Star Wars: Dark Forces

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Star Wars: Dark Forces
Studio United StatesUnited States LucasArts
Publisher United StatesUnited States LucasArts
Senior Developer Daron Stinnett , Ray Gresko , Justin Chin
Erstveröffent-
lichung
MS-DOS February 28, 1995 March 1995 PlayStation November 30, 1995 March 4, 1998 Steam (Windows, Mac OS) September 16, 2009 PS4 (PSN) April 29, 2010
North AmericaNorth America
EuropeEurope

North AmericaNorth America
EuropeEurope

world

North AmericaNorth America
platform MS-DOS , Mac OS , PlayStation , Windows
Game engine Jedi
genre First person shooter
Game mode Single player
control Mouse , keyboard
system advantages
preconditions
DOS: 386DX / 33 (recommended 486DX / 33 ), MS-DOS  5.0+, 8 MB RAM , 256-color VGA graphics card / MCGA , 3.5 MB hard disk space, sound card
medium CD-ROM , download
language English, Spanish, German, French, Italian
Current version v1.2 (1995)
information Indexed in Germany

Star Wars: Dark Forces (dt. Dark forces ) is the first commercially developed first-person shooter, which in Star Wars is located universe. LucasArts developed and published the game in 1995. In Germany, both the original English and the German were indexed on September 30 and October 20, respectively, by what was then the Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to minors .

The main character is the mercenary Kyle Katarn , a former Galactic Empire officer who joined the Rebel Alliance after Imperial soldiers killed his family.

The game continued in 1997 with Star Wars: Jedi Knight (published outside Germany as Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II ). This makes Dark Forces the first part of the Jedi Knight series.

action

In the first mission, which serves as an introduction to the game, the player is given the task of stealing the plans of the Death Star , an imperial super weapon, for the rebellion. With the help of the plans, rebel troops succeed in destroying the battle station.

A year later, the rebellion approaches Katarn again and assigns him to spy on and sabotage a new weapons project of the Empire, the Dark Troop Project, a project to research war droids. His first investigations lead him to Anoat, where he tracks down and interrogates the imperial weapons developer Rebus. From this he learns that the research base Fest and a mine complex on Gromas are important for the Dark Troop project. Meanwhile, Crix Madine, an Imperial officer, has switched sides and gathered information about the Dark Troop project for the rebels. However, he was caught and arrested. Katarn is assigned to save Madine from execution and to free him from the Imperial prison. Madine then reveals locations of other Imperial factories that are relevant to the project. After Katarn carried out attacks on these factories, it fell into the hands of pirates led by Jabba the Hutt . However, he quickly manages to escape them and to locate a fuel station, which he destroys. He then succeeds in tracking down the Arc Hammer , a factory ship on which the dark troops are manufactured. There he kills the project manager, General Rom Mohc, in a duel and then blows up the ship, ending the Dark Troop project.

The plot is explained and driven forward by video sequences , in-game language and mission descriptions, which was rather unusual among first-person shooters at the time.

Gameplay

Dark Forces is a shooter that is played from the first person perspective. The player controls the character Kyle Katarn through a variety of environments. In these he meets numerous opponents who attack the player in visual contact. In combat sequences the player has his fists, land mines, grenades, pistols and rifles at his disposal. Most fights are ranged fights. The player needs ammunition for his weapons. These are distributed in the levels similar to the bonuses and can be collected.

The core of the game is the linearly structured campaign. In the individual levels, the player can collect various bonuses that upgrade his armor and weapons. He can take up arms from fallen opponents.

Development history

Development of the game began in September 1993 under the direction of Daron Stinnett, Ray Gresko and Justin Chin. At the time, the shooter genre was significantly influenced by Doom , released in 1993 . The developers of Dark Forces intended to combine the elements of a shooter with the level design of adventure games. To do this, they implemented some puzzles, such as puzzles, and placed extra lives and other bonuses in more or less visible places.

Originally, Luke Skywalker was supposed to be the main character of the game. The developers of the plot feared, however, that this would limit the campaign design, which is why a new character was developed with Kyle Katarn.

When it was released, Star Wars: Dark Forces was often referred to as just another Doom clone. However, the title introduced new elements in the shooter genre. These include the skills of looking up and down, swimming and crawling. To allow these possibilities, the studio developed a new engine, the Jedi engine , which was also used in the 1997 Outlaws . The Jedi code base allows the use of three-dimensional models, which was a specialty at the time. However, there are only a few such models in the game for optimization reasons. Most objects, such as opposing figures, are two-dimensional graphics, which are cleverly scaled and illuminated depending on the distance of the player, so that they appear almost three-dimensional. Another special feature of the Jedi engine is that it allows the display of fine particles with which atmospheric effects, e.g. B. display fog. Stinnett stated that this should create a more active environment. Other effects that contribute to this are flowing waters, ships berthing and casting off at docks, and moving machine components.

Porting the game to Mac environments was particularly difficult, as LucasArts insisted that Mac and DOS have the same system requirements. The Mac system itself, however, requires more resources because, unlike DOS, it has a GUI . Therefore, the game's resource requirements had to be significantly reduced.

Dark Forces has an extraordinarily extensive sound output for its time. The developers used the iMUSE system to create a soundtrack based on the original John Williams film score . In addition, the game offers voice output and numerous sound effects, e.g. B. Gun shots and explosions.

reception

reviews
publication Rating
DOS PS
Game revolution C- k. A.
GameSpot 7.6 / 10 5.4 / 10
IGN k. A. 5/10
JeuxVideo 18/20 k. A.
Power play 83% k. A.
Meta-ratings
GameRankings 77% 59.57%

The Mac OS and DOS versions received good reviews. For the latter, GameRankings calculated a meta-rating of 77%. The PlayStation version, on the other hand, performed significantly weaker in the trade press, with a rating of 59.57% calculated for it.

In a test of the DOS version, Ron Dulin from GameSpot praised the creative design of the levels, which could convince with their mixture of intellectual and skill tasks. He criticizes the lack of a multiplayer mode, which greatly reduces the replay value. In addition, the game is too short with its small number of levels. The PlayStation version also suffers from a very poor graphics performance, which makes playing very difficult in some places. Furthermore, a cumbersome and user-unfriendly storage system is implemented.

The editors of the online magazine IGN joined the criticism of the PlayStation version. The graphic performance of the game is exceptionally weak. Animations look very wooden, textures are so strongly pixelated, even from a distance, that they can hardly be identified:

"Unlike the PC and Mac versions, PlayStation Dark Forces is grainier than a loaf of bread."

"Unlike the PC and Mac versions, Dark Forces is grainier than a loaf of bread on the PlayStation"

In terms of concept, however, the game was well done. The plot is functional and the gameplay is varied. That's why Dark Forces works much better on other platforms.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Grace Chen: PlayStation Store Update. In: playstation.com. April 29, 2010, accessed September 15, 2019 .
  2. Updates: Star Wars: Dark Forces. In: LucasArts . November 1, 1995, accessed on May 29, 2011 (English): " 1.2 Update "
  3. a b c d IGN Staff: Dark Forces. (No longer available online.) In: IGN Entertainment . Ziff Davis , December 13, 1996, archived from the original on July 13, 2011 ; accessed on November 15, 2015 .
  4. a b c Wiley Wiggins: Star Wars: Dark Forces Review. (No longer available online.) In: GameSpot . CBS Corporation as of December 23, 1996, archived from the original on October 8, 2012 ; accessed on August 15, 2014 .
  5. Katarn, Kyle. From the Expanded Universe. (No longer available online.) In: starwars.com. Archived from the original on September 12, 2011 ; accessed on August 21, 2014 .
  6. Leslie Mizell: Star Wars: Dark Forces preview. In: PC Gamer. Future Publishing, pp. 34-37 (English).
  7. Rex Baldazo: Today's hot first-person 3-D shoot-'em-ups. (No longer available online.) In: byte.com. December 1995, archived from the original on November 23, 2008 ; accessed on August 21, 2014 .
  8. a b Ron Duley: Star Wars Dark Forces Review. (No longer available online.) In: GameSpot . CBS Corporation March 1, 1996, archived from the original October 18, 2012 ; accessed on August 20, 2014 .
  9. L'avis de Daigoro: Test: Star Wars: Dark Forces. jeuxvideo.com, November 8, 2010, accessed August 21, 2014 (French).
  10. Knut Gollert: Super Dooper Trooper: Dark Forces. In: Power Play . No. 5, 1995. ( online ).
  11. Nebojsa Radakovic: The Star Wars madness continues… In: gamerevolution.com. June 4, 2004, accessed August 21, 2014 .
  12. a b Star Wars: Dark Forces. In: GameRankings . CBS Corporation , accessed August 15, 2014 .
  13. a b Star Wars: Dark Forces for PlayStation. In: GameRankings . CBS Corporation , accessed August 15, 2014 .