I think it does.
...because the game does not grovelling revolve around Luke, Han, Leia, or unlikely cameo appearances by minor characters, or any of that shit. It's protagonist is not a Jedi, has no special powers beyond their blaster rifle. Today Disney/Hollywood execs, on top of their many other sins, are convinced that you need 'familiar faces' in games. The Star Wars galaxy is massive and the likelihood of running into movie characters is negligible, meaning implausible cameos shrink the breadth of the setting. This constant fixation on what someone like Han was doing between movies is really constricting. Dark Forces instead created a new hero. It created a feeling of isolation and self-reliance, with a brand new character, Kyle Katarn.
You are just one mercenary among thousands of worlds, operating against the Empire without any Jedi powers, on distant isolated outposts, as the majority of action in Star Wars must be. Battles must take place daily, between pirates, rebels, outlaws and imperial special forces. The sequel is also amazing, and is something that would never happen now; an original galactic-level threat like Jerec, being handled without reference to the movies, by someone on an independent hero's journey to Luke. Kyle Katarn is the subject of memes; the Chuck Norris of Star Wars. Ten years after buying out Lucasfilm, there is no word on whether Kyle Katarn even exists in modern canon. It would be so easy to remake Dark Forces in Unreal Engine and release as a £9.99 game on Steam, GOG, PSN, etc, re-canonizing the plot by altering a couple of lines of text.
I tried Republic Commando recently and didn't enjoy it. Shooting felt very poor. I think they were looking to Halo for the shooting, but completely failed to reproduce how good Halo's shooting feels. Very imprecise and the blasters felt like toys. No feedback from enemies when hit. Combat overall felt too hectic to make use of the squad effectively. Music and atmosphere are decent if you like the prequel era.
It's alright.
I found that the movement felt heavy and stilted, lacking the finesse that the Dark Forces games had. Guns felt poor to use, were wildly innacurate in comparison, and damage models as well as hit reactions didn't quite feel right. The lightsaber was imprecise to the point that duels felt like a random war of attrition where I was winning or losing based on a dice roll more than through deliberate action. Sometimes hits wouldn't register despite going through the character model, sometimes my character would block a strike, and sometimes not. The criteria to trigger these moves felt a little too random for me, and the prospect of savescumming to hope for luck to be in my favour completely soured me from the experience.
I agree entirely. Dark Forces 1 & 2 are great. On the other hand, Jedi Outcast didn't even feel that good at the time, and I played it at release back in 2002. I remember well how 'off' it felt compare to Dark Forces 1 & 2, and I can't really understand how it has gained this reputation as a great Star Wars game, that it seems to have.
There is more to the combat system than just randomly slashing and stabbing with your lightsaber and hoping for the best. Try to use special moves and see what the enemies are doing, when they leave themselves open for attack. Strong style is the best for offense, but not so good for defense. Fast style is the best for defense and has some great special moves, but does not do much damage compared to Strong. Medium style is an inbetween style.
Tried it once against Desann, didn't really work (but I know it can be done, especially with powerful guns like the Flechette Cannon).
I stand by what I said two years ago:
Tl;dr Amazing atmosphere, mediocre gameplay.
I agree. The fight with Tavion is brutal. She darts all over the place and has her own unique Fast lightsaber style.
