Recently I picked it up and flew into STAR WAR Dark Forces Remaster . Moreover, this was not the first time I had the opportunity to play through this game. Because once upon a time during my school years I played this game from a pirated DVD collection of games based on "Star Wars". Then I remember the game as a typical doomclone, with a rather rigid and confusing design of the levels themselves. Moreover, back then I used cheats with all my might, because on some maps I simply didn’t understand where to go, what to do, and often died after falling from a height. Then, in the second half of the game, I couldn’t honestly pass a single level, because I simply didn’t have spatial thinking then. Today, remembering that it was the enemies themselves that never presented me with any significant problems, I immediately started playing the game on hard, and it was the right choice. For after the next entry into the same first Doom , I longed for more similar sensations, so that stormtroopers walked in crowds, and you had to maneuver among groups of enemies, and not phlegmatically shoot enemies.
And yes, in a fresh feeling, this is still a typical shooter of its age, heavily inspired by Doom. However, unlike the creation of the Idovites, here they tried to implement the levels and the narrative as a whole in a more realistic manner. Here you have normal cutscenes, where the plot is presented to you in portions as the game progresses, and pre-mission briefings quite logically guide you from task to task. If you compare it with most shooters of those years, where the entire plot was presented in the form of a couple of paragraphs in an attached text file, then this is a story-driven game. Moreover, the specialists from Lukasarts, who were keen on the quests, produced well-made screensavers with voice acting in an animated format – neither give nor take a full-fledged Star Wars cartoon.
And the cards themselves moved away from the abstract nature of Doom, where the names of the cards could only be combined with what you would see on them only with a very big stretch. No, of course, technical limitations have not gone away and, despite the capabilities of the engine, capable of realizing a room above a room and polygonal three-dimensional objects, the maps themselves still look like such a work of angular creativity with a square-nested manner. But in the setting of the universe, with all these clear geometric lines of the environment, imperial architecture and ships, it even starts to work as part of the atmosphere. Moreover, despite all the conventionality of the environment, you can quite easily understand what these or those parts of the map should represent, and what role they play in the world. Even if level design also contains a significant part of the methods and techniques of the old school of the genre.
The local save system still seems a little strange to me, where instead of free saves you have lives. That is, you should ideally complete each level at once and in its entirety. But still, after death, you are given very little back, and therefore after some time you begin to get used to such orders. Moreover, the extra lives themselves are scattered quite generously throughout the levels, especially if you play carefully and bother a little bit with looking for local secrets. Over time, you begin to plan in advance how many lives you are willing to spend to complete a particular level.
So after beating the game, you begin to understand that Kyle Katarn is still a gigantic child of his universe, who turned out to be capable of all these feats even before he mastered the force and the flash bomb. And in general, after the game you are left with pleasant impressions, despite all its archaic nature and sometimes dishonest meanness. And in the new remaster, the picture looks good, without all these ladders of pixels and with a normal vertical perspective, without the vomit gun of the original game.
P. S.: I played the game with an amateur translation of the text from ENPY.NET adapted to the remaster and voice acting from Mechanics VoiceOver, which, despite a number of oddities and, of course, the discrepancy between subtitles and voice acting due to different authors, generally gave rise to such an atmosphere of a good old pirate game on which they really tried their best.
A few notes on individual levels:
First level just a https://sg88wincasino.co.uk/games/ regular mission to get the Death Star plans. The only enemies are Imperials, but even on hard there aren’t very many of them here. The only thing that can be considered interesting is that a good third of the map turns out to be hidden behind a multi-level secret – everything is according to the classics of the old jokes.
Second level follows the tradition of increasing complexity. There is an increased number of enemies and their respawn depending on your progress, but overall it’s just an ordinary task.
Third level with a sewer system, which is simply the apotheosis of sewer levels in games, and after tens of minutes of swimming in shit with those creatures from the New Hope garbage collector, you just want to take a shower yourself. It’s good at least there is no requirement to return to the starting point. And besides the tentacle monsters, the main threat will be various robots and several grenade launchers at the end.
On fourth level The main problem will be not to crash while moving along the rocks at the beginning, and also to learn to cope with the rather infuriating security turrets. And this is a very strong mission, which is not so easy to complete, following head-on to the main entrance. Yes, and inside you will need to understand how to read and enter local security codes.
Fifth level will finally put you against the dark soldier, path and first phase. But apart from this and the stylish reddish “blood moon” color scheme, there is nothing special at the level, the main thing is not to get lost in the mines themselves.
On sixth level you will be challenged by one of the most dangerous opponents – mines. In general, mines have been a pain throughout the entire game, because the authors like to place them under piles of loot, in dark corners and niches, right behind doors – it’s just annoying. Otherwise, the level is extremely confusing and if you don’t figure out one joke with the elevator shafts, you can get stuck on the level for a long time.
IN seventh mission you will again have to face treacherous mining, and in addition, three-eyed grenadiers will return to the game, capable of throwing their shells with fair accuracy. Even if I went all the way Blood , but in handling local grenades I am far from these aliens. Here I remember only secrets that can only be reached with the help of explosions.
Eighth task will guide you into the ice and, thank power, that climbing boots can be found so soon, otherwise sliding on ice next to abysses is definitely not for me. The main attraction of the mission will be the long conveyor belt along which you will have to get to the heart of the production complex. Well, the dark soldiers are back again, this time not only in the form of skeletons, but also in full armor and with weapons.
Ninth level on Nar Shadda, again quite difficult due to the particularly dense concentration of three-eyed creatures with grenades and lizards with some kind of bfgeha at minimum levels, from which it is simply impossible to avoid damage. The level is just difficult, confusing and throws up problems one after another
Tenth same level represents the most concentrated level of aduha. It takes place on Jabba the Hutt’s yacht, where you first have to piss off three or four dragons with your bare hands, after which the entire level is tormented by grenadiers and damn lizards, and especially by damned mines, some of which are laid with a clear desire to guarantee damage to you.
Eleventh level, despite the huge number of enemies, it rather serves so that you can eat up and accumulate lives after the last two missions. Let hordes of stormtroopers and again dark soldiers throw at you here, but you have enough room for active maneuver. And in the end, what you remember most is not even the final battle with Bobba Fett, but a small puzzle in the intelligence center.
Twelfth level could be considered the last truly difficult place in the game. Because there are also whole heaps of enemies that respawn from time to time. And the infuriating lizards and grenadiers return. It’s good that the level itself is short enough and doesn’t torment the brain with special puzzles.
Thirteenth mission takes place on Darth Vader’s flagship and features a large corridor from one arena filled with enemies to another. And even if there are packs of shturamachs you will meet here, and in one place several dark soldiers will be thrown at you, but overall the task goes quickly and fun.
In the end fourteenth final level, turned out to be not so furious, despite the presence of a whole bunch of dark stormtroopers and the under-boss. The truth here is rather the fact that you no longer need to save or hold onto anything. Even if you have to die in one place two, three, four times, it will not be a big tragedy, but only a banal inconvenience. It’s a pity that the final boss himself turned out to be just a rag.
In addition to these levels in the remaster you can find demo level, which the publisher took to gaming exhibitions. Moreover, in the end this level was cut from the game due to its increased complexity. However, during its passage I did not encounter any special problems or difficulties. Yes, sometimes here you can stumble upon unpleasant places with a bunch of enemies, but in the end you rather regret that this level was never included in the main game, because it would have looked good somewhere in the middle.