went lax and started making half-assed games.

I'm not sure why people still call this a doom clone when it has boring enemies and the back half forces you to slow down a lot (I love mines). There's lots of other little things that differentiate it, like various items that rely on a gauge, mission-based levels with briefings, exiting missions when the mission is complete with the main menu, a lot more effort into a story and cutscenes, a lives system, pretty different weapons, and more things I'm probably forgetting. 

It was alright for a few hours, and I really liked some of the levels. I should just stop trying to play Star Wars games when I don't care to watch anything about them.

Played with The Force Engine.

When I was a kid, one of the first Star Wars games I played was Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, which I've since beaten like 50 times. I've always thought it was a perfect Star Wars game, and, as I aged, my opinion has only been reaffirmed.

At some point in my childhood I got a DVD anthology of Star Wars games, which featured all the Jedi Knight games, along with KotOR, Galactic Battlegrounds, Force Commander and several other old Star Wars games. I was excited to see what the older Jedi Knight entries were like, but upon playing them was left kinda unimpressed. Not that I disliked them, but they felt quite underwhelming. I remember brushing off Dark Forces as a simple Doom clone, and throughout two decades I continued thinking the same. Not that being a Doom clone is something bad, and I did attempt getting further in the game several times, but the first level always felt very off-putting to me.

I'm glad to acknowledge how wrong I was. In fact, Dark Forces is not only more than a Doom clone, it's actually a very important step in the development of first-person shooters. People often point to Duke Nukem 3D as being the first game to create realistic looking environments in a 3D space (where you could utilize the Y-axis), but I think Dark Forces beat Duke to it. In fact, it kinda beat Unreal and Half-Life to a more story-driven experience with scripted scenes. It was also one of the first shooters to have a secondary fire.

Now, that is a bit of an exaggeration ofc, but the seeds of what Duke, Unreal and Half-Life would bring were already here. The game does a remarkable job recreating the aesthetic of the movies, and most missions start or end with a scripted scene of a 3D model of a spaceship flying in or out of your location. There is also a lot of verticality throughout the levels, not just in elevators, but in straight up platforming sections that require timed jumps or crouching. Also, unlike Doom and its clones, Dark Forces mostly gives you story-related tasks instead of simple key-hunting (although there are instances of that too). Clearly a great amount of effort went into making this a realistic experience, with cutscenes, in-game characters, detailed animations and little touches like projectiles ricocheting off some of the walls and certain objects in the environment being breakable.

Of course the story is nothing to write home about. It's a simple tale of the rebels thwarting yet another sinister plan of the empire. It does its job though and definitely makes the game stand out from nearly storyless shooters of the era. In addition, it conveys really well the scale and danger of the Dark Trooper program. Honestly, having mainly seen them in Battlefront, I never thought of Dark Troopers as that threatening, but this game makes them look almost scary. And when you see one in-game, it's definitely an adrenaline-pumping experience. Not to mention general Mohc in an exoskeleton. The last level of this game is quite a rollercoaster in the best sense of the word.

However, sadly I can't say the same about all levels. The first level is indeed a bit of a slog. Which is then followed by sewers (where you have to swim in rivers of shit) with puzzles that require a lot of backtracking. The levels do get better from there, but the level design in general is pretty confusing. It's true that Doom, Quake, Duke and other such games also had a mazey level-design, but somehow they were able to pull off an organic progression. I don't think Dark Forces does as well in this regard. There were a couple of levels where I'd run around for like 40 minutes not knowing what to do, until giving up on it and resorting to a walkthrough. And even in otherwise normal levels, there'd sometimes be really boring puzzles, like the one where you have to keep running back and forth through the same tunnels, turning on and off switches. Often there's just too much extra stuff, like nearly inaccessible paths that would only lead to secret areas, which you would spend tens of minutes trying to get to only to realize you didn't have to. Not like the secret areas give you anything worthwhile (usually just ammo and health packs). I also really disliked the grenade-throwing three-eyed cow-people (i just looked it up, they're called Gran). In Jedi Outcast and Academy there is a beeping before they throw the thermal detonator, but here there's nothing. So they can just spam you with grenades that are very hard to dodge when there's more than one of them.

That being said, most of the gameplay is still solid. It still has that addictive and exciting projectile-based combat that Doom pioneered, so every shootout is a blast. The game starts really coming into its element in the later levels, when it throws huge crowds of enemies at you and give you powerful weapons to deal with them.

While Dark Forces in my opinion still doesn't reach the highs of Jedi Academy, it is definitely a solid foundation for the series. What really impresses me is how much of its DNA can be seen in the sequels, despite this being a pseudo-3D old school shooter, while the sequels focusing more on the melee combat and Force usage.

A pretty decent FPS in the Star Wars universe. It is a little ridiculous when you really think about the fact that you're going around just slaughtering hordes of Imperial forces, and no one is able to stop you, but still very good. Has that Doom/System Shock style graphics that I really like. Overall still holds up decently, with only one complaint in that since it is a very old game, it can be difficult to discern where you are exactly. I did get lost a few times near the end of the game, when the map and textures looked very similar. Would be fixed if there were guide or nav point that could pop up if you're extremely lost. I'm really thinking of the last level when you're supposed to fall through a certain hole that I had no idea led to a different area than I had been previously. . . . . .. .

This game was fun. It's Star Wars DOOM, so of course it would be.

Levels are pretty big and labyrinthine (however, the lack of quicksaves or checkpoints make this a detriment to the game as well). Not 100% sure how Star Wars they felt, but the guns and enemies helped with that a little.

Apparently Boba Fett features in this game, but I barely remember fighting him lol

A DOOM clone, though not as direct of one as you'd think. Dark Forces runs on LucasArts' proprietary Jedi engine, a ground-up creation that improves upon DOOM's id Tech engine in a few key ways, notably by emphasizing the Y-axis; levels can take up multiple floors, and player character Kyle Katarn can jump. Because of this, levels are quite big and objective-driven, with what the player has to do changing over the course of the given level. The easiest example is the first level, where Kyle picks up where the Bothan Spies left off and steals the Death Star plans. You first have to infiltrate, swipe the plans, then get the hell out of there. Way more to do than mowing down baddies.

The most important change, surprisingly, sits with the introduction of a lives system. Rather than restart at the beginning of the level with just a piddly pistol, Kyle respawns at the last checkpoint (often the beginning of the level...) with his ammo reserves, enemy kills, etc precisely where the player left off. The trick is that you have a limited amount of retries; run out of lives, and you have to restart the mission from the top. It's a weird dynamic to inject into something as high-energy as DOOM, but it works for the mission-based structure of these levels. It's an interesting effect where the engine is as fast as DOOM's, but the game asks to be played more slowly as a consequence of its mechanics. I get why they moved away from this design in Jedi Knight, but I dunno, there's an interesting design space here that ended up being an evolutionary dead end. If the game Outlaws (also on the Jedi engine) uses a lives system, I'd be curious to see how it feels there.

I don't like Dark Forces as much as DOOM or the later Jedi Knight games (simply a question of those games having way more for me to hold onto), but I respect a lot of what Dark Forces does. Since Kyle's Force powers haven't awakened yet, there's a much more even emphasis on the different types of guns than you see in later Jedis Knight. Cutscenes and narrative focus are really fun to see here, and I love that the game's able to play around with some of its scenarios - that one where you have to bare-knuckle brawl your way out of captivity is a favorite, and I got a laugh out of accidentally stepping into an Imperial Bathroom (or, "Refresher"? I have lots of scattered EU knowledge). Definitely not one to overlook.