JEDI REMASTER

DARK FORCES REMASTER is the classic Star Wars FPS upgrade you've been looking for

- Robert Jones

A long time ago, in a PC gaming age that now feels far, far away… there was the mid-1990s rush of Doom clones. And, truth be told, most of them were pretty poor imitations that brought nothing new to the genre. But, where these derivative FPSes failed, LucasArts’ 1995 Star Wars: Dark Forces succeeded, and not just in terms of its own quality, but also in terms of how it evolved the FPS genre in a large number of ways.

So it’s been puzzling that a game which, as we’ve chronicled before, largely introduced cinematic narrative storytelling to FPS games, established a new standard for realistic level design theory, and gave us graphics and audio that outstripped what Doom delivered, has never been officially remastered. Enter Nightdive Studios.

For those who have missed Nightdive’s recent activities, it’s the talented team behind the high-scoring System Shock remake, as well as a wide range of remasters of classic games including Quake 2, Turok 3 and Blade Runner, all of which have been well received. I think it’s fair to say that Nightdive is the foremost remastering studio in business today.

And that’s great news here, as the quick take away from this Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster review is that this is a great remaster, with the classic LucasArts game not only brought back to modern systems, but brought back with many enhancements and extras that make it the definitive version to play.