Dark Forces

LucasArts

1st-Person Action

Quintin Stone

Well, I was looking forward to this game, from what I'd heard about it. I've been an avid Doom fan for as long as its been out, and was hoping for another good first-person shooter.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite reach the level of Doom. I admit to playing it a lot, addictively even, but it just didn't have that level of enjoyment that I'd associated with the Doom games. I didn't particularly like the auto-aiming feature that, like in most first-person shooters games, will tweak your shots slightly from the point your barrel is actually aiming at. In Doom and Heretic, this always works for you. In Dark Forces, you honestly never know where your shot is going to go. I've hit Storm Troopers standing a half a mile away with a three consecutive shots, but missed almost everything I blasted at a Trooper standing not two feet in front of me. The shooting is erratice, although I will admit that it does compensate for bad aim more than Doom. The problem is, you don't look directly down the barrel of any of your weapons, so it's hard to tell exactly where it's pointing.

One nice thing I can say about the game is the sounds. If you've got a stereo set up on your sound card, noises coming from the left of your position actually come out through the left speaker. I thought this was a very nice effect and quite enjoyable. Made it easy to figure out where that nasty blaster-fire was coming from.

No, I didn't object as much as some to the lack of a Save Game feature. While I do believe that it detracts from the quality of the game, you won't find me shouting about it over the new groups. In my opinion, it merely adds an extra level of frustration to an already flawed game design. Making the game harder does not make up for a lower number of levels to play, guys.

But, I couldn't help asking myself: What is the Rebellion so worried about if one guy can do some much freaking damage?? In one mission, you single handedly take out every trooper on Corsucant, the Imperial homeworld. Not only that, but on Jabba's barge, you kill Kell Dragons with your bare hands. Isn't this a bit much? Granted, Doom could be slightly silly, but that was part of its charm. The Star Wars universe is supposed to be a little more realistic. Yeah, the heroes always won in the movies, but it was never like this. Even they had to surrender at times.

It's an interesting game, and worth some enjoyment, but I don't think it will go down in history as one of the best first-person shooters around.

Bad Mojo

Lucas Arts drops one notch of respect for this really lame and slightly underdone DOOM rehash. This games one saving grace is that it is set in the Star Wars universe. This means we get to see Mon Mothma and Darth Vader, WOO WOO! Take a picture, it lasts longer! Wait! They did! Isn't this Mon Mothma the same digitized rebel leader from X-Wing? If it weren't for Jan the hot babe between mission I might have never continued, on my quest to what? Fly through the rebel fleet? We don't even get the girl in this little plot lacking game. Our fearless hero, Kyle, seems to be quite able to destroy an ENTIRE star destroyer! Oh and most of Corsucant on the fly. Now that I've got the good points of the game out of the way, now lets talk about the parts I hated. The look up/look down deal? It's like controlling your rudder with a seperate set of keys in a flight simulator, over complex for a simple human action. Can't save my game? Why not? I'll admit it makes the game more `challenging', but when I got to shut down to go to work, I want to be able to save my game. If there was a save feature, you don't HAVE to use it, but at least it would have been there for those of us who could use it. And when it came time to kill Bubba Fett, well, I wasn't impressed one bit, I even had to ask Quintin Stone who I had just killed.

Well, needless to say, this game didn't warrant my 50 bucks. It really was a borrow/trade game in my eyes.