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Nitro Family is basically insane. It's a bad Serious Sam clone with few underdeveloped gimmicks thrown in. The basic one is main hero's wife sitting on his back, which helps him by cutting off some random enemy's head, sometimes 2-3 of them if you're lucky. The second one is her launching with jetpack and nuking the place with rockets, but it's hardly useful. Also it works as a collectible powerup that you need to activate. There is, in theory, a combo system, but good luck trying to work it out. The score system is for purchasing guns and ammo from travelling bimbo, which also prompts you to look for hidden cards. The "naughty" secret cutscene is your "reward" for this work, and of course it's astonishing in its terribleness: https://youtu.be/Wq8iTftTjqc It's a bad game, filled with weird enemies, bad bad bad music (that Offspring-ripoff song from first level is beyond terrible), no balance at all, and not worth a second look really. It's not enjoyable in its badness. And yet, I have the boxed copy of it. I've got some real stinkers in my collection, my recent acquisition is a Russian FPS Operation Matriarchy, where you, as a brave male, fight women infected with some alien cyber virus, a'la really sexist version of Stroggs. It's from 2005, though. Also it was released in near broken-status, as most EastEuro 3d shooters tend to be (hi Wolfenschantz!), but some people were dedicated enough to make two separare patches, which make the game more presentable. And if that wasn't enough, the game shares it's universe with bit less obscure sci-fi flight sim, Echelon Will Rock is pretty much a Serious Sam ripoff, with bad balance and two unique weapons: acid gun which evaporates baddies, and medusa's head (or gun, I don't remember), which turns them to stone, and you can break them piece by piece, the only kind of interesting bit in the whole game. It's not bad, simply uninteresting. laserghost fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 22:55
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SGT Mark just posted a screenshot from his set of levels meant to be played with brutal doom: Lets not get into any discussions of doominess, but that looks pretty wild. This is Map19 and supposedly you and 100 marines are assaulting a fortress together, and even tanks and aircraft assist in the assault. I'm damned curious to see how it plays out.
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Aug 14, 2015 23:05
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Hmm what's the most obscure FPS I own. Gore: Ultimate Soldier, I think. I remember being mildly entertained at some points.Zaphod42 posted:SGT Mark just posted a screenshot from his set of levels meant to be played with brutal doom:
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Aug 14, 2015 23:09
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Heavy Metal posted:Is this Extermination Day, or just something that'll be bundled with a Brutal Doom update? That does sound pretty ambitious. The 'full' release of Brutal Doom V20 will have a megawad of maps either built specifically for Brutal, or existing ones reworked with it in mind. The focus seems to be more open, non-linear maps that allow the new AI and allies to shine.
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Aug 14, 2015 23:13
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Heavy Metal posted:Hmm what's the most obscure FPS I own. Gore: Ultimate Soldier, I think. I remember being mildly entertained at some points. I think they released it as freeware at some point. I've mostly heard it's not even worth it then, but I've been tempted to find it, I must admit.
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Aug 14, 2015 23:20
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Last time I downloaded the freeware version of Gore, it demanded cd-key from me. I own the original copy but couldn't be arsed to go look for it to play the same bad game, only patched so it doesn't eat all the free RAM.
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Aug 14, 2015 23:27
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Has there ever been an arena FPS that plays like Doom 1's deathmatch? Doom 1 DM is way, way slower than Doom II DM and is much more about patience and cunning than the sort of high-speed blastfests normally associated with arena shooters. There's a lot of cat-and-mouse SG/CG action that would be completely useless in Doom II or Quake but tends to dominate in Doom 1.
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Aug 14, 2015 23:58
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Don't think I own that many obscure FPS titles, barring Gunman Chronicles and Saturn Powerslave. Don't even own that many bad ones. I can't say I don't own any; I saw a copy of Extreme Paintbrawl for a buck in a bookstore a few years ago and basically had to buy it.
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Aug 15, 2015 00:04
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I know Chasm: The Rift doesn't quite count as "obscure" to anyone here, but it's the one FPS I've owned that nobody I know outside of this thread ever heard of. Man I love that game. It's kind of a shame it never hit Quake's popularity.
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Aug 15, 2015 00:14
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I vaguely recall that Chasm was also really, really flat. Some height variation, but not a whole lot. I forget if that was an engine limitation (likely) or level design incompetence (possible, but I somehow doubt it).
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Aug 15, 2015 00:25
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Chasm's engine is really weird. It could do 800x600 under DOS without 3dfx with effects like smoke and dithering, everything was in 3D, yet there was barely any height difference on levels. Jumping between platforms is annoying because you nearly immediately hit roof, so you're more sliding than jumping. Also, everything is cramped and rooms feel really small. Yet I really like it, it clones Quake/Doom gameplay with really limited resources, it even uses a variant of Doom map system afaik. The boss fights are more engaging than Quake ones. Also the only FPS to have Egyptian motif, except Exhumed and Serious Sam. Too bad it was released so late and there never was a Windows implementation. Chasm really deserves a GOG treatment.
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Aug 15, 2015 00:39
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Okay, a few levels into Shogo and I'm starting to see what people said about the AI and having to be psychic to avoid dying. It's a good thing there's quicksaves.
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Aug 15, 2015 00:41
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Zaphod42 posted:SGT Mark just posted a screenshot from his set of levels meant to be played with brutal doom: As much as I hate Brutal Doom and SGT Mark, that actually looks pretty badass!
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Aug 15, 2015 00:55
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I don't remember seeing this here, but it was originally posted on ESR on July 31st. QuakeLive is going to let private servers go back up in a future update.quote:SyncError was in a chatty mood today in ZLive chat, I tried to sum everything in a clear post, in case you missed it. Sounds good to me.
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Aug 15, 2015 01:13
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Heavy Metal FAKK 2 trip report! Runs great in Windows 10 with no messing about. Getting it to run in 1080p requires a few config file additions but that's easy. Game starts too slow, lots of running and talking to people, and when the action finally starts it's against swarms of mosquitoes in a barn. Then there's a sort of annoying boss fight. Then more running around and talking to people in the town. That's as far as I got. The demo had more action so I hope it gets better. Pro tip for people who might pick this up: turn off vertex lighting. It causes a lot of graphic issues, at least on my computer. Also, Levelord is featured prominently in the opening credits and the song that plays in the main menu is stupid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS-47U32H3U
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Aug 15, 2015 02:13
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Overbite posted:Also, Levelord is featured prominently in the opening credits and the song that plays in the main menu is stupid I will fight you. Lemon Curdistan posted:Okay, a few levels into Shogo and I'm starting to see what people said about the AI and having to be psychic to avoid dying. It's a good thing there's quicksaves. Yeah, Shogo is a strangely designed game. I like it, but I think in many ways it kinda succeeds despite itself.
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Aug 15, 2015 02:27
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laserghost posted:Chasm's engine is really weird. It could do 800x600 under DOS without 3dfx with effects like smoke and dithering, everything was in 3D, yet there was barely any height difference on levels. Jumping between platforms is annoying because you nearly immediately hit roof, so you're more sliding than jumping. Also, everything is cramped and rooms feel really small. Yet I really like it, it clones Quake/Doom gameplay with really limited resources, it even uses a variant of Doom map system afaik. The boss fights are more engaging than Quake ones. Also the only FPS to have Egyptian motif, except Exhumed and Serious Sam. Too bad it was released so late and there never was a Windows implementation. Chasm really deserves a GOG treatment.
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Aug 15, 2015 02:48
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Chasm actually had a 2.5D engine in the spirit of Doom or Build. It was just really, really good at looking like true 3D. I also think david_a's explanation is correct. That could explain a lot of the level flatness. E: Actually it seems the engine was capable of more than just 90-degree walls. Whether that means any-degree walls like Doom and Build I have no idea, but there are screenshots containing corners with different angles. The game looked pretty good imo, but rose colored glasses and all that.    Also the disc art rules  
Mak0rz fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Aug 15, 2015 |
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Aug 15, 2015 03:40
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Overbite posted:Heavy Metal FAKK 2 trip report! Haha how did I forget that menu music. I remember it being a pretty fun game once you get out of the initial town and get cool stuff like the chainsaw sword.
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Aug 15, 2015 04:03
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Mak0rz posted:Chasm actually had a 2.5D engine in the spirit of Doom or Build. It was just really, really good at looking like true 3D. I also think david_a's explanation is correct. That could explain a lot of the level flatness.
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Aug 15, 2015 04:24
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Yeah the Chasm editor works in DosBox (although I can't actually get Chasm itself to run  ). Here's a screenshot: From playing around with it for 5 minutes (and skimming the printed manual, which I would be 100% lost without) a couple of things are notable: * It does in fact support angled walls. I think this capability was underused by the level designers. The level above is what happens when you create a new level - I just moved that one vertex on the left out a bit. * There is a global floor/ceiling height. * Anything that appears to be height variation (or a sloped wall) is actually a model. It's hard to tell from the screenshot, but that little box in the top right of the editor is a preview for the model (RUFF_) I have selected in the list. It appears to be a pair of angled walls with a ceiling (the ceiling is presumably lower than the "world" ceiling). I rotated/moved it over a bit so you can see one of the walls and the ceiling. You would plop down a bunch of these in a hallway to make it look like the walls are actually sloped and there is some height variation going on. There are a ton of other similar "architectural" models; everything from a single subtly sloped wall to a massive arch with lights intended to span a hallway. * It supports some primitive type of scripting and the lighting system seems interesting, however I'm not going to mess with that now. I didn't search very long, but I couldn't find a video where the player looks up sharply - I'm curious if you can tell whether or not it uses y-shearing. I wouldn't be shocked if the engine is actually a ray caster. The coordinate system is very suspicious - the numbers you see at the top with the colons are "squares" and world units; IE "13: 144" is square 13, unit 144. Each square is 256 units on a side. This seems like how you would organize things if you supported angled walls in a ray caster. david_a fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Aug 15, 2015 |
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Aug 15, 2015 05:19
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Zaphod42 posted:SGT Mark just posted a screenshot from his set of levels meant to be played with brutal doom: Knowing how Brutal performs on normal maps, it will probably play out pretty poorly. That just looks like it's gonna be a laggy mess.
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Aug 15, 2015 05:30
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There was a very similar map in Ultimate Torment & Torture, with a lot of monsters and AI marines, in higher resolutions there were huge frame drops.
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Aug 15, 2015 06:15
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Most obscure FPS I own is Last Rites, which doesn't even appear to be available on eBay or amazon for some reason. Only reason I even heard of it was because it arrived in a shoe box of random games I bought off eBay a few years back, alongside Tekwar, Witchaven 2 and some old Raven top-down shooters. God knows if it's any good or not, I should probably try it out sometime.
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Aug 15, 2015 09:41
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catlord posted:Yeah, Shogo is a strangely designed game. I like it, but I think in many ways it kinda succeeds despite itself. On the other hand, it's fun enough and I like the mecha design enough that I'd love for it to get a sequel, even though that will never happen. 
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Aug 15, 2015 11:41
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Half first-person game half point-and-click adventure, the most obscure game I own would have to be Eternam. https://youtu.be/dInUN2VYi2I I never got very far, but enjoyed what I played.
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Aug 15, 2015 11:58
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I have a copy of The Mark kicking about, which is a bit less obscure and just plain shite. On the other hand I remember enjoying Pariah so what do I know. e: Oh yeah, I have Brahma Force on PSX and that's a really cool game.
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Aug 15, 2015 12:13
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laserghost posted:Nitro Family is basically insane. Man, I've been meaning to get into those obscure European FPS's. Ones I've been looking at are Neuro, Skout, Kreed, Operation Matriarchy, Hades 2, Vivisector, Bloodline, Psychotoxic and Gene Troopers. Really wish I had more time these days.
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Aug 15, 2015 12:26
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kirbysuperstar posted:I have a copy of The Mark kicking about, which is a bit less obscure and just plain shite. Oh man Brahma Force. I should go back and play that.
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Aug 15, 2015 12:28
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SparkTR posted:Man, I've been meaning to get into those obscure European FPS's. Ones I've been looking at are Neuro, Skout, Kreed, Operation Matriarchy, Hades 2, Vivisector, Bloodline, Psychotoxic and Gene Troopers. Really wish I had more time these days. Hades 2 is freeware, and also developed in Brazil! http://www.espacoinf.com/hades2-i.htm It's quite interesting on it's own, with Build-like engine and pretty unique visual scheme, but goddamn levels are bizzare and hard to navigate. Skout, on the other hand, was developed in Germany and is one of the first budget 3D shooters that tried to mimic Q2/Unreal, with really mixed results. There are couple neat ideas, like AI controlled drone which you can command and it helps you fighting, and one of the weapons has like, seven ammo types? But the engine is glitchy and there is way too much switch-hunting for my patience. Gene Troopers is really, really interesting. I remember playing it a lot, but was absolutely confused by the story. Also the game doesn't really feel like explaining things to you, which sucks because for such overlooked game there is whole lot of potential and work put into. I'd grab it, but not too much, because it feels kind of unfinished. Also, avoid console releases, they're rubbish. I haven't played Neuro (my friend did, and called an absolutely broken Deus Ex wannabe), but it reminded me two other games - Utopia City and Liquidator 2. While Utopia City is a simplistic and broken mess (I remember that AI and scripts crapped out in the final mission and everything was frozen in place), L2 is beyond bizzare. Not only it's a remake of unlicensed Build game ( http://liquidator-world.chat.ru/jpgarchive.htm ), but the design itself is not unlike anything I ever saw. You start with all weapons and full ammo, the levels (all 3 of them) are open and without any clue or sense of direction, some power-ups will hurt you, and there's no way to guess which ones are poisonous, and the enemy roster consists of walking skulls that jump on your face and doors with living demon heads. It's like a playable fever dream. There is surprisingly big amount of bad sci-fi shooters from the last decade, with much of them being developed in Russia, Ukraine or Czech Republic, and somehow I find them much more interesting than typical WW2/war on terror pap.
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Aug 15, 2015 13:13
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How do you run old vista, xp-era FPSs? I tried running Psychotoxic and it ran initially. Once I tried bumping it up from 720p the game crashed on startup every time even after multiple re-installs. I remember there being a couple of programs that could run old Direct 3D and old games linked in the thread ages ago. Where should I start?
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Aug 15, 2015 14:56
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RyokoTK posted:Knowing how Brutal performs on normal maps, it will probably play out pretty poorly. That just looks like it's gonna be a laggy mess. I've been really surprised at how well BDv20 performs so far. In some light slaughtermaps (1500-2000 enemies) it actually holds together, albeit with some drops from 60fps. Only time I've seen the framerate really tank are when multiple explosions (like stacked barrels) happen in water, which spawns a shitload of special water-splat particles which hit walls and dribble down/dry. It's never going to run as well as vanilla doom because it's running a shitton of scripts. The engine was never meant to do locational damage, and it requires some really funky stuff to manage it.
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Aug 15, 2015 16:15
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Shambler's Castle does not look or sound like Quake at all. From watching a video of it it looks like it must play much more like Doom 3 than Quake. Everything feels slowed-down and the atmosphere of the original is lost, and what the gently caress is up with those Shamblers? This game is wrong in every possible way. It sees Quake as a set of images (castles, zombies, Shamblers) instead of for its actual themes, mechanics, and content, so it misses the actual heart of the game which is the feeling of anxiety and horror in the face of a completely unknowable, alien world. Shambler's Castle is a big dumb loud action game with lovely butt-metal and firefights with largely unthreatening enemies. Even the zombies, which, while not particularly dangerous in Quake, were at least creepy, get turned into roaring imp-like things that don't even have their signature quirk of rising from the dead unless you blow them up. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Aug 15, 2015 |
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Aug 15, 2015 16:31
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uncleKitchener posted:How do you run old vista, xp-era FPSs? I tried running Psychotoxic and it ran initially. Once I tried bumping it up from 720p the game crashed on startup every time even after multiple re-installs. I'd also like a solution to this. Typically anything post 2004 runs alright with my 64bit machine with minimal issues, but once it a while a game gives me issues and there's absolutely nothing to do about it due to a lack of knowledge/support. Older Windows games (pre-2001) generally work after using DGVoodoo2 (that's my goto issue solver) or DXWND or NGlide for 3DFX, but I don't believe they're useful for anything more modern (correct me if I'm wrong). My major game problem right now looks like Neuro, it doesn't seem to run at all on 64bit systems and there's no solution online. It's also OpenGL so DX related stuff is useless.
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Aug 15, 2015 16:36
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Woolie Wool posted:This game is wrong in every possible way. It sees Quake as a set of images (castles, zombies, Shamblers) instead of for its actual themes, mechanics, and content, so it misses the actual heart of the game which is the feeling of anxiety and horror in the face of a completely unknowable, alien world. Really? I've always thought of Quake as being even more twitchy a shooter than Doom. Everything is so immediate and squirrely and bouncy. I don't remember any anxiety or horror, but I do remember a big lava dude that dies when you run around him twice.
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Aug 15, 2015 19:02
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Shambler's Castle does look like dog poo poo no matter what you think the original Quake is.
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Aug 15, 2015 19:08
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Is like that they designed that boss fight on purpose for bunny hopping (or speedrunners).
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Aug 15, 2015 19:08
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I'm replaying Quake 1 on nightmare and I get the feeling that methodical and twitchy gameplay are both applicable - depending on whether you know the map. If you don't know the map then you don't know the monster teleports/closets or environmental hazards, so you're forced to creep up slowly for fear of activating another Shambler teleport right in front of you without being ready for it. If you know the map then you know that there are a lot of fights you don't have to take, and it is often better for your health and ammo just to keep running towards the goal. For actually fighting enemies, the optimal strategy is usually popping out of corners, since the nastiest attacks are area-denial (Ogre), homing (Vore), or charging lightning-gun (Shambler).
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Aug 15, 2015 19:38
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SparkTR posted:My major game problem right now looks like Neuro, it doesn't seem to run at all on 64bit systems and there's no solution online. It's also OpenGL so DX related stuff is useless. A quick googling around says that the fix for Neuro on modern systems is to use a no-cd crack for it, so maybe it's a DRM issue or something.
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Aug 15, 2015 19:48
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Woolie Wool posted:the actual heart of [Quake] is the feeling of anxiety and horror in the face of a completely unknowable, alien world. quake is about shooting grenades into the faces if eldritch horrors while running and jumping circles around them at half the speed of sound and laughing at the flying meat and gurgling sound produced when they explode hth
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Aug 15, 2015 19:58
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