Star Wars: Dark Forces
Rogue
One has finally made its way to store shelves, so if you somehow missed the
first Star Wars Anthology film in
theatres, you have no excuse not to check it out now! In celebration, I thought
it’d be fun to look back into the archives and look at the original story about
how the Rebels got those pesky Death Star plans. This is Star Wars: Dark Forces.
Dark
Forces is the original Expanded Universe story about the great Death Star
plan heist. Instead of a movie, here the mission is experienced through a video
game. It was released in 1995 for MS DOS and ported to the original PlayStation
one year later. Being an early PC game, the first thing you’ll notice about Dark Forces is that it bears a striking
resemblance to a certain other early PC first-person shooter.
Can you guess which one?
The game stars Kyle Katarn, a
mercenary currently employed by the Rebels. He’s been given the impossible task
of invading the Imperial base on the planet Dantua and retrieving the secret
plans. That’s right: whereas it took an entire army to get the plans in Rogue One, all it took in the Legends
canon was one dude with a blaster. Is that realistic? No. Is it awesome? Yeah.
The first level teaches you the
typical Doom-style controls and
combat. You can’t look on a vertical axis, only horizontal. Ammo and health
kits are littered around the map, but I personally never really needed them.
Imperial officers and Stormtroopers are around every turn, and it’s your job to
fight through the guard and make your way to the plans.
One of my favourite parts of the game
is the delightfully dated background music. Composed entirely with various
blips and boops, the composers of the game did an admirable job of crunching
down John Williams’ classic tunes to fit on the DOS file. Listen to their
rendition of the classic Star Wars theme
and just try not to grin.
The character models are actually
really detailed all things considered. While everyone is blatantly
two-dimensional and blurry to look at, you can definitely tell two enemy types
apart from each other. On the other hand, a lot of the backgrounds look like
the same repeated grey hallways over and over again with similar room layouts,
making it often feel like Kyle is going in circles on his quest to stop the
Empire.
Hilariously, the Death Star plans can
be stolen in about six minutes total, once you’ve finished blasting down all your
foes. If only it had been that easy for Jyn and crew…
Later missions see you investigating
the Empire’s secret “Darktrooper” program, an encounter with Jabba the Hutt,
and even a fistfight with a literal dragon. Familiar Star Wars faces also pop up throughout, such as Mon Mothma, Admiral
Ackbar, Boba Fett and Darth Vader. Kyle makes it out alive through all of this,
ending up blowing up an entire Star Destroyer by himself. Did I mention that
he’s awesome?
Overall, while Dark Forces is definitely one of the more archaic examples of a Star Wars game, I’d say it’s worth
revisiting if you enjoy Doom-style
shooters. If you’re interested in checking it out, it’s available on Steam for around $5 a pop. If anything it’s a
charming lookback to the early days of Star
Wars games, and it’s a real treat to see the original way the Rebels truly
began their war.
BREAKING NEWS
I’ve got nothing for you right now,
but I’d just like to let you all know that next week on Saturday the 15th I’ll
be writing a bonus Star Wars Saturday
all about the latest and greatest news straight from Star Wars Celebration in Orlando. We’ll be talking about the 40
Years Opening Ceremony, updates on what Disney Parks has planned for Star Wars Land, new toys and
collectibles, and of course what’s likely to be our first look at Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I’m expecting
to have it finished sometime at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, so if you’re a Star Wars fan you really won’t want to
miss this one.
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