STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

Needs mods to get it working so I can't recommend as it should work out of the box. The FMV cutscenes and music are great, but the Star Wars theming carries this game hard. Level design is awful and most your time is spent crawling through sewers and ventilation systems. Force powers and lightsaber combat are lacking, and the guns all feel the same. If you stripped away the Star Wars theme you're left with a crappy FPS that's not worth your time.

a classic

I am surprised how much I enjoyed this game. The gunplay is very fun, the level design mostly great and full of surprises (at least to me), the cutscenes were very charming and cool, but the lightsaber combat could definitely be better, the Dark Jedi boss fights were annoying, and I definitely found myself a little too lost now and then.

Dark Forces II is an old-school first-person shooter with both combat and levels that remind me of the original DOOM games. Of course, this is all in a Star Wars setting complete with aliens, lightsabers and force powers. Overall, this is a definite recommend for Star Wars fans who enjoy or would like to experience an older style of shooter gameplay. The level design, as other reviews mention is quite vertical, which, along with the fact that the levels themselves are quite sprawling, makes them enjoyable to traverse. They also have secrets, I myself mostly focused on exploring just enough to keep the level moving, so I missed a bunch of them, but the ones I did find were fun to find. Traversal across the levels is enhanced by force abilities such as speed and high-jump. The levels span across quite a few very different feeling locales and there are plenty of them for a satisfying campaign. Speaking about the campaign, the story is mostly told via FMV cutscenes which, while definitely a dated design choice, are quite enjoyable to watch and tell enough of a story to enhance the levels all the more. The combat is also quite varied, you get a bunch of weapons most of which are fun t…

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