Star Wars: Dark Forces

Star Wars: Dark Forces introduced agent Kyle Katarn and his fight against the Empire and the Dark Trooper project through extensive, vertically rich levels that, thanks to the custom Jedi engine, allowed jumping, swimming, and traversing spaces with height differences far more prominently than other shooters of the time. It was precisely this vertical complexity that made it an interesting candidate for Forte VFX1 support, since looking up and down through cargo holds, ducts, and Imperial bases full of stormtroopers had genuine justification in the headset.

In the end, however, the game ran into the same limits that accompanied the whole generation of engines derived from a principle similar to Doom's, namely the headset's low panel resolution, which made the more detailed textures of bases and ships blurry, and a limited field of view that specifically hampered the vertical orientation the VFX1 was supposed to highlight. The jumping sequences, swimming through flooded corridors, and quick transitions between floors also intensified, for some players, the sense of disorientation typical of early VR devices and their imperfect head-motion tracking.

Dark Forces is remembered today as one of the best-crafted action titles set in the Star Wars universe from the 1990s, with atmospheric music echoing the film score and level design that pushed the genre forward through its verticality, and it inspired later entries in the Jedi Knight series. Weapons, enemies, and vehicles faithfully drew from the film trilogy, and the story takes place in parallel with the events of the classic films, so the game managed to appeal even to Star Wars fans who otherwise didn't play action shooters, and that licensed authenticity was one of its main assets. In the context of the VFX1, it remains an example of a game where ambitious level architecture was at the same time exactly what made playing in the headset more difficult and harder to orient in than flatter titles.

Why play: Fans of Star Wars and action shooters alike will enjoy Dark Forces for its faithful license and vertical level design, which at the same time made playing in the VFX1 headset more difficult.