The Moldy Crow

TheCrow’s Nest

Jabba's Ship Revenge

Author(s): Richard Gold

Description

During an attempt to bring Jabba the Hutt to justice, Jan, all your gear, and the Nava Card from your ship were captured. Now it's up to you to get your gear back, find the Nava Card and Rescue Jan. Be prepared for anything. Jabba is aware of your abilities and will be expecting a rescue attempt. Our intelligence sources report that Jabba may have acquired advanced Imperial weapons technology, in return for smuggling supplies to the Empire's secret research and development facilities, under the direct command of General Mohc. Extreme caution is advised.

  • Right from the start things are a little different from what you might remember.
  • The revised mission will give you plenty of opportunity to use the arsenal it provides.
  • Some of the logics applied to WAXes make for disturbing and hilarious new combinations.

Review

Reviewed by: Geoff Elliott | June 21, 2021

In the very early days of Dark Forces editing it was common to release missions that re-used the existing geometry and objectives of the LucasArts levels with new enemies and objects scattered throughout. These were distributed as .O files instead of the .GOB files that you might be familiar with if you've run most of the other available missions. It was an easier way of providing something new, but it limited what kind of experience the author could really offer.

Jabba's Ship Revenge is one such mission, in which you run through Dark Forces level 10 again, but this time with Boba Fett and Dark Troopers standing in your way, and lots more weapons to use.

In principle I'm not opposed to re-use of geometry from other missions, provided that there's a good story reason for revisiting the environment. But it would certainly be better to modify the mission in some way to differentiate it. I'm thinking of the way that original locations on Zebes were re-worked in Super Metroid to hint at the passage of time and continued expansion by the space pirates. Even some lighting or texture changes would go a long way to convincing us that something had changed since last we visited the ship. Sadly, no such modifications are present.

Addition of new enemies notwithstanding Jabba's Ship is still pretty much the same, with the same drawbacks. That means mines. Lots of nonsensical mines. You can feel the hand of the designer when hidden mines detonate and health packs are immediately revealed to compensate for the damage. It's the author basically saying "Ha! Got you! No hard feelings, right?" and I hate it.

For all my criticism, Revenge is not without its charms. An escaped dianoga that can "swim" on solid ground and leap about is amusing at least. Adding multiple higher-difficulty enemies to custom missions is a trope, but in this case you fight Boba Fett several times. At first it seemed lazy to need to kill him over and over; by the end I had the impression of a man who simply would not stay down when beaten and continued his pursuit throughout the ship. Respect.

Overall

Such a low rating may seem harsh for an early community mission, but the truth is that you've played this mission before and the changes aren't any more entertaining than the descriptions of them you just read. These reviews are intended to help you, the reader, decide which missions you want to spend your valuable resources on. In the 90's those resources were dial-up time and disk space; in the 21st century the limitation is time. Unless you're a completionist when it comes to Dark Forces it's fair to say you can skip this one.


Download Jabba's Ship Revenge(revenge.zip, 52.1 kB)