Star Wars Dark Forces

"Captures the spirit of SW flawlessly"

I may be biased, as i'm a huge Star Wars fan, but in my defense i'd like to explain just why star wars appeals to me as much as it does. Its down to personality and charm. There is no real adventure anymore these days. Everything needs to have some sort of anchor with reality. people complain left and right about lacking realism and the like, and while i agree with a lot of these sentiments i think its extremely important for fairytales to have a place in modern society. Whenever i bring up fairytales people always seem to think of castles and princesses and dragons, or the typical fantasy realm type setting. Star wars truly brought the dungeons and dragons feel to science fiction.

Elves and Goblins - Weird aliens
Dragons and serpents - Huge monstrous brutal aliens
Wizards and knights - Jedi
Fortresses and castles - Space stations like Bespin and the Death star

Its all there! This kind of take on mindless adventure and discovery set in a sci-fi environment is what kept my interest 100%, and when Dark Forces first game out it genuinely placed me slap bang in the middle of it. The gorgeous hand drawn cut scenes (Denny Delk remains the *man* in voice acting), huge sprawling missions and overall epic sweep to the story, it just sucked me right in.

Other reviews have told the plot, so i wont bother with that right now. Suffice to say you're ex-empire agent Kyle Katarn, flying around with your partner Jan Ors doing freelance missions for the rebel alliance -under much scrutiny with regards to your past with the empire. This kind of stand-offish take on both the rebels and the empire makes Katarn a wholly likable character, often with sarcastic oneliners and the like in the duke nukem fashion.
People continuously bring up Dark Forces as a doom clone, but fail to regognize all the features DF brought to the FPS world. Released in '94, Dark Forces was the first proper story driven FPS, bringing multiple objectives, NPCs and in-game cut scenes to the world, which again inspired other games of the sort. The first mission, stealing the plans for the Death Star, also contained one of the first true-3d in-game objects of FPS history; The Death Star hologram. The brisk pacing, varied weaponry with dual triggers, lots of secrets, sideways-moving platforms and doors, grandiose setting and completely anal audio work made Dark Forces the new benchmark for FPSes in its day.

If you pick up DF today, keep this in mind:

1. There hadnt been a single FPS game to date that offered jumping, crouching and sideways-moving platforms.

2. For its time the textures were fairly high res and the enemy sprites were also quite detailed.

3. The production values. This is pure old school star wars all the way, untainted by Episode 1.

4. The plot and cutscenes driving you on to see what happens next.

For what it is, Dark Forces is an entirely impressive objective and story driven 3d shooter, and deserves far more recognition than it has received already.
Although dated, this is one game that will forever hold a place in my heart. I just wish lucasarts would make more games set in the old style of starwars rather than this new drivel.

(scores are based on time of release)

Graphics : 9
Audio : 10
Gameplay : 8
Overall : 9

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/02, Updated 03/21/02