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Cream-of-Plenty posted:That's the issue I held on to for a long time. That's the one that had a piece on gaming urban legends, like Doom being used for training soldiers and Pacman's original name. can everyone start just slathering over how amazing the waterfall looks, that'll complete my 1997 unreal experience Edit: jfc 17 years later and people are still waxing rhapsodic about that thing Eurogamer posted:6 years after Unreal's release, Prisoner 849's exit from the Rikers and into the wilderness of Na Pali is no less impressive: that juxtaposition of the ship's metallic carcass teetering on the edge of a waterfall evokes the feeling of a spoiled paradise, a world corrupted.  Yes, this is an actual PC game screenshot orphean fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 23:21
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orphean posted:can everyone start just slathering over how amazing the waterfall looks, that'll complete my 1997 unreal experience Hey now. A completely blown mind needs more time than that to be mended. Also, Unreal was the (visually) most impressive thing seen in and to be seen for a long time. Arguably, it's still hella-impressive if you run it in software rendering mode. 
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Oct 13, 2014 23:32
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Oh I remember, at the time it was awesome. In retrospect, the transition from 2d/2.5d to full 3d was just an awkward teenagey period for everyone. Its stood the test of time the worst so far.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:36
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orphean posted:Oh I remember, at the time it was awesome. In retrospect, the transition from 2d/2.5d to full 3d was just an awkward teenagey period for everyone. Its stood the test of time the worst so far. I'm going to read that as "best" and just nod. Just compare it to its contemporaries: Q2 (an in every way awful game), HL (a horribly paced jumping-puzzlevaganza), and… I don't know. Falcon 4? Actually F4.0 is still surprisingly good, but that's mainly because the entire genre has almost evaporated.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:47
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Tippis posted:Just compare it to its contemporaries: Q2 (an in every way awful game), HL (a horribly paced jumping-puzzlevaganza), and… I don't know. The gently caress is all this nonsense. Half-life? As in, Number One on everyone's best game of all time list for like a decade Half-Life?
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Oct 13, 2014 23:51
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Tippis posted:Hey now. A completely blown mind needs more time than that to be mended. All the fancy rendering addons and the s3tx ultra fan textures make it still look pretty nice, and also completely cripple most computers.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:54
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Unreal was amazing in 1024x768 on a Voodoo2 SLI setup. Also 3dfx's SLI, best SLI.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:55
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Being snide about graphical fidelity in that transitional period from sprites to models is really asinine, btw. Unreal was really, really good looking when it came out and was pretty well worthy of the praise it got.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:01
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:The gently caress is all this nonsense. Half-life? As in, Number One on everyone's best game of all time list for like a decade Half-Life? Yes. Now go back and play it with a decade and a half of hindsight. Its pacing is horrible and it is a jumping-puzzlevaganza. It has not aged well. I can still play Unreal and experience some joy, even if only fuelled by nostalgia. I can no longer stand Half-Life, and the advances it did indeed make are not of the kind that manage to cover up its many issues. Its narrative structure is buried by the bad pacing; the once-impressive soldier AI is too rare something that you are too used to to even notice any more (and tbh, Unreal did that just as well). It set the stage for that decade's improvements(?) in FPS design, which is how it earned all those listing positions, but in and of itself, it is not something that really stands up to a revisit. Tippis fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 00:01
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RyokoTK posted:Being snide about graphical fidelity in that transitional period from sprites to models is really asinine, btw. Unreal was really, really good looking when it came out and was pretty well worthy of the praise it got. Unreal also beats Quake 2 and other early 3D games, mostly because it used more than two colors.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:08
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Tippis posted:Yes. Now go back and play it with a decade and a half of hindsight. Its pacing is horrible and it is a jumping-puzzlevaganza. It has not aged well. I can still play Unreal and experience some joy, even if only fuelled by nostalgia. While I haven't actually played Half-Life proper in some time, I did play through Black Mesa when it came out and though it was goddamned incredible on basically every level. I did mod it to make the soldiers slightly less reactive.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:11
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:While I haven't actually played Half-Life proper in some time, I did play through Black Mesa when it came out and though it was goddamned incredible on basically every level. I did mod it to make the soldiers slightly less reactive. If I recall correctly, BM also very deliberately cut out some of the really sloggy parts, altered encounters and added new ones, and drastically increased the fighting difficulty. It's not a 1:1 replica of old HL.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:35
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Tippis posted:I'm going to read that as "best" and just nod. Uh hello half-life still looks amazing to this day But I remember thinking that Quake 2 looked like rear end when it first came out, much less now. And the only reason Quake looks good is because its a super stylized brown on brown, and all the ambiguity kinda hides some of the flaws. Now suddenly I'm thinking of Quake machinima. Have I posted before how much I love the intro to Team Fortress? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FVJ__rBFxk That's pretty drat cool, especially for a multiplayer game. Nobody was doing stuff like that back then. And has everybody seen the seal of nehahra? Its a pretty drat entertaining ... movie, even nowadays. Red vs Blue before Red vs Blue. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 00:40
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Did Black Mesa ever finish Xen?
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Oct 14, 2014 00:43
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TOOT BOOT posted:Did Black Mesa ever finish Xen? 
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Oct 14, 2014 00:45
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TOOT BOOT posted:Did Black Mesa ever finish Xen? Last I heard, it'll be in the final Steam release, but probably not sooner.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:46
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I dunno, I think that Unreal 1 still looks pretty drat impressive at parts. The skyboxes are gorgeous at times and some of the levels, like Dark Arena and Bluff Eversmoking, have aged well visually. You'll probably never see something like Sunspire again, for both good (too long and confusing) and bad (harder to render something that big with modern graphics and console limitations) reasons. And I think that Unreal 1 is probably my favorite out of the big-name 1998 FPS games. Q2 looks bad and it's gameplay feels like step back from Q1's balls-to-the-wall action, while HL1 has stuff that can be pretty annoying, like getting weapon stripped, the MP5 being nearly worthless without the grenade launcher, the pain in the rear end turrets, and how the level design occasionally dips into you doing all sorts of contrived stuff to get past a door that you could easily smash to pieces. I've seen people call U1 "Myst with guns", and I think that's a good description of it. For better or worse, it's one of the more unique FPS games out there and I haven't seen any FPS manage to really replicate it, which is a shame.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:13
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I played Unreal when it was new and it was certainly beautiful, atmospheric, and unique. I also felt like it was fairly boring because of the tiny variety of enemies and the weak weapons that took many shots to kill anything. I feel like it would be a more exciting game if it just didn't have enemies in it at all to interrupt the exploration and sightseeing.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:18
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Stop making GBS threads on Half-Life you're hurting me feelings!   I do absolutely adore Unreal though. Interesting weapons, if lacking in the oomph department. That soundtrack though, still one of my favs to this day.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:43
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SiN is the best 1998 FPS game
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Oct 14, 2014 01:57
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Zaphod42 posted:And the only reason Quake looks good is because its a super stylized brown on brown, and all the ambiguity kinda hides some of the flaws. Why do people keep saying this? There are more colors to Quake than just brown. There's lots of grey and washed-out blue too 
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Oct 14, 2014 02:01
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Nintendo Kid posted:SiN is the best 1998 FPS game 100% truth.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:09
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Nintendo Kid posted:SiN is the best 1998 FPS game Is it just me or is it really hard? I'm in the water works right now and it's kicking the crap out of me. I think I'm playing on medium. Is health just difficult to come by, since it seems like it can only be gained by picking it up off the bodies of certain enemies, or did I catastrophically miss something? Also it feels a little weird to me, like something is slightly off. I'm not sure what's the deal there, if it's just the controls being a bit off from what I'm used to, or some weirdness with the GOG package, maybe nGlide? It's not in real widescreen, right, even if its set? Its just stretching it? Edit: vv Ugh, gently caress the new PC Gamer site. Absolutely dreadful and a nightmare to find anything. And gently caress Interplay, it's not like they're doing poo poo. catlord fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 02:33
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Some dude trying to make a Descent remake of sorts got shot down by Interplay (which is baffling seeing how they barely exist aside from licensing out IP), so he's retooling it to remove all Descent stuff: http://www.pcgamer.com/descent-fan-reimagining-sol-contingency-shut-down-by-interplay/
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Oct 14, 2014 02:45
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catlord posted:Is it just me or is it really hard? I'm in the water works right now and it's kicking the crap out of me. I think I'm playing on medium. Is health just difficult to come by, since it seems like it can only be gained by picking it up off the bodies of certain enemies, or did I catastrophically miss something? There are things you can do in previous levels to give you a harder or easier path through the rest of the game. It's super adaptive to what the player does. There's some more info about that in the various guides: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/39787-sin/faqs One of the biggest things is that you skip out on the whole sewer sequences and make the water works easier if you do the right things a few levels prior. And yeah I have no idea as to what the patches they've done for the GOG version to have widescreen does, you might prefer setting it to run at a 4:3 resolution.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:50
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I'm finding that Half-Life in Software mode at 720x480 is Good poo poo. Hardware modes let you run the game at low resolutions while maintaining native resolution (like Chocolate Doom, something I wish more old game ports let you do), but Software mode has a "blur" effect (read: render the scene at half-res) and I don't want to give that up.
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Oct 14, 2014 03:30
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I think I've tried 2-3 times to get into Unreal, but I usually end up petering out somewhere around this very tall, very vertical, very circular stage with big vats of green slime. Never did figure out where you're supposed to go in that one.
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Oct 14, 2014 06:51
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Freedoom version 0.9 has just been released. I haven't tested it all out yet, but most of the maps are alleged to be beatable this time around, and there are new sprites for the zombie and sergeant (aka "shotgun guy"). There are also a whole bunch of new textures and whatnot that are slightly less ugly. And the latest version of Zandronum allows for Freedoom 0.8 to be used in place of doom.wad and doom2.wad... (obviously not 0.9 since it was released like 20 minutes ago) I'm still a huge fan of OBLIGE 6.10, since it can save you from getting bored if you don't have internet access. lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 09:58
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Zeether posted:Some dude trying to make a Descent remake of sorts got shot down by Interplay (which is baffling seeing how they barely exist aside from licensing out IP), so he's retooling it to remove all Descent stuff: http://www.pcgamer.com/descent-fan-reimagining-sol-contingency-shut-down-by-interplay/ Good on them for not giving up and instead just removing anything that might have tied them to Interplay/Decent.
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Oct 14, 2014 11:42
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Tippis posted:Yes. Now go back and play it with a decade and a half of hindsight. Its pacing is horrible and it is a jumping-puzzlevaganza. It has not aged well. I can still play Unreal and experience some joy, even if only fuelled by nostalgia. quote:Also it feels a little weird to me, like something is slightly off. I'm not sure what's the deal there, if it's just the controls being a bit off from what I'm used to, or some weirdness with the GOG package, maybe nGlide? It's not in real widescreen, right, even if its set? Its just stretching it? Jblade fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 11:58
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One of the little things I love about Half-Life is that it really feels like a remake of Doom in a good way: a research lab gets overrun by monsters after a teleportation experiment goes wrong, you fight your way through (encountering both humans and monsters) and end up in the monsters' homeworld where you take out the (literal) brains behind the invasion. But this also shines through in the gameplay: yes, you're in a more realistic world, but you can still run with the speed of a race car and speeding towards an enemy while you dodge his shot so you can take him out with a double-blast of your shotgun is a perfectly viable technique. While I love Half-Life 2 as well, it lacks that feeling.
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Oct 14, 2014 12:07
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Al Cu Ad Solte posted:Stop making GBS threads on Half-Life you're hurting me feelings! Don't worry — it's all from the perspective of having seen what grew out of HL over the last 15 years. Really, if anything, it would be really odd if all that iterating and honing of the basic design didn't make the first steps down the set-piece narrative path look a bit… fumbling, I suppose. Come to think of it, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the reasons I feel Unreal stands up as well as it does is exactly because HL became the foundation style for the next few generations of FPSes. With a scant few exceptions such as Serious Sam, the Doom-Quake-(Unreal) branch of just blowing poo poo up kind of died out and hasn't seen much in the way of improvement over the years. They rather took the turn into arena death match (where the style almost died out as well in the face of HL-derrived Counter Strike and its successors). Jblade posted:I played the game recently, it still beats the poo poo out of the vast majority of shite currently sitting on the market right now. It's pacing is still pretty fantastic. Meanwhile I'm replaying Opposing foce and while that's good, it's pacing is much worse than the original games. I think Gearbox tried to put too much into the game and only a few areas like the Biodome are really memorable (Blue Shift was a bit better) HL's problem, I feel, is that in trying to actually present some pacing, it goes too far in the opposite direction: the set pieces that are meant to slow you down and offer some calm between the storms are too elaborate — it's always one or two buttons too many to push and one too many closed doors you have to bypass in some contrived manner. As mentioned, it was the first step that set the stage for what was to come. It was a vast improvement of what had come before, but not even GabeN gets it right on the first try. By HL2 and the episodes, they had made huge strides in balancing action and calm, as well as in offering different means of delivering both.
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Oct 14, 2014 12:22
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quote:HL's problem, I feel, is that in trying to actually present some pacing, it goes too far in the opposite direction: the set pieces that are meant to slow you down and offer some calm between the storms are too elaborate — it's always one or two buttons too many to push and one too many closed doors you have to bypass in some contrived manner. As mentioned, it was the first step that set the stage for what was to come. It was a vast improvement of what had come before, but not even GabeN gets it right on the first try. By HL2 and the episodes, they had made huge strides in balancing action and calm, as well as in offering different means of delivering both. I do love HL2 as well, but I think Black mesa just had a more oppressive and immersive atmosphere...they really really sold the location in the game not just through visuals but through sound design (they even had different kinds of reverb for being outside, inside, in a vent or in a large silo .etc .etc the last FPS game before that I remember doing that was Duke Nukem 3D) I do remember quite a lot of people bitching about the vehicle rides though...I enjoyed both of them quite a lot myself.
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Oct 14, 2014 12:50
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Tippis posted:HL's problem, I feel, is that in trying to actually present some pacing, it goes too far in the opposite direction: the set pieces that are meant to slow you down and offer some calm between the storms are too elaborate — it's always one or two buttons too many to push and one too many closed doors you have to bypass in some contrived manner. As mentioned, it was the first step that set the stage for what was to come. It was a vast improvement of what had come before, but not even GabeN gets it right on the first try. By HL2 and the episodes, they had made huge strides in balancing action and calm, as well as in offering different means of delivering both. I'm not sure I'm following you here, you think that the original HL had too lengthy interruptions in the flow? For me HL2 was way worse in this regard, when you have to stand around and pay attention to NPCs droning on about something or other. They really should have made that crap skippable on subsequent playthroughs.
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Oct 14, 2014 13:04
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Icept posted:I'm not sure I'm following you here, you think that the original HL had too lengthy interruptions in the flow? For me HL2 was way worse in this regard, when you have to stand around and pay attention to NPCs droning on about something or other. They really should have made that crap skippable on subsequent playthroughs. Not so much lengthy interruptions as a tendency to not switch often or soon enough between action and stillness and vice versa, and without enough variety in what you actually did during either of those. HL2 went from one to the other more often and it was less a case of “now do the same thing on the other side of the map”. Even the Overwatch Nexus (which is otherwise exactly that) mixed it up in where and how you had to disable the power generators. Granted, a lot of that is simple technological improvement: with only one real “AI” opponent and only one type of interactivity (ok, one and a half… hitting stuff always works so that doesn't really count), there will be limits to what kind of problems you can actually present to the player. The NPCs in HL2 could indeed jabber on a lot, but I'd categorise that more as a variety of downtime, and I don't think any of them actually required you to stick around. You had to trigger their little spiels and then you could just go off and collect stuff and explore for a bit. I seem to recall from the commentary that some of them are purposefully designed to do just that: give the player a chance to get their bearings and stock up while some other people “act” in the background. But sure, the episodes were in some respects worse at this since they made far more use of Alyx-as-a-gatekeeper to separate action arenas and the exploration/pick-up opportunities didn't quite fill up the entire gap.
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Oct 14, 2014 13:25
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Icept posted:For me HL2 was way worse in this regard, when you have to stand around and pay attention to NPCs droning on about something or other. This is why my headcanon Gordon Freeman is a dude with severe ADHD who jumps around and throws/destroys poo poo whenever he's tasked with listening to a conversation.
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Oct 14, 2014 15:24
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Mak0rz posted:This is why my headcanon Gordon Freeman is a dude with severe ADHD who jumps around and throws/destroys poo poo whenever he's tasked with listening to a conversation. "Gordon doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional." Meanwhile Freeman's hopping off the walls and shaking all over.
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Oct 14, 2014 15:32
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Aw, I missed another Unreal sploogefest.
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Oct 14, 2014 15:32
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Shadow Hog posted:I think I've tried 2-3 times to get into Unreal, but I usually end up petering out somewhere around this very tall, very vertical, very circular stage with big vats of green slime. Never did figure out where you're supposed to go in that one. That part is easier if you follow the translator messages, but I'd just skip it. Same for one of the last levels where you have to fight headcrabs in total darkness. Actually, at the start of the green goo level, note the author's name and skip all of his maps, it's all boring boxy starships.
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Oct 14, 2014 16:06
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BattleMaster posted:I played Unreal when it was new and it was certainly beautiful, atmospheric, and unique. The thing with U1 is that you have to know how to use the weapons to really do a lot of damage with them. Take the Razorjack. If you fire a single shot at a target, it's a piece of poo poo. However, if you land a headshot, it does more damage than a single rocket does. Depending on how calm I am, I can kill a powerful Skaarj with about 4 or so headshots, which is a huge ammo-saver and fun as well. Since all of the major enemies can take headshot damage, this means I can down a Behemoth with about 5 or so blades, which is much faster and less dangerous than trying something like using the flak cannon on them. Also, enemies will never dodge the Eightball,'s alt-fire, the Razorjack's projectiles, goop gun projectiles, and the Flak Cannon's alternate fire. Skaarj will attempt to dodge if you point a hitscan weapon at them for a certain amount of time, so fire fast!
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Oct 14, 2014 16:11
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