AceRimmer
28th Jun 06, 6:34 PM
Dark Forces - Old-Skool FPS
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Year of release: 1995
Development House: Lucasarts
Publisher: Lucasarts
Website: www.lucasarts.com/products/darkforces/splash.htm
**************************************
Game score: 80 / 100
Graphics: 4 / 5 (Then), 1 / 5 (Now)
Sound: Anywhere from 1 / 5 to 4 / 5 (See review as to why this is)
Gameplay: 3 / 5
Concept: 4 / 5
Execution: 5 / 5
Controls: 4 / 5
Enjoyment: 4 / 5
Replay ability: 2 / 5
Difficulty: 2 / 5
Learning Curve: 5 / 5
Patch version: 1.0
Bugs: 1 / 5
Modability / Community support: 3 / 5
Review
This game was released way back in 1995 in what I like to call the "Doom Clone" Era. That is, this was when lots of companies attempted to replicate the success of Doom and Doom II, but very few actually succeeded. This is one of those few. Set in the Star Wars universe, this game is a great mix of action, atmosphere, exploration and even a little bit of puzzle-solving. Unlike today's crop of mixed efforts from Lucasarts involving our galaxy away from our galaxy, it also happens to be quite good.
Story? Well, actually there is evidence of some effort being put into this, although ultimately it's an excuse to blast all and sundry into the next dimension with your arsenal of death. Including about 500 stormtroopers. Anyway, to get back on topic, your character is Kyle Katarn, who defected from the Empire to become a traitor-cum-mercenary working for the Rebel Alliance. The first mission is to get the Death Star plans (before Ep IV in the timeline) before going on to stop an evil plan by a crazed Imperial General building an army of all-powerful robotic troopers, called Dark Troopers.
There are about fourteen missions, all of which are well designed and chock-full of items, weaponry, baddies and secrets too. Gameplay basically consists of running about, shooting up stormtroopers and collecting key cards in order to get to the main objective (such as setting a detonator charge, placing a beacon, rescuing someone etc.) Although the key cards bit has been done to death many times since. There is a bit of puzzle-solving to do: for example, there is a really good puzzle late in the game that involves setting a series of doors in a certain sequence in order to get through. The puzzle bit comes from the fact that the doors are controlled from one end only, meaning you have to set doors first and then move through to see if it worked. Simple, yet effective at breaking up the action and taxing the player a bit more than simply blazing away with the fire button.
Speaking of fire buttons, being a DOS game made in the pre- Windows NT 4.0 days, there is no mouse support while playing the game; it's in the menus but not in the actual game. This means no mouse look. It also means that strafing and turning requires two sets of keys and is therefore really hard to do one at the same time as the other (as you need the other hand to use the fire, jump, crouch etc. buttons). Mind you, you can take quite a bit of damage from the hordes of white-helmeted ones, so it doesn't matter so much. It does remove some of the strategy of dodging, using cover though.
Music and sound is solid, although this game, being one of the DOS crowd, also means that the quality can be quite poor to rather good depending on your sound card (If you have a Soundblaster Pro dating back to 1995, that is!) Hence, I was forced to emulate Soundblaster 16 quality using that wonderful utility, VDMSound, which was merely good, not great. However, An Awe32 gold soundcard yields the best sound and music in-game (speaking from memory when I had that card about 7 years ago).
Graphically, the game won't win any prizes today, given the blocky textures, angular level design and amazingly poor 2D sprites used for enemies, weapons etc. Far away, they are just a few pixels in the same vaguely similar colours as they are up close, while being close up just reveals a horrible pixelated mess that only vaguely suggests that your're being attacked by an Imperial officer. Mind you, level design is solid, with some varied environments and tight, almost maze-like installations. It's quite good considering that some modern FPS's fail in this department.
Ultimately though, it's all down to gameplay; It's great fun shooting up hapless idiots in white armor, rescuing people and blowing up entire installations. Although eventually it gets old, the combination of varied missions, good level design, plenty of weapons and some puzzles made this a winner then, as well as a pretty good shooter today. No lightsabers, but then it was only a matter of time before they made an appearance.....
Bottom Line: Good, solid shooter from the good old days.
Good stuff: Plenty of action, level design, weapons, cutscenes, characters, story. Music and sound are good if you can get them to work.
Bad stuff: Doom clone, so it was always going to struggle in it's shadow. Music and sound quality is variable. Shooting stormtroopers eventually gets old. No lightsaber.
Reviewer System Specs:
CPU: 2.8Ghz
RAM: 512mb
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9600 XT at 1280x1024
Sound Card and Speakers: On-board 2:1 speakers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Year of release: 1995
Development House: Lucasarts
Publisher: Lucasarts
Website: www.lucasarts.com/products/darkforces/splash.htm
**************************************
Game score: 80 / 100
Graphics: 4 / 5 (Then), 1 / 5 (Now)
Sound: Anywhere from 1 / 5 to 4 / 5 (See review as to why this is)
Gameplay: 3 / 5
Concept: 4 / 5
Execution: 5 / 5
Controls: 4 / 5
Enjoyment: 4 / 5
Replay ability: 2 / 5
Difficulty: 2 / 5
Learning Curve: 5 / 5
Patch version: 1.0
Bugs: 1 / 5
Modability / Community support: 3 / 5
Review
This game was released way back in 1995 in what I like to call the "Doom Clone" Era. That is, this was when lots of companies attempted to replicate the success of Doom and Doom II, but very few actually succeeded. This is one of those few. Set in the Star Wars universe, this game is a great mix of action, atmosphere, exploration and even a little bit of puzzle-solving. Unlike today's crop of mixed efforts from Lucasarts involving our galaxy away from our galaxy, it also happens to be quite good.
Story? Well, actually there is evidence of some effort being put into this, although ultimately it's an excuse to blast all and sundry into the next dimension with your arsenal of death. Including about 500 stormtroopers. Anyway, to get back on topic, your character is Kyle Katarn, who defected from the Empire to become a traitor-cum-mercenary working for the Rebel Alliance. The first mission is to get the Death Star plans (before Ep IV in the timeline) before going on to stop an evil plan by a crazed Imperial General building an army of all-powerful robotic troopers, called Dark Troopers.
There are about fourteen missions, all of which are well designed and chock-full of items, weaponry, baddies and secrets too. Gameplay basically consists of running about, shooting up stormtroopers and collecting key cards in order to get to the main objective (such as setting a detonator charge, placing a beacon, rescuing someone etc.) Although the key cards bit has been done to death many times since. There is a bit of puzzle-solving to do: for example, there is a really good puzzle late in the game that involves setting a series of doors in a certain sequence in order to get through. The puzzle bit comes from the fact that the doors are controlled from one end only, meaning you have to set doors first and then move through to see if it worked. Simple, yet effective at breaking up the action and taxing the player a bit more than simply blazing away with the fire button.
Speaking of fire buttons, being a DOS game made in the pre- Windows NT 4.0 days, there is no mouse support while playing the game; it's in the menus but not in the actual game. This means no mouse look. It also means that strafing and turning requires two sets of keys and is therefore really hard to do one at the same time as the other (as you need the other hand to use the fire, jump, crouch etc. buttons). Mind you, you can take quite a bit of damage from the hordes of white-helmeted ones, so it doesn't matter so much. It does remove some of the strategy of dodging, using cover though.
Music and sound is solid, although this game, being one of the DOS crowd, also means that the quality can be quite poor to rather good depending on your sound card (If you have a Soundblaster Pro dating back to 1995, that is!) Hence, I was forced to emulate Soundblaster 16 quality using that wonderful utility, VDMSound, which was merely good, not great. However, An Awe32 gold soundcard yields the best sound and music in-game (speaking from memory when I had that card about 7 years ago).
Graphically, the game won't win any prizes today, given the blocky textures, angular level design and amazingly poor 2D sprites used for enemies, weapons etc. Far away, they are just a few pixels in the same vaguely similar colours as they are up close, while being close up just reveals a horrible pixelated mess that only vaguely suggests that your're being attacked by an Imperial officer. Mind you, level design is solid, with some varied environments and tight, almost maze-like installations. It's quite good considering that some modern FPS's fail in this department.
Ultimately though, it's all down to gameplay; It's great fun shooting up hapless idiots in white armor, rescuing people and blowing up entire installations. Although eventually it gets old, the combination of varied missions, good level design, plenty of weapons and some puzzles made this a winner then, as well as a pretty good shooter today. No lightsabers, but then it was only a matter of time before they made an appearance.....
Bottom Line: Good, solid shooter from the good old days.
Good stuff: Plenty of action, level design, weapons, cutscenes, characters, story. Music and sound are good if you can get them to work.
Bad stuff: Doom clone, so it was always going to struggle in it's shadow. Music and sound quality is variable. Shooting stormtroopers eventually gets old. No lightsaber.
Reviewer System Specs:
CPU: 2.8Ghz
RAM: 512mb
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9600 XT at 1280x1024
Sound Card and Speakers: On-board 2:1 speakers