Star Wars: Dark Forces is a first-person shooter video game released back in early 1995.
The game is set in the Star Wars universe and it follows the story of a mercenary named Kyle Katarn, who's working on behalf of the Rebel Alliance.
Dark Forces was quite ahead of its time for when it was released, and is easily one of the better Star Wars games.
This is a review based off of my playthrough in the Steam version of this game.

So, let's start with the gameplay.
The gameplay is your fairly typical early 90s first-person shooter, much like that of Doom or Duke Nukem 3D.
However, this game doesn't only have you focusing on shooting everything that moves.
In Dark Forces, you tend to spend much more time with tedious puzzles and massive levels. You'll usually find yourself getting lost in the gigantic levels,
and spending way too much time trying to figure out ridiculous puzzles instead of shooting things. To be honest, I didn't really enjoy the big levels or puzzles.
We'll get to what I didn't like later, though. The game has a decent variety of weapons for you to slaughter the empire with, and there's a pretty good
variety of enemies, too. Mostly, you'll find yourself shooting stormtroopers, but at other times you'll find yourself shooting trandoshans, gran, and much more.
You'll even face off with Boba Fett at one stage. The toughest enemies I think, were the dark troopers. Those bastards are tough.
Not like that helps much, the entire game is tough in general. Even on the easiest difficulty you'll find yourself struggling to finish each level. At least it's challenging.
The game also takes you to many different places on many different planets, such as Nar Shadda, a famous planet in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
From level to level, you'll occasionally get a cutscene. Some of them are done with sprites, some of them are FMVs.
As you can expect, they look outdated, but they are quite impressive for the time of the game. Basically, it's the best that a computer game like this could do for its time.
The engine the game uses is much like that of the Build Engine in Duke Nukem 3D.
The engine is called the Jedi engine, and happens to include a lot of things that weren't common in shooters at the time, even in Doom.
Things such as jumping, crouching, looking up and down, etc. Overall, the gameplay is very retro feeling, and if you're a fan of 90s first-person shooters, you'll love it.
The game can take you about 10 hours to finish, and personally I think that's a great length. Honestly, if the game was any longer, I would probably of lost my mind.

Now, let's talk about the story.
The story follows mercenary Kyle Katarn, who's working on behalf of the Rebel Alliance. You play as Kyle for this whole game, and he's a very popular character in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
The game takes place just before and mostly after Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In the first level, you steal the plans for the Death Star, which you send to Princess Leia.
After that, Kyle is sent to investigate an imperial attack on the Tak Base of Talay, in which there he discovers a prototype dark trooper weapon.
This investigation reveals the dark trooper project, a project the empire are working on. Dark troopers are a new stormtrooper, which aren't human, but instead are advanced battle droids.
The rest of the game follows Kyle Katarn and his further look into the dark trooper project, and his ambition to stop it. At the end, Kyle destroys the Arc Hammer, the ship carrying all the dark troopers.
The story is engaging and exciting, and leaves you with ambition until you reach the end. Very good for the limits games had at the time this was released.

Lastly, let's talk about things that I didn't like.
So, like every game ever, it has flaws and problems.
First thing is that this game, for most of it, feels like more work than play. Like said before, you spend more time doing puzzles and exploring huge levels than shooting things,
and to be rather honest, I hated it. The levels use the same textures so often, that it's so easy to get lost and you'll find yourself getting angry everytime you find yourself
running in circles. It doesn't help with the fact the levels are gigantic. You'll eventually have to resort to online walkthroughs to get past most of the game.
The puzzles, I think, were the worst part. They really put me off of the game. They were usually unclear and took you forever to figure it out and wrap your head around it.
I'm pretty sure I spent at least 20 minutes on one puzzle alone in a certain level. Very exhausting. Be sure to take plenty of breaks with this game.
Other problems are the fact that the game is just really aged, and the graphics can even hurt your eyes. They certainly hurt my eyes through the majority of the game.

In conclusion, Dark Forces is a classic old gem that you should play at least once in your life. If you are an avid Star Wars fan like myself, I most certainly
suggest playing it, as well as the rest of the Jedi Knight games. Especially if you love the older FPS feel. Unfortunately though, it's no longer canon, but still very well worth playing.

Overall Rating: 8/10