STAR WARS™: Dark Forces Remaster

Les mecs de NightDive se sont pas trop foulé le joystick sur Dark Forces Remaster. Graphismes en mode moderne (FPS illimités, décors 3D propres, textures qui ont pris un coup de polish, cinématiques redessinées), nickel. Et pour les vieux de la vieille, une simple touche F2 et paf ! Retour direct en 1995, rendu software craspouille comme à l’époque sur 486. Et franchement ? C’est tout ce qu’il fallait. Le jeu était déjà une tuerie à sa sortie, un an après Doom et bien avant que Half-Life vienne nous expliquer ce qu’est une vraie mise en scène. Scénario béton, difficulté calibrée au millimètre, persos charismatiques comme Kyle Katarn ou Jan Ors. Seul reproche : avec mon sens de l'orientation à deux sous, j'ai trouvé ça labyrinthique comme un câble USB dans une boîte à câbles. Résultat : plus d’une heure sur la plupart des 14 niveaux. Mais peut-être que pour vous ça passera comme une lettre à la poste. En tout cas, zéro regret d’avoir insisté cette fois : j’ai adoré. Merci LucasArts et NightDive, vous avez remasterisé l’essentiel : le fun.

I recently finished the Nightdive Studios remaster of Dark Forces. I found the game to extremely competently made/remastered and very fun with only a few minor gripes. Details below. Dark Forces is what everyone has always considered Doom with a Star Wars skin. It's an overload of flat 2D sprits, complex maps and great sound design, much like the game it was clearly inspired by. The game is so beautifully simple. Read your objective, obtain that goal whilst massacring plenty of innocent imperial staff members. There's plenty of weapons to achieve this goal, all of which are fun spins on classic weapons and generally staying faithful to the early Star Wars aesthetic. The remaster introduces a weapon wheel, which makes switching weapons a lot easier, especially if you chose to use a controller. Talking of, controller support is really good. I played a chunk of the game with the mouse and keyboard, but randomly decided to finish the second half of the game on my Steam Deck. It worked really well. Admittedly, it took me a little bit to adapt to the floatiness. That's what happens when you play a game for 30 years and then try a new input style. The actual aesthetic is something I truly love about this game. It's solely based on the original trilogy, simply because we hadn't even had the prequels at this point. So, because of this, you'll see lots of familiar wall textures, soldier designs and the sound effects sound like they're straight out of the classic movies. Visually, it's the only Star Wars game to properly achieve this, in my opinion. Those moments where you end up in the spaceships and you see that gleaming white wall textures designed to mimic the opening sequence of the first movie, they're so good. As far as my gripes go, it's only really down to how the game was designed. Instead of having a very useful save system, this game has a very limited life's system. If you die, you use a life and continue where you left off. No more lives, game over. Personally speaking, I've hated that since I was a kid. I have hated it in every game that I have ever played. Some of the levels are quite long and enemies do get quite tough. So, it feels like you have to really dedicate yourself to beating the level you're on, which is quite annoying for a guy with kids and an actual life. Nightdive Studios really should've implemented a manual save feature. It would have helped people and reduced stress levels considerably. I can just see the Dark Souls dork muttering to himself, "but save scumming destroys the challenge". Well, sorry to say you greasy pimple faced man baby. Not everyone has the time to continuously replay these levels. It's tedious and frustrating, especially on the longer ones. It's one big flaw in an otherwise excellent remaster. As a remaster, it's VERY faithful in everyway but with better textures, great music clarity and a better control scheme. Fans of ancient shooters and Star Wars should have this in their collection and finish it at least once. Such a great game.

TOO OLD TO BE FUN, THIS BELONGS IN THE MUSEUM