This article originally appeared in Pyramid #17

Pyramid Pick

DARK FORCES

Published by LucasArts
Project Leader: Daron Stinnert
Lead Artist: Justin Chin
3D Engine: Ray Gresko
Retail Price: $44.95 (Mac and PC CD-ROM)

While the first-person "explore the digital environment" genre of computer game has grown in leaps and bounds — where players must conquer the nigh-inscrutable puzzles leading to the game's conclusion — its more satisfying sibling, the first-person "explore the digital environment and kill everyone in it" genre has by far surpassed it.

Wolfenstein 3-D, progenitor of first-person mass-mayhem, predates the first issue of Pyramid, so it's no surprise we didn't review it — we try to as least give lip service to keeping Pyramid Picks timely. The reason of timeliness reared its ugly head again when we wanted to review Doom, which was the first game to really use the Internet as a marketing advantage. Given the speed at which things happen on the net, it seemed pointless to review Doom; everyone with a PC capable of running it had seen it by then, and it was the established paradigm.

Of course, it's not an established paradigm until everyone and their lab proctors get in on the action by spending endless Saturday nights crafting their own contributions to the field. Faster than you could say "multi-million dollar industry," the computers of America and beyond were filled with Doom-expansions and Doom-wannabes. Very few of them are worth noting, but if you like diving into enemy bases and killing and killing and killing, . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: January 1, 1996

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