Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster: A More Civilized Age…

A long, long time ago, almost 35 years in fact, First-person shooters were a very different breed of game. There were no skill trees, no replenishing health, no dodge mechanics. Hell, even having a plot beyond something like “kill a bunch of guys and/or monsters” was pretty rare. Star Wars: Dark Forces was pretty advanced for the time including wild ideas like multiple floors on levels and the ability to look up and down (what can I say, FPS games of the 90s were incredibly straightforward)!

Star Wars: Dark Forces was also unique for having a real plot and introducing arguably the biggest fan-favorite character that as of yet not appeared outside of video games and books in the Star Wars universe, Kyle Katarn. Katarn starts as a mere mercenary but becomes much more through the course of this franchise in later games.

But the question is, especially with something that is definitely a remaster and not a from-the-ground-up remake, does a game over thirty years old still hold up? Surprisingly, yes but with definitely a few caveats.

Firstly, the FPS gameplay of Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered absolutely holds up. It’s still pretty fun to shoot various Storm Troopers, robot droids, and various space monsters you might run into, and it can be pretty challenging, especially if you are used to the breaks more modern games give you. Health packs and shield generators are lying around, but they aren’t infinite and are often well-hidden. Your health and shield don’t automatically replenish. And while ammo isn’t in short supply, it is a resource you can easily waste if you aren’t careful and then you are screwed.

The levels in Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered aren’t particularly large, but being a game of 1995, even with revamped graphics, they can look very similar in parts, and it is easy to get lost and spend way too much time trying to find your way around. This was a common issue of FPS games of the 90s, but it’s decades later now. There is a map, but it isn’t super helpful. This is my biggest gripe with the game, and it could’ve easily been fixed by at least adding the option of a waypoint or any sort of thing that can point you in the general direction of where you are supposed to be going.

One fun perk of Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered being a very old game is that cheat codes are still totally a thing. You can use these for level skip sure, but there are also a couple of ones just for fun like small mode, giving yourself a high jump or even making everything move faster. These are all easily available via an internet search if you want to make use of them and help the game keep its old-school flavor.

They don’t make FPS games like Star Wars: Dark Forces anymore, and while I think that isn’t a bad thing it’s still really nice to be able to experience older FPS games (and older games in general) in an updated enough way that we can see how they were and still can be fun. Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered is an absolute recommendation for anyone looking for some old-school FPS fun and hopefully developer Aspyr who has been doing many of these remasters is already working on the next games in the series to re-release and we’ll see them in the near future.

That’s all for today, I will be checking out the next Star Wars remaster that is right around the corner, the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection, so look for thoughts on that release not long after it is out, and I may slip in another blog entry shortly before that so see ya real soon!