by Dark Forces is the grandfather of the Jedi Knight series and a surprising combination of Doom and Ultima. Well, just the music style from Ultima – which was a surprising choice for a Star Wars game (though probably just a limitation of the hardware). The rest of the game is Doom clone all the way – until you get a lightsaber, but I never got that far.
I went back and forth on putting this in Tier Three or Tier Two. I felt like putting it into Tier Three was unfair since many of my complaints are due to the game’s age and comparatively lackluster design. At the same time, I feel that many of my complaints are legitimate: movement is floaty and you have the magical ability to bend your blaster bolts towards enemies as long as you are pointing your weapon in generally the right direction (and I miss vertical look, but I’ll let that slide). The environments are complex, but provide little direction or visual cues. In fact, due to the Star Wars aesthetic, enemies and switches often blend into the background. One of those ten panels may be a switch, but there’s little to indicate it.
What clinched putting it into Tier Three is that it came out two years after Doom, a year after Marathon, and the same year as Marathon 2: Durandal. Those three games are fantastic – from exquisite level and enemy design in Doom to the fantastic story of Marathon and Durandal, they are deserving of their places as classics of the shooter genre. Dark Forces just feels like a reskinned Doom with little to recommend it as a first-person shooter – except that it’s Star Wars. Which is almost enough.