Star Wars: Dark Forces

The Good
Dark Forces was and is a classic. Taking the role of mercenary Kyle Katarn, the players engage in fourteen levels of Imperial slaughtering. On top of that, there is thought required; some of the puzzles are tricky. On top of THAT, there are some really cool effects in this game: a Death Star hologram rotates in place; TIE fighters launch and land in the Super Star Destroyer Executor's bay; spotlights pan the rooftops of Coruscant as you try to reach the Imperial Security building. Incredibly details for something so old.

The Bad
It's age has shown, however. LucasArts has refused to release the source code, which would allow a 3D-accelerated version to be created by users. Stuck in 320 x 200 mode for PC users, the game does become badly pixelated. Macintosh users are better off; they get to play Dark Forces in 640 x 480 glory.

The Bottom Line
The staying power of this old game lies not only with the wonderfully crafted universe LucasArts created for us. Rather, hundreds of user-made levels have propagated the Internet and our hard drives, ranging from the epitome of laziness known as "Mines" to the glory and wonder known as "Condition Red," "Mt Kurek," and "Dark Tide." While the Dark Forces community has shrank in size, it still lives at www.df-21.net where forums are still active and downloads are still available. Few games have had such a lasting, creative community. In this old engine, users have created effects to rival the newest of games. So, even if you're bored with the originals, don't throw that CD...check out what others have done.

You just may decide that Dark Forces is, just maybe, the greatest game of all time.

The Good
First off, let me say that I played Jedi Knight BEFORE I even looked at Dark Forces. But even after playing the sequel, I still enjoy playing the original.

The gameplay is quite simple. You play the role of Kyle Katarn, a mercenary-for-hire agent employed by the Rebel Alliance. Your first mission is the theft of the Death Star schematics (Kyle says in the game "Much too easy", and even of the difficult settings, the first mission is indeed a cakewalk). After this mission you embark on a series of missions revolving around a new breed of weapon that the Empire is developing called the "Dark Trooper". So you play through detailed levels trying to find out what is happening.

The graphics are very good considered the year it was released. The blasters look real, and the game has that Empire "Sterile" look to it, although that doesn't really work in the outdoor levels. The movement on my P233 is ultra-fluid, even with all the music, SFX's, and graphical detail cranked to full, so it is very immersing.

The sound is superb. Come on, it's Star Wars! John Williams infamous music is playing in the background, and sampling the sounds of the blaster shots give the game that "Star Wars" feel to it.

The control is good, especially the keyboard, when it setup for your tastes (more on that later)

The computer AI is okay, but fighting the Dark Troopers themselves can be very discouraging. They are tough on any level of difficulty.

The Bad
The control setup for the keyboard is extremely frustrating, mainly due to the fact that the setup is done OUTSIDE the game environment. For example, if you have the "Fire" key mapped to the "G" key, and you find that that isn't working well for you (let's face it: ANYONE who maps the "Fire" key to "G" has NEVER played a 1st person shooter before grin), you need to exit the game, run the setup program, change the key, save the settings, and restart the game. Come on LucasArts, even id could do on-the-fly keyboard mapping, and that was in Wolfenstein 3D.

The cutscenes were animated (much like the cutscenes in X-Wing). I find they were poorly animated, and the voice-over were sub-par. The voice-overs in-game were much better.


The Bottom Line
Despite all its drawbacks, You have to give LucasArts credit for its accomplishment on its very first 3D shooter. They managed to make a convincing environment to play make-believe in, even though it is rough around the edges. A great game all-around.

The Good
Released during LucasArts heyday in the mid-nineties when they were on a role in the adventure genre with the SCUMM based games, and the Star Wars brand was at its pre-prequel resurgent height, Dark Forces provides Star Wars with its own quality FPS as much as X-Wing gave it a quality space-flight sim.

The story is set during the classic era, intertwined around the events of the films with the first mission being to steal the plans of the first Death Star. This places you in amongst the classic scenario of fighting against Stormtroopers in typical Imperial garrisons, creating the atmosphere with well-drawn sprites and the iconic sound effects. You are cast as Kyle Katarn an ex-Stormtrooper turned Rebel Agent, whose hard boiled attitude is obviously a tribute to Han Solo. In this the plotting is quite poor, as the developers obviously couldn't think of a decent main character so resorted to the loveable rogue stereotype, much like the later Dash Rendar, it wouldn't be until the later games that Kyle really comes into his own. Here he is a thin character sent on missions by the Rebel Alliance to 'investigate' an Imperial project to create 'Dark Troopers', a new kind of super Stormtrooper. Of course this FPS is very much of it's time and investigating generally involves progressing through a linear level shooting anything that moves and picking up key cards and weapons and despatching such a number of Imperial troops that Kyle Katarn can easily be a one man army. That LucasArts actually tried to conceive a plot to this is a credit, compared to games such as Duke Nukem, Dark Forces features cut-scenes that progress the story and give you a sense that you're somehow contributing to it.

The game engine is good for it's time, the graphics are clean and sharp with levels well thought out and the Stormtroopers have the classic poor shooting skills. The controls are intuitive and allow for looking up and down making the game world deeper, though you hardly have to for game play.

The Bad
Any negative criticism of the game really depends on what you might be expecting to get out of it. The game is very much an FPS both in game play and plot line, which has you facing an ever increasing number of enemies of ever increasing toughness, dressed up in a plot to make it believable, though the actual plot of the Dark Troopers is hardly believable, but this is Star Wars. All this plays out in the typical check point level format, picking up a vast array of weapons generally based on those seen in the films, and health packs, a-la Doom et al. It's a shame that so many of the FPS clichés made it into the game, but then it is a product of it's time.

If you're looking to relive parts from the films or see any hints of the main characters, you'll be disappointed though as aside from appearances of Darth Vader in the cut-scenes the game lives pretty much in it's own world. None of the classic Star Wars locales are given for exploration, although some of the levels are made to be familiar to them.

The game doesn't have the re-playability of its sibling space flight sim games and could have opted to place you in the role of an anonymous rebel agent as in X-Wing, allowing for branching missions and creating a plot more around you, but that really wasn't the mode for FPS at the time, only really System Shock was getting near that style of play.

The Bottom Line
Overall the game is a great way to live out Star Wars fantasies and place yourself in the action, nicely framed in the Star Wars universe. What it lacks in original game play it makes up for in polish and plot, making it a thoroughly engaging experience, that if worth playing for all Star Wars fans, if they can get it to run on modern systems. More importantly as it was made and set before the Star Wars universe exploded after the prequels came out, it retains the innocent charm of the original trilogy.