1995’s Star Wars: Dark Forces has been beautifully remastered by Nightdive Studios. Converting the entire game to their own engine, they’ve done a hell of a job bringing this boomer shooter Star Wars title to modern audiences. That’s about where my praise ends because the game itself doesn’t always hold up the best. Let’s get deep into the good and bad.
The Good
Priced at $30 I was skeptical of SW: Dark Forces Remastered when I first saw it. After playing through the game’s campaign though, it makes sense. Nightdive has done a ton of work rebuilding this game in their own engine. Playing on a Series X it looks crisp, clean, and runs beautifully. Cutscenes and gameplay alike are a massive improvement over the original ’95 release, and the audio sounds great.
You are Kyle Katarn a former Imperial Officer who now does work for hire with the Rebel Alliance. Set during the original trilogy you’ll start the game by finding the Death Star plans and go all around various “I know that” places throughout Star Wars lore. To do this you’ll have your trusty modified Bryar Pistol and an assortment of other weaponry as you blast and bomb your way through over ten labyrinthian levels.
The game featured voiced cutscenes tied to lightly animated visuals. These have their original charm, despite the graphical upgrades, and were my favorite part of the game. My other favorite part was the intact cheat system from the original release. After playing through once on normal difficulty these let me mess around in any level I wanted with god mode, unlimited weapons, and more. I really can’t say enough about the great work Nightdive did creating this port, and enough bad things about how this title holds up.
The Bad
Star Wars: Dark Forces is a game of its time. Back in ’95 it took up the DOOM and Wolfenstein style of fast first-person shooter and gave it a Star Wars setting. It was awesome seeing all of these familiar characters from previous decades in a video game that was all about blowing the shit out of people. By modern-day sensibilities, this is not one to dive into if you don’t have those nostalgic feelings.
Gameplay-wise it is a very fast paced shooter with a lot of height-based aim assist. It doesn’t feel terrible, they’ve smoothed out the stick acceleration, it’s just not deep. You shoot and get shot a lot, with little else to do. You can’t avoid being hit and end up having to hunt for health and shield items on the ground. I’d consider it barely passable even 20 years ago, let alone today.
My biggest issue with the game is the awful level layouts. I was able to figure out where to go every time, eventually. It was just rarely fun to do so. The game is far too long to hold up with its simplistic gameplay systems for its intended runtime. If you know where to go in a level you can clear most of them in 5 or 10 minutes. To keep that from happening they made them into mazes with seemingly random switches to find or paths to stumble across.
For those who know the game and are looking for a bit of nostalgic fun I do think the $30 will be off-putting. ND put in the work, so I understand why. I’m sure the license isn’t cheap to get from Disney but it’s still a massive ask for a game that doesn’t hold up.
Wrapping Things Up
Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered is a remaster done right. Its main issue is the game it is remastering doesn’t hold up to modern titles well enough. If you have that itch to dive back in and the $30 price isn’t too much then it is well worth the price. If you don’t have those feelings though, it’s tough to recommend.
STAR WARS™: Dark Forces Remaster
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Beautifully remastered
CONS
- Game itself does not hold up
30 bucks is too much
I get it, but they had to completely rebuild almost every part of this game so I understand why it is that pricey. It was a ton of work.
Hm, looks like something I might pick up on a deep sale.
Good review!
Nice review. I probably wouldn’t give this a play unless it was on a subscription service. I don’t know how far I got through the original, but I do recall feeling it was a bit too long so I never finished.