STAR WARS™: Dark Forces Remaster

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster is a great example of how to bring a classic into the modern era without losing what made it special. Nightdive kept the soul of the original intact, from what I can tell from old gameplay videos I watched, while modernizing the game and make it run flawlessly on new hardware and giving it great controls. While the gameplay is absolutely amazing the level design shows its age. Most levels are a sprawling labyrinths full of secrets, keycards, hidden switches, and I got lost more often than I can recall, and it was, in all honestly, frustrating at times. The remastered visuals are faithful, the enhanced cutscenes look fantastic, and the action and movement controls always feel smooth. If you're looking for a modern cinematic shooter with objective markers and direction tonal help, you won’t find much joy with Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster. I’d recommend the game to people who played it in the past and want to relive it, and fans of classic First Person Shooters, that also enjoy the Star Wars Universe, and can deal with some frustration.

This is a pretty fun and solid 90s fps that has good star wars feel in it. Level design can be annoying at times and couple of levels have a lot of cheap traps. Also not being able to save during mission is annoying. But overall this remastered version plays and runs well so it's worth checking out if you like 90s fps or star wars games.

I never played the original Dark Forces, so I came into this remaster with a fresh perspective. I was expecting a straightforward Doom clone, but DF is anything but. For one thing it doesn't even use the Doom engine. Instead, it runs on its own engine, one that feels closer to Build engine used in Duke Nukem 3D. You can freely look up and down, jump, and crouch, while the level geometry is far more varied than I expected. What surprised me the most is just how ambitious the game is. It's much more complex than I had imagined. It's not as puzzle-heavy as Hexen for example, where you're constantly hunting for switches, keys, and obscure objectives, but it comes surprisingly close. The first level eases you in, but from there each mission becomes increasingly intricate. You'll often need to locate an important item, activate a switch, unlock a new area, and then continue toward your next objective. The levels can be VERY confusing to navigate at times, even with handy minimap, and some puzzles are borderline frustrating, like "how is THAT a solution?!" frustrating. The story is simple, but more engaging than I expected. While Dark Forces is no longer part of the official Star Wars canon, it's still enjoyable to follow Kyle Katarn's adventure and see how the campaign unfolds. One thing I did appreciate is that all of the achievements are tied to simply completing the game. There are no tedious grindy challenges or "finish the campaign on Ultra Nightmare without blinking" requirements. The weapons are... there, I guess. For the most part, I ended up using the regular repeater you start the game with. Almost every weapon is energy-based, aside from the rocket launcher and grenades, and they all feel surprisingly similar. The differences mostly come down to whether you want a weapon that's less accurate at longer distances or one that's a bit more precise. Their damage output is comparable enough that I rarely felt encouraged to switch unless I ran out of ammo. The grenades are especially awkward to use. Kyle always throws them upward in a high arc, making it very easy to blow yourself up in tight corridors, which ended up being more frustrating than useful. Also mines are the biggest threat in the entire game. Someone on the dev team clearly loved hiding them in places where you're almost guaranteed to trigger them by accident, or placing them right next to ammo and weapons lying on the ground so you get blasted the moment you try to pick them up. It feels incredibly cheap. One design choice I'm still conflicted about is the save system. You can't save freely during missions; instead, your progress is only saved after completing a level. Since many of these missions are long and fairly complex, losing progress can be frustrating, especially if you're playing in shorter sessions. You start each mission with three lives, and you can find additional ones hidden in secret areas. Those extra lives are extremally useful because the game can be surprisingly unforgiving. Enemies react quickly, hit hard, and there are plenty of platforming sections where a missed jump means instant death. Oh, was that your last life? Nice, go re-do whole level again. I also wasn't completely sold on the movement. The default walking speed feels a little too slow, while running feels slightly too fast. That becomes particularly noticeable during platforming sections, where you have to make precise jumps. The controls never feel terrible, but those moments can be more awkward than they should be. Overall, though, Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered is a good shooter. Just don't go into it expecting a simple run-and-gun experience in the style of Doom. This is a more methodical, objective-driven game that rewards exploration and careful navigation just as much as combat. On the downside, the campaign is fairly short. My first playthrough on Normal difficulty took around six hours, and that included getting stuck on a few puzzles for a while. Also recommended at heavy discount. It's just not worth the full price.

Ich bin zwar kein Star Wars Fan, aber das Spiel war in Ordnung. Leider oft nicht ersichtlich, was nun zu tun ist bzw. wo was sich geöffnet hat, wenn man mal ein Schalter/Knopf gefunden hat. Dafür sind alle Steam-Errungenschaften sehr einfach und das ganze Spiel kann in weniger als 6-8 Stunden abgeschlossen werden. Ich empfehle es aber eher nur, wenn es im Rabatt ist. Für das kleine Spiel hier fast 30€ zu verlangen, ist total absurd...

Тот случай, когда Star Wars еще спокойно умел быть шутером про грязные коридоры, имперские базы, секреты, ключи, лифты, взрывчатку и мужика с бластером, которому не надо каждые пять минут доставать световой меч. Ремастер от Nightdive делает ровно то, что нужно: подтягивает картинку, управление, разрешение, интерфейс и удобство, но оставляет игру старой. Это все еще 90-е: уровни запутанные, дизайн местами злой, враги простые, а логика прохождения иногда требует не маркера, а нормальной ориентации в пространстве. Зато в этом и кайф. Dark Forces ощущается как Star Wars из эпохи, когда франшизу расширяли через игры, книги и комиксы, а не бесконечно полировали одни и те же знакомые лица. Кайл Катарн, имперские объекты, темные солдаты, миссии на вражеской территории — простой, плотный, правильный боевик во вселенной Звездных войн. Вердикт: отличный ремастер важного Star Wars-шутера. Старый, угловатый, местами вредный, но живой. Nightdive снова достали из архива нормальную игру и аккуратно вернули ей способность запускаться без шаманства.

Developed by Nightdive Studios, Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster is a great way to experience this classic shooter. Each mission really makes you feel immersed in the Star Wars universe, with memorable locations, familiar enemies and the chance to step into the role of Kyle Katarn. Some of the stages can feel a little drawn out at times, and there are moments where the game's age really shows, especially when it comes to platforming. It definitely has it's flaws, but it's a really enjoyable remaster and one that any Star Wars fan should experience.

Doom but Star Wars. Levels are pretty lengthy with no saves, which can be frustrating sometimes. Runs great on Steam Deck.

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster is an excellent remaster that adds great new visuals and better feeling controls and more or less keeps everything as you remembered it -- for better or worse. Personally, I've tried playing this game in the past and could never get into it or got stuck, but this remaster was good enough for me to finally finish the game this time around! If you already like the game, then there's no reason not to pick this game up because I'd say its the definitive way to play this game currently. For the game itself, the game is a pretty decent Doom clone with an alright number of enemy types. You are certainly playing this game more for the novelty or nostalgia. The weapon variety is somewhat lacking since you are pretty much just using whatever weapon you have the most ammo for most of the game; most of the weapons feel same-y and most enemies die incredibly fast on normal. My biggest complaint with this game is the level design which granted, this is a remaster of an almost 30 year old game. Out of the 14 levels in the game, I will say around 2 or 3 of them definitely have issues with either puzzles or artificial difficulty with adding mines everywhere that do a ton of damage to you (I'm looking at you prison level). Also a minor complaint, but there isn't much else to do after you beat the game because just beating the game nets you all the achievements and having some achievements for finding secrets or playing on hard mode would have been a nice reason to play it again.