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Retro Monday – Star Wars: Dark Forces

Star Wars: Dark Forces is an FPS shooter that came out on Dos (PCs,) Playstation and Macintosh. It was made by LucasArts and came out in 1995.

As I said, it was a First Person Shooter that was very much like Doom, and by that, I don’t mean it was a Star Wars with Demons and Hell. I mean that it simply plays like Doom, and has a very similar feel to it.  It was great fun gunning down Storm Troopers and getting the plans for the Death Star to take to the rebels. It played really well, but I have to admit that I used Dark XL Mod that made the game run like a more modern day shooter, as an example you can aim properly with your mouse instead of the keys on a keyboard.  The game has a lives system, you have 3 in which to complete your mission, if you lose all 3 you start from the beginning, differing the other game that I mentioned, where your lives are unlimited. Another thing the game seems to have are pick ups, I don’t mean the usual you pick up a weapon and it adds to your ammo, I mean that items that have will have some benefit to you, an example being I picked up an  item and it was Thermal Goggles for a while before that I complained about not being able to see, as some of the areas of the 2nd level were too dark, and the goggles helped me, but allowing me to see in those areas.

It also has a lot of soundbites from Star Wars, with Storm Troopers calling you rebel scum, as well as saying other things. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t many different sound bites used as it gets quite repetitive quite quickly. Then you have the music for the levels itself, from what I played it was serviceable but entirely forgettable, there was nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t stick with you in any way. Visually it’s good to look at, though, from what little I played there wasn’t too much variety in the areas.

It’s worth nothing that if you want to complete the game you cannot do so with the Dark XL mod, you can play to a certain point and then the game will continually crash, so you’d have to finish it through DOSbox. I would still say play it with Dark XL to get the most out of it, even if you have to finish it off without it, it’s a good game and more need to play it.

Verdict: Recommended