Dark Forces is the officially licensed Star Wars game in the proud tradition of 1990’s FPSs. Just like most of those, you play as an unstoppable arsenal on two legs determined to shoot, detonate, and press wall-mounted buttons on his way to victory. Unlike the likes of Doom and Heretic however, the game is actually willing to let you in on a fairly large and well-developed story – you play as the Rebel Kyle Katarn, who, in his quest to foil the plans of the insidious Empire mainly travels from planet to planet sabotaging various imperial installations in each level
Along the way, Katarn is able to make use of an extensive selection of weapons and equipment – including blaster rifles, explosive mines, infrared goggles, and more. All of these pick-ups will aid you in fulfilling the game’s various objectives. Unlike Doom or Duke Nukem 3D in which the only goal of each stage was to get to the exit, Dark Forces often requires the player to reach a number of sub-objectives within a level – such as retrieving or destroying a particular object – and then typically returning to their starting point for extraction.
Each level is highly distinct from the others, with a unique visual style and often its own enemy types, and all of Dark Forces’ maps are very well designed for gameplay, often quite large for 90’s games especially, and very aesthetically pleasant to go through.
Dark Forces is already a great game, and it holds up exceedingly well for a retro shooter, but if you really want to see it in even further polished visuals, fan-made graphics packs, mods, and Source ports are available. All in all, a great game that I would heartily recommend to FPS players and fans of the original Star Wars expanded universe.
