STAR WARS DARK FORCES 2 SERIES

Remember wanting desperately to be Han Solo? Sure, Luke was cool and everything, but Han had such a great attitude for being a scoundrel. With a multi-player option it might have got 97. Dark Forces is Doom with nicer graphics, more complex puzzles, a few neat extras and a storyline. Things will always progress and people will always produce slightly better product than before. if not better than Doom, simply because that's what time does for a genre. Other than that Dark Fotres is as good as. You'll never be able to recreate those feelings of raw emotion. It doesn't have that sense of total originality that Doom offered, but then nothing ever will again. Does that mean it's not as good? Sort of. One feature that by its omission is causing howls of anguish in magazine offices everywhere. There is one 'minor point' that stands head and shoulders abov the others, though.

It didn't, so the residents of Abercrombie Terrace were able to sleep peacefully at nights. If a situation like that had produced itself anywhere, I would have been jumping onto the rooftops of a Chipping Norton housing estate and proclaiming Dark Forces as king. The ultimate test I was giving the game was to see if it could create something dose to the scene in Star Wars when Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie were trapped in that prison block. Having Stormtroopers ducking taking cover, trying to pin yoi down and the like, a basic bit of enemy AI as it were, would have put Dark forces way above the rest of the Doom games currently available. It would also have been nice if the bad guys had tried to be a little bit more than the mindless cannon fodder they've turned into. Being able to flatten yourself against a wall and cautiously peer around the corner would have actually made some of the later levels feel more Star Wars-like. You can jump and crouch/crawl in Dark Forres which isn't all bad, but I would really have loved to have had the total movement experience that Origin offered in System Shock. Oher small points worthy of note are the annoying size of the guns and their difficulty to aim, the apparent emptiness of some levels and the lack of movement options pioneered in System Shock (for which I would have thought it was d-e rigeur for every Doom-game creating team to rip off). The ultimate aim - and this is hinted at throughout by different elements of each mission - is to seek out and destroy the Emperor's latest weapon, the Dark Trooper.

STAR WARS DARK FORCES 2 SERIES

This is accomplished (or as much as possible within the constraints of the larger Sltir Wars storyline) through a series of challenging missions, from obtaining the plans to the Death Star to freeing prisoners from Jabba and blowing up Imperial manufacturing plants. You are a rebel agent, a sort of laser-toting James Bond, devoted to overthrowing the Empire and freeing the universe of its icy grip. Dark Forres doesn't look set to become a major way of life or anything, just a damned fine blast to be getting on with until the sequel appears (not that there's any news of a sequel - it's just a figure of speech). Despite not being able to capture the original 'Holy shit, this is f***ing amazing!' feelings that Doom ushered into everyone's workday lives, it does hold up as a challenging, involving and atmospheric game. Right you are, on with reviewing it as a game. does Dark Forces manage to address our primitive desires? No. And all the time they fail to recreate the true essence of Doom, the basic, simple need to turn living matter into its exact opposite. Where I'm going with this is that every Doom-inspired game that has come since has failed to recreate these feelings and addictions simply because they constantly try to better the original by adding new features, more of a storyline, larger and more complex puzzle: to solve. Doom had no real pretensions at a plot, at a logical, thought-provoking challenge.

Man's deepest hidden desire is to kill - the very first tool we ever picked up was a weapon.

A game that brought our prehistoric heritages directly to the fore. Doom was more than just a violent action game, it was a game that appealed to the very deepest reaches of our subconscious mind. Do you remember the adrenaline that pumped through your veins? The nerves that stood momentarily on end every time you opened a new door? The beads of sweat that formed across your erudite brow after surviving a particularly vicious onslaught? These were primitive emotions, the very stuff of man. To remember the first time you played Doom and the subsequent emotions that racked your body for hours afterwards. I simply need you to turn your minds back. I need you our precious reader, to do something. Before I begin this little five-page opus into the merits and/or cons of this much-awaited space-age shoot 'em up.

Star wars dark forces 2