Man, this was the game of my adolescence (along with Half-Life and Unreal Tournament). A Star Wars first person shooter with lightsaber combat and force powers? Hell yeah! Hanging out on the MS Gaming Zone and running through Canyon Oasis, dropping landmines while on Force Speed was a hell of a time. I played the single player campaign a million times, and I even had the Prima strategy guide (remember strategy guides?). Due to the excellence of Jedi: Fallen Order, I was interested in going back and seeing to what extent my memories matched reality.
The first roadblock was getting Dark Forces 2 running on a modern operating system. I have both the GOG version and the Steam version, but the GOG version actually runs out of the box (there are no boxes anymore!), although 3d acceleration didn't work. Back in the day, folks, such graphical options such as texture smoothing and 16 bit color were exclusive to users sporting add-in cards made by 3DFX and Nvidia. I had to download a mod to get 3d acceleration, although the newest version of said mod had missing textures, and it was only after downloading an older version that I got the game to work. The glorious FMV cutscenes, however, I never got working smoothly, for they'd stutter out after about thirty seconds.
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 puts you in the shoes of Kyle Katarn, an expanded universe mash-up of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, and originally the guy who stole the Death Star plans before Rogue One came out. You watch a blurry FMV cutscene to learn that Kyle is searching for the man who murdered his father (Star Wars tropes!), who is revealed to be a Dark Jedi named Jerc. Kyle now has an excuse to visit various locales while pursuing Jerc's Dark Jedi, their ultimate destination being the Valley of the Jedi, a Jedi graveyard holding unlimited power! (said in ol' Palp's voice). The acting is cheesy, but it's not terrible, and although the plot is fairly bare-bones, it's pretty good stuff for the time. Remember, Doom and Quake had almost no story at all. Kyle starts off in Nar Shaddaa, armed with his trusty blaster pistol and no force abilities or lightsaber to speak of. You go a whole three levels before you get a hold of your jedi tools, but Dark Forces 2 is a fairly competent fps. The E-11 stormtrooper rifle is fast firing but inaccurate; your pistol is slow but can hit the broad side of a barn, and you also get thermal detonators to awkwardly lob as grenades. Eventually Kyle will get the wookie bowcaster, which can be charged to fire as many as five bolts at once, as well as the Imperial repeater, a machine-gun like weapon, and the rail detonator, a rocket launcher. Rounding out the arsenal are land mines, which are completely worthless in single player, and the concussion rifle, which fires a huge blast of ionized air and serves as a less aim demanding alternative to the rail launcher. It's a decent arsenal, although the bowcaster is useless once you get the repeater, and the thermal detonators are so hard to throw you probably won't use them after the first few levels. Dark Forces 2 also features some weird movement; you can run a million miles per hour, a la Quake, but you side strafe and back up much slower, which is realistic but makes circle strafing a little slower than I'd like. I played on Hard difficulty, and it was difficult to avoid being hit by blaster shots.
Die Greedo, you son of a bitch.
The enemy design is classic Star Wars, with you facing off against three-eyed Grans (who are goddamn annoyingly accurate with their lobbed grenades), Rodians, Gammorrean pig men, Trandoshan bounty hunters, Grave Tuskens, and the required assortment of Imperial troops and droids, along with a few monsters such as Kratt Dragons and giant wasps. Dark Forces 2's biggest problem is that it has you facing off against the same enemy types for several levels in a row. In the Nar Shaddaa levels, you fight Grans and Rodians exclusively, with a few pig men thrown in. The enemy AI is pretty much limited to standing around and shooting at you. Sometimes, enemies won't even open doors, which makes the land mines useless. What saves the game is the level design, which is incredibly vast and vertical. There are levels in Jedi Knight longer than entire games. The vastness of Nar Shaddaa is permanently etched in my memory and is probably my definitive Star Wars experience. The Into Dark Palace level is massive, with huge AT-ST walkers patrolling a complex of bridges surrounding a skyscraper full of stormtroopers and laser turrets. You are given no direction, no magic arrow marker pointing you to your destination. Back in the 90's, games trusted you to find your own way through them. It's a design ethos that's been abandoned to avoid frustration, and although there are frustrating parts in Dark Forces 2 (setting the acid level in the fueling station level comes to mind), more often than not I was thrilled to find my way through its vast environments.
Just keep circle strafing until she's dead.
The lightsaber combat is the weakest part of the game. The green (or yellow) glow stick is basically a baseball bat; you have a fast attack and a strong attack, and that's it. Kyle can't string any combos together, and there's an annoyingly long delay after swinging before you can attack again. Most Jedi boss fights boil down to circle strafing and wacking their backside before they can turn to defend themselves. Kyle will block blaster bolts, but he'll let quite a few slip through, making the lightsaber impractical to use against ranged enemies until you get Force Protection. The Force powers are better implemented. 2/3s of the way through the game, you will be turned to either the light or dark side of the force depending on whether or not you've callously destroyed bystander NPCs like civilians or droids. The lightside powers are the best bet: Heal and Force Protection are required on Hard difficulty. Dark side powers are movie accurate but useless against anybody except Dark Jedi, since you have your arsenal to mow down stormtroopers. Some powers break the AI, however; if you Force Pull a stormtrooper's weapon away, he'll run around like a chicken with his head cut off and make no attempt to pick up his weapon. Force Protection is a blaster-proof shield that makes it too easy to mow down troopers. Blinding and Persuasion serve the same purpose, and Force Absorb is completely useless.
Altogether, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 is worth playing for its level design as long as you're willing to put up with some old school shooter wonkiness. I found that my memory was a little kinder to it than it deserved. Still, it's a classic Star Wars game, and it's interesting to compare it to Fallen Order. It's only a few bucks on Good Old Games.
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