Dark Forces is a strain to look at, grating to listen to, and a headache to play.

It offers some fun cinematics and does do a handful of things that are admirably different for being a "Doom Clone" in its era, but the uninteresting array of enemies and weapons, and the not-very-well-conveyed level design makes Dark Forces a struggle to play in 2020.

LuciusXL's The Force Engine source port project is something to keep an eye out for, as I anticipate it being the most palatable way to play this game on its release.

For being essentially "Star Wars DOOM", this game is WAY better than you might guess. It handily captures the original trilogy vibe with a great MIDI version of the soundtrack and very well done, on-model art.

Beyond that stuff, the genre fundamentals are tight as well. Good weapons, good movement, fast, light pace. More plot and mission objectives here than in the average 1995 FPS but that doesn't bog things down. And most of the level design is believable and non-maze-y (with a couple ill-advised exceptions including a memorably annoying sewer level).

Again, given the mission of "make DOOM, but Star Wars", they did a pretty impressive job and it's hard to say how it could have gone much better. Holds up!

I've played all the Jedi Knight games and am an avowed Doom-lover, so buying this felt inevitable. Was delighted to discover early on that the game was obviously asset-stripped to make the following year's Shadows of the Empire - everything from sound effects to switches got taken forward - but was less impressed with everything else.

Somewhat painful to try and play via DOSBOX. When moving at speed through the headier action setpieces, the game becomes a painful whirl of pixels and jagged frames that I'm not willing to sit through in my old age. The sewer level was the icing on the cake - don't make me squint at brown and don't make me squint at a 320x200 map that I have to page through with arrow keys.

Might come back to this once the source port is ready, depending on what the developers can do to make it GZDoom-y. Godspeed to the rebels who stole the plans from the evil empire.

"Some Extra Lore For The Star Wars Saga, But A Bit Boring To Play Nowadays"

For a game released in the mid-90's, this was entertaining enough. The game uses the JEDI engine (similar to the "Build" engine from "Duke Nukem") and creates a Star Wars based story centering around a mercenary-for-hire named Kyle Katarn. The story is decent enough, with many plot points supporting the events that occur before and after "Star Wars: A New Hope", but the gameplay and visuals definitely suffer from age.

The gameplay is just "okay". Its as simple as "Doom" or "Duke Nukem", and has many of the same tropes (kill enemies, collect weapons/ammo/armor/secrets, etc.). A nice difference here is that each level has some part to play within the plot, as minor as it may be. Its nice to be able to go through locations knowing you have a separate goal besides "destroy hundreds of enemies". However, the game gets really stale, really fast. The weapon diversity is sort of there, but most are some form/variation of blaster or explosive.

The level designs are extremely convoluted and boring to the eyes. This may be due in part to the aged visuals, which makes many details squish together while edges are left extremely jagged. However, I think it has more to do with the levels themselves. They are very labyrinth-like, and it is oftentimes unclear as to where the objective/next area will be. There is authenticity in the design, sound effects, and story, but it still started to drag as I progressed and I ultimately ended up feeling burnt out and bored of the experience.

As Star Wars games go, this isn't the worst one out there that you can play, but it certainly hasn't aged the best. A remaster/remake would be awesome to see, that way many of the old-school elements could be cleaned up while the visuals could get a modern polish. I'm gonna go ahead and Not Recommend this game unless you have a lot of patience for repetitive gameplay, are a huge Star Wars fan, and love playing older MS-DOS titles.

Final Verdict: 4/10 (Below Average)

I'd beaten Jedi Academy by the time I first played Dark Forces, and this completion of Dark Forces was well over a decade in the making. I got this game's PS1 port way back when because my older siblings' CD for the PC version was so old by the time I tried it that it couldn't play sound, and I got so stuck on one level that I dropped the game forever... Until now.

Revisiting it through Steam, I still needed to look at a walkthrough for that part, one more comprehensible than the one I tried back then. Still, I had fun throughout, especially for its retro charm. The lack of permanent checkpoints during each mission is a little frustrating, though, especially for the more challenging missions.

It's also unrealistic because the stormtroopers can hit you.

Aged horrendously

So a lot of people say this is a DOOM clone, which it isn't! It's a very unfair thing to call it, that's like calling literally any 3D shooter a call of duty clone. This game is not DOOM. It is objective based, its levels are designed way differently, it has cutscenes, the way you go through levels are completely different. It's just a different game that looks like a non-3d shooter. It's a boomer shooter simply.

The game is just way too confusing at times. There are so many puzzles and questionable level design choices, I have no clue what the developers were thinking. I had to look up where the fuck I was supposed to go after scavenging the level for like an hour 2 times. I dropped this game 3/4ths of the way through, I've seen all I need to see and the game is just a bust.

Looking up and down sucks, it gives a lil motion sickness, and the controls are just weird.

The gunplay is actually fun and fine, but the game is just more of a headache than it is fun. Also the midi music doesn't work in its favor the way it worked for the X-Wing games.

Honestly, I would've played this game all the way through and had given it a higher rating if it wasn't for the god awful level design. Just convoluted labyrinth-like design that plagues a lot of shooters from the mid-90s, this type of design is just a total chore to get through in any game.

(See all my Star Wars Rankings and reviews on my profile here, the list is titled "Star Wars Ranked.")

It is unfortunate that Dark Forces is a bit of a dickhead to get running in 2021, with one abandoned attempt at a source port creating a myriad of bugs (enemies shooting through walls and doors!) and another WIP one not having important features like "enemy AI" switch on yet, I had to settle on some wild script that binded PgUp and PgDn to my mouse so I could get some sort of mouselook going.

Totally worth the hassle. With the exception of the sewer filled Anoat City level, Dark Forces is a bunch of tightly designed shooter maps, full of traps and puzzles and a variety of weapons that would satisfy any classic shooter fan. The fact that they're all part of a wonderfully authentic Star Wars experience just elevates them to something a bit special. Yes, it might be dated not only visually but also in regards to controls but when great midi renditions of that John Williams music and those instantly recognisable blaster sounds hit just right, the grey, pixelated blocks that apparently make up Nar Shaddaa suddenly make you feel like you're right there, cutting about its dark alleyways and into Imperial ran areas and seeing the noticeable shift in enemy type, you're bloody well IN Star Wars. The good Star Wars. The type of Star Wars some people dedicate their lives to being fans of.

When I finished this game I was suddenly absolutely raging that Disney binned all of this stuff.

Having heard about the Force Engine’s full release and having played and beaten Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight as a kid years ago I decided to finally give Dark Forces 1 a try. While I never played the original Dark Forces before I can tell that the devs put a lot of great work into the Force Engine to have this run so smoothly on modern OSes. It was straight up download and play once I bought Dark Forces on Steam. The game looked real nice at 1920X1080 and it ran without a hitch. It also adds a bunch of QoL stuff like quicksaving and full mouselook. The game itself is mostly good, though some of the level design and puzzles really suck, like real strong examples of what’s considered to be bad classic shooter level design with obtuse puzzles and one of the later stages just shoves in mines everywhere in annoying trial and error ways. Though hey, it’s not nearly as terrible as that one puzzle in Marathon that made me drop the game. The game does a quality job bringing Star Wars to life within in its limits. The atmosphere evokes that kind of sci-fi cheesiness of the OG movies had that later Star Wars games didn’t really invoke as much. They also pull a whole bunch of sound effects and voice lines from the movies which is charming. The weapons are of a decent variety and I mostly used them all on the regular, though the thermal detonators are kind of janky to use. Overall Dark Forces has aged a bit poorly compared to its contemporaries but the Force Engine has breathed new life into it and I would recommend it for boomer shooter and Star Wars fans. Definitely should revisit Jedi Knight now because my memories of it is that was it was a big improvement over this game.