STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

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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Its Kewl

Aged like Bobby K's man milk out in the open in a pre-Overwatch Blizzard's office [spoiler](the whole scandal was a sham, apparently - look it up)[/spoiler]. [b]Atrocious controls[/b] (even with OpenJKDF2 and bucketload of fixes) - feels like you're constantly sliding a piece of butter on a pan, or like being a Pstein pal on the Hill after the files. Dumb momentum on strafing makes the platforming or maneuvering in a firefight feel like a ballet on a minefield - you continue moving after stopping for a good half-a-second. No mouse wheel support - you might think it's not much, but imagine an FPS game (scratch that, imagine ANY game with multiple weapons\items\anything) where you can't use a mouse wheel for switching; coupled with slow switching speed - even when using number keys - makes weapon juggling painful and, as such, combat itself a chore (the "Wheelthingy" app doesn't work with OpenJKDF2, either). [b]Graphics[/b] are in this weird middle ground between somewhat gracefully aged 2D sprites of DF1 (Remaster or otherwise) and actual human-looking humans of id Tech 3's Outcast and Academy; characters (DO NOT look up Grans' heads) are ugly wooden\plastic cutouts, weapons…