Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered Review

“It’s so easy,” quipped Kyle Katarn as he snatched the Death Star plans in Dark Forces’ opening mission. What took Rogue One two and a half hours to solve, LucasArts’ shooter does in just ten minutes. For Katarn, an arrogant mercenary temporarily aligned with the Rebel Alliance, stealing the Death Star plans is just another contract. In, out, work done.

Katarn’s confidence and abilities are evident throughout Dark Forces and Nightdive’s recovery efforts. The remaster is a polished professional overhaul that makes the game look exactly how you remember it, but belies the work that’s gone into getting to this point. In doing so, Nightdive showcases a shooter that hits targets like a proton torpedo, a Doom clone known for its vivid, imaginative expansion of the Star Wars universe. get promoted.

To make Dark Forces run easily on modern machines, Nightdive had to dig deep. The studio rebuilt the game from its original foundation, taking Dark Forces’ source code and rebuilding the game in the studio’s in-house Kex engine. Additionally, the game’s art has been completely redrawn to look crisp on modern high-resolution monitors.

The result is a game that looks sharp and fresh, but most importantly, it’s not new. Stepping out of Secret Base’s introductory passage felt like playing a brand new version of Dark Forces, more like falling through a wormhole back to my first computer in 1997. The rumbling MIDI soundtrack, the modulated “Hey, who went there?” stormtroopers’ hats flying off when you blow them to the ground — it’s all about my first There’s no difference when you first encounter a LucasArts shooter. That is, until I pressed F2 and switched to software rendering mode, which shrinks the screen to 4:3 and displays the game in its pristine, watery glory.

Exploring further, some performance flaws emerge. Sometimes corpse sprites overlap world geometry when viewed from certain angles, causing some ugly glitches. Additionally, while the redrawn 2D in-game objects look great at higher resolutions, the same cannot be said for the few 3D objects in the game, such as laser turrets. In the original software-rendered version of the game, these objects were subtly integrated into the wider art design. In stark hardware-accelerated HD, their blocky simplicity really stands out like a textureless sore thumb.

But overall, this is an excellent restoration. Particularly worthy of praise are the recreated cutscenes, which are an important part of Dark Forces. The redrawn 2D sprites are very distinctive (especially Kyle Katarn’s Chandler scowl), and the reconstructed 3D sequences are spectacular. Dramatic scenes of moldy crows swooping through space, or dark troopers being fatefully deployed into Talai, validate the game’s Star Wars credentials.

In fact, the quality of these cutscenes is crucial to Dark Forces, because now, as then, what defines LucasArts’ shooters is the setting. Dark Forces takes the abstract gunplay of Doom and gives it narrative and environmental specificity. After Katarn retrieves the Death Star plans, he is sent to track down a new weapon the Empire is designing – the Dark Troopers.

The story is less mysterious than I remembered – you have a rough idea of ​​what the Dark Troopers are by the end of the second mission. Instead, the story focuses on giving each mission a clear and exciting shape, much like LucasArts did with X-Wing and especially TIE Fighter in previous years. After stealing the Death Star plans, Kyle is sent to Taletak Base to investigate the site of the latest Imperial attack. What he finds are blaster-charred rebel buildings packed with Stormtroopers, and the charred, twisted corpses of the rebels stationed there, hinting at the power of the Dark Troopers.

This way, each mission has its own unique flavor, making for a different experience. Where Gromas Mines had you dodging industrial drilling on a rust-colored planet and duking it out against the dark troopers of the first stage, Ramsees Hed makes up for it with some tricky, shape-shifting level design. The best missions are the ones that make you feel most like a Rebel agent, like searching the cliffs of a planet festival for a secret entrance to an Imperial base, or trekking across the ice of a robotic facility to sabotage a Dark Trooper assembly line.

My favorite mission in the game is the Detention Center, where you are sent to rescue an Imperial informant from a maximum security prison. It’s the equivalent of the Death Star escape from the first Dark Forces movie, except here you’re breaking in instead of getting out. The complex is filled with Star Wars fan service, from the hexagonal detention area corridors, to how to access them via the trash compactor, to the Dianoga monsters lurking in the mud. But it’s also a satisfying space to unpack. While you’re frantically punching Imperial codes into your computer, a bombardment of stormtroopers is reminiscent of Luke and Han’s chaotic attempts to free Leia from Vader, while getting into the correct holding area requires more clever detours. Ways to pass safety measures.

These evocative scenes made Dark Forces so exciting in 1995, and they remain largely unchanged today, even with richer Star Wars experiences. The game’s lack of lightsabers and Force powers gives it some lasting distinction, but it’s also just a well-designed shooter. The 3D levels are maze-like and complex, but small enough that you can get around them almost by feel (Arnot City being the major exception). Combat is also surprisingly tactile, with fantastic sound effects, responsive enemies, and a plethora of weapons. The E-11 blaster deserves a spot in the Video Game Weapons Hall of Fame alongside the Doom shotgun, while more powerful weapons like mortar launchers and concussion rifles require a certain amount of skill to wield without letting yourself down collapse.Arc cannon too excellent Late game weapons. It doubles as a rapid-fire plasma rifle and rocket launcher, allowing you to blast through the game’s final levels and go head-to-head with those massive dark troopers in explosive duels.

Dark Forces is still present even in areas that I think definitely feel dated, like how it regulates player progression. The dark force does not allow you to save during the mission. Instead, your progress is maintained throughout your life. On medium difficulty, you get three by default, with extra lives hidden throughout the level. Dying will cause you to respawn a few steps back from the point of death until you run out of health, at which point you must start over.

After Wrath: Doom Eternal, a game with a unique save system, I wasn’t particularly fond of this one. But it turns out that living systems are both liberating and unobtrusive. Three lives are enough to get through most levels on medium difficulty, and the promise of extra lives makes secret hunting all the more worthwhile.

That said, Dark Forces does have some flaws. As far as the final level goes, the game isn’t particularly strong. The best ending has you picked up by co-pilot Jane Ors in Moldy Crow, providing a neat arc to your mercenary adventure. However, missions that require tracking down a character tend to end when the character is found, which is always a bit unsatisfying. Doom at least lets you hit a switch before the level disappears to the completion screen.

The game’s biggest flaw, however, is its obsession with mine explosions. Among the forces of darkness, landmines are both a weapon and a danger. They incorporate both functions. But in the latter, they are an outright threat. They trigger quickly and have a huge splash radius, making them difficult to dodge. The second half of the game will often use them to ambush you, placing them in corners and under picked up items. One of the missions, Jabba’s ship, is riddled with mines. In an early level where you fight a giant lizard with just your fists, the mines make it a miserable experience.

Still, I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I enjoyed returning to Dark Forces. I’ve always hoped that LucasArts’ first FPS would get a remake one day, as I thought the original was a little too shaky to fly in the modern era. Now that I’ve played this remaster, I’m no longer sure it warrants one. Nightdive’s revamp reveals an exciting, cleverly designed shooter that perfectly embodies the more villainous side of Star Wars. Few Star Wars games have managed to escape the gravitational pull of the Jedi, but Dark Forces remains one of the best examples.

The project also raises exciting questions about the road ahead, as Nightdive’s deal with Disney to overhaul Dark Forces opens up the possibility of a Jedi remake. The sequel to Dark Forces is not only a great Star Wars first-person shooter, but one of the best 3D shooters of the ’90s, with a truly massive sense of scale and some incredibly advanced ideas for the time. . But what is always in motion is the future. at present? mission completed.