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Lork posted:I don't know, the "puzzles" in Hexen 2 seemed even more inscrutable than the ones in the original. Like isn't the very first thing you're suppose to do when you start to turn around and press a hidden switch disguised as a brick to open up a mandatory secret area? I don't think I ever made it to the second episode, but if that first one was setting the tone for the rest of the game correctly, the original game is a masterpiece in comparison. Yes, but if you see a notably huge brick sticking out of a wall and don't immediately want to press it then I'm not sure what to say. I will agree that some of the areas you're expected to find are a little obtuse though. For example there's a shrine hidden behind a bed in a house in the castle area that takes a keen eye to notice, but it's not exactly devoid of clues as the wall is recessed a little and the textures are slightly different. There's also a key you need to dig up and its location is revealed in a book just laying in the corner of a barn. In any case it's nice to see more variation than "pull switch and find out what it did in that other map!" There also aren't any centaurs! Not a single one! Sorry it wins the contest because of that alone. The first episode (a medieval European castle) took me a while to finish because of the objectives you have to do are a bit unclear. I admit I had to resort to a guide for a few parts of it. The second episode (a Mesoamerican temple) was a little more streamlined and I finished it in far less than half the time. The third chapter is pretty cool because it takes place in an ancient Egyptian temple of some kind with pretty neat architecture and remixed Heretic tracks for the background music, though it just makes me want to play noted better games Powerslave and Chasm. Mak0rz fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 07:24
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I should really try Hexen 2 at some point, I've had it on Steam for years but never got more than about 10 minutes into it. I go back and forth on the first game but the second always looked interesting. Isn't there a bit where you can catapult a sheep over a wall or something? That looked pretty cool
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Apr 10, 2016 08:02
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Convex posted:I should really try Hexen 2 at some point, I've had it on Steam for years but never got more than about 10 minutes into it. I go back and forth on the first game but the second always looked interesting. Yup! Then you use the catapult to get over the wall yourself!
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Apr 10, 2016 08:07
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Shadow Hog posted:Honestly, I'm going through Quake 2 now, and, well, it's actually kinda awesome? I mean, I admittedly find the purple skies of the first Quake more appealing than the orange skies of Quake 2, and I find I'm hoarding Quad Damages instead of using them at appropriate moments, but hell, I'm having quite a bit of fun with this. It is a great game, kinda hindsight-like though. Way back then, when id was still releasing games and some other developers were trying to do different things, it felt a little stale. Even the guns to be honest. I remember being excited about the SMG in HL because it was a real gun. If you pay attention the maps aren't confusing, and make sure to use the BFG as much as you can in appropriate situations, there's absolutely no need to hoard the ammo. Heh, BFG, SMG. The history of the FPS genre in two acronyms.
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Apr 10, 2016 12:07
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I think Quake 2's single player is fantastic and is one of my top single player FPS games in the whole early FPS era. I feel like the backtracking was overstated; there aren't that many places where you spend significant amounts of time going through cleared areas. You definitely go back into levels you've already been to, and even ones that you've cleared a significant amount of, but the times you have to pass through areas you've straight-up cleared are usually short jogs at most. I thought that the multi-level "unit" concept as a whole was pretty novel at the time without being grating in the present day, was generally implemented well, and adds to the game. Of course opinions, etc.. For some reason I have the strongest nostalgia for Quake 2 even though I grew up with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom; probably because it was the first game I bought with my own money and the first one I spent huge amounts of time online with? Edit: Summer of 1999 is probably why I became such a shut in; my family moved into a new neighbourhood that had cable internet and I spent the whole summer playing Quake 2 mods online instead of making friends BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 13:16
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Yeah there really isn't that much backtracking, and the levels aren't huge for it to become annoying. In fact I think they could've made certain areas bigger because when it does open up the game feels better. Also people are quick to call it ugly and too  
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Apr 10, 2016 14:16
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Quake 2 single player was passable but the multiplayer is what makes it. It was massive in its day, before CS got big. Quake 3 Arena was made the way it is because Q2 multiplayer was so popular. Unreal went the tournament route because of it too. It made arena shooters big.
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Apr 10, 2016 14:30
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Whatever happened to the bombshell tie-in with the build engine? Is that still a thing?
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Apr 10, 2016 14:56
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Quake 2 single player was passable but the multiplayer is what makes it. It was massive in its day, before CS got big. Quake 3 Arena was made the way it is because Q2 multiplayer was so popular. Unreal went the tournament route because of it too. It made arena shooters big. (...well, okay, that's being overly melodramatic, but it sometimes feels that way...) Narcissus1916 posted:Whatever happened to the bombshell tie-in with the build engine? Is that still a thing?
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Apr 10, 2016 17:55
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Man, it's almost possible to forget what a trainwreck Invisible War's version of UE2 is while playing Deadly Shadows + Sneaky Upgrade. Right up to the point where you load a save and the game process kills itself then spawns another executable, that is. 
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Apr 10, 2016 18:02
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Narcissus1916 posted:Whatever happened to the bombshell tie-in with the build engine? Is that still a thing? Supposedly it's going to be released somewhere in Q4 2016. Not sure if those screenies were posted?   loga mira posted:Also people are quick to call it ugly and too I always liked the way Q2 architecture is very brutalist and industrial, with steel mills and other machinery. Hate to ask here in the thread, but you don't have PMs, are you maybe still working on that great Q1 hudweapons mod? laserghost fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 18:44
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laserghost posted:Supposedly it's going to be released somewhere in Q4 2016. This looks sick as hell. laserghost posted:I always liked the way Q2 architecture is very brutalist and industrial, with steel mills and other machinery. Which kinda fits because the world of Stroggos is built by machines.
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Apr 10, 2016 18:52
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The build Bombshell is probably going to end up better than the actual main game.
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Apr 10, 2016 18:55
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Shadow Hog posted:And unfortunately, the single-player FPS market never quite recovered from that decision. What makes you feel that way? There's tons of games that are clearly focused mostly on single player (Wolfenstein TNO, Bioshock Infinite, the Far Cry games, Deus Ex, Metro).
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Apr 10, 2016 19:14
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Quake 2's 'backtracking' is almost exclusively looping you back around to the entrance, rather than you legitimately having to walk back the way you came. It rarely puts you in a situation where you absolutely HAVE to go back the way you came. most of the time it'll even take you multiple levels to get back to the area it wants you to use (insert key item or button here). I think the only real instance of true backtracking is the first secret level, and even it tries to keep things a bit interesting. Personally I loved the game's singleplayer campaign, but that may just be me. Quake 2 MP was good, but UT Multiplayer was my jam. Quake 3 felt really boring and plinky compared to Quake 2 and UT.
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Apr 10, 2016 19:21
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:The build Bombshell is probably going to end up better than the actual main game. That's not exactly a high bar to jump.
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Apr 10, 2016 19:35
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laserghost posted:Hate to ask here in the thread, but you don't have PMs, are you maybe still working on that great Q1 hudweapons mod? gently caress I forgot about that. Still need to package it all up and upload to moddb, write a read me etc. I have posted a sort of test version earlier in the thread, in case you missed that, it should still be up. Since then I've also made a thunderbolt version that is a sort of valve-esque gun with a pretty elaborate firing anim, need to clean it up a bit  I've moved on to monsters now, giving them faces and facial anims, it's cool in game seeing them scowl and frown, and some subtle mesh updates and fixes. The process I found isn't as time consuming as remaking everything from scratch but it's still pretty convoluted and slow.  
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Apr 10, 2016 19:52
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khwarezm posted:What makes you feel that way? There's tons of games that are clearly focused mostly on single player (Wolfenstein TNO, Bioshock Infinite, the Far Cry games, Deus Ex, Metro).
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Apr 10, 2016 20:07
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I know what you mean, felt like lots of single-player centric FPS games with some diversity were coming out all the time back then. Then felt like it slowed down a bit in quality releases after a while. Though there are still usually a couple gems a year or so.
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Apr 10, 2016 20:11
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Colon Semicolon posted:Personally I loved the game's singleplayer campaign, but that may just be me. Quake 2 MP was good, but UT Multiplayer was my jam. Quake 3 felt really boring and plinky compared to Quake 2 and UT. Q3 MP marked a transition to a dark and grim time where devs and players started to argue more about what was balanced than what was fun We're still in it, fyi
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Apr 10, 2016 20:11
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loga mira posted:gently caress I forgot about that. Still need to package it all up and upload to moddb, write a read me etc. I have posted a sort of test version earlier in the thread, in case you missed that, it should still be up. Since then I've also made a thunderbolt version that is a sort of valve-esque gun with a pretty elaborate firing anim, need to clean it up a bit I'm using that test version on all of my devices with Quake installed, it's miles better and more suiting than that Quake 1.5 thing. Some of my steam buddies also liked it very much. Hope to see more of your work! I remember seeing some "fixes" for monsters, but nothing as interesting like that.
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Apr 10, 2016 20:39
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What ever happened to secret levels in games. I get that now development is so expensive that having players potentially miss content is bad, but secret exits to secret levels rule.
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Apr 10, 2016 23:50
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dishwasherlove posted:What ever happened to secret levels in games. I get that now development is so expensive that having players potentially miss content is bad, but secret exits to secret levels rule. I'd like more secrets in general, just opening some thingy or something for a cool little extra. Secret levels though I can understand not having. But they are cool.
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Apr 10, 2016 23:58
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The ending to shadows of the metal age may be the dumbest ending every to exist in a mod.
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Apr 11, 2016 01:19
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Klaus88 posted:The ending to shadows of the metal age may be the dumbest ending every to exist in a mod. It's not a mod, but Neverwinter Nights 2 literally ends with "rocks fall everyone dies" after you kill the end boss. (Then the expansion pack turns that into one of the best RPGs ever, but ymmv.)
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Apr 11, 2016 01:33
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Klaus88 posted:The ending to shadows of the metal age may be the dumbest ending every to exist in a mod. What's so bad about it? I looked it up real quick on YouTube, and it looks like you stop a demon or something, and then you sail off on a boat.
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Apr 11, 2016 01:57
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I thought Shadows of the Metal Age was just kind of generally dumb. Here's this world that very clearly takes place in a 100% fictional universe....so anyway the protagonist is from Egypt. 
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Apr 11, 2016 03:34
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OK I finished Hexen 2. The puzzles in the Egypt chapter were some goddamn bullshit and can gently caress off. The fourth chapter (some Greco-Roman temples) was okay I guess. The last chapter (back at the medieval castle) was actually kinda fun and the final boss was a hell of ride! Thus ends my journey to kill the Serpent Riders and save the world or whatever. Maybe I should play Heretic 2 next! Actually no I'm not because that game looks loving awful.
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Apr 11, 2016 06:17
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Just catching up on the magazine scans, I love this quote from the Kingpin review:Drew Markham, Lead Programmer posted:The language is so realistic and over the top that it would be really hard for me to give you a taste of it without having it heavily censored. First, how can something be simultaneously realistic and over the top? And two, the real reason you won't say anything is because then it would be obvious you stole half the dialogue from Pulp Fiction  The titular kingpin is pretty obviously Marcellus Wallace.
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Apr 11, 2016 06:29
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All I know about Kingpin: Life of Crime is that apparently the ingame soundtrack is just a loop of the baseline to "16 Men Till There's No Men Left" by Cypress Hill. Yo ho ho and a bag of indo.
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Apr 11, 2016 06:48
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Mak0rz posted:Maybe I should play Heretic 2 next! It's not awful; but it's more fantasy Tomb Raider than an FPS. Personally I had a lot of fun with it, especially because pole-vaulting and kicking people in the face with both feet at once is not just a valid combat technique, it's generally what deals the most damage.
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Apr 11, 2016 07:48
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C.M. Kruger posted:All I know about Kingpin: Life of Crime is that apparently the ingame soundtrack is just a loop of the baseline to "16 Men Till There's No Men Left" by Cypress Hill. Yeah, Cypress Hill gave them like 4 instrumental tracks from some of their songs and they just loop those the entire game. Also they swear a lot. Like... a lot:  This is out of a total 17 episodes  Depressing Drawers did a pretty good Let's Play of the game about 4 years ago, if you want to hear a motor mouthed Aussie (I think?) run through the game pointing out absurdities then I recommend giving it a watch. The game is actually pretty great starting off, but about half way in the quality just falls off a cliff and it stops being fun to both play and watch  http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3513785
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Apr 11, 2016 08:53
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Heavy Metal posted:I'd like more secrets in general, just opening some thingy or something for a cool little extra. Secret levels though I can understand not having. But they are cool. Why give people free extra content, when you can make them pay for DLC instead?
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Apr 11, 2016 08:54
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Based on this thread's recommendation, I've started playing Jedi Outcast. It's pretty fun so far, in a very old-school way. I like how as long as you keep moving normal storm troopers have about a zero percent chance to hit you, but since your own weapons tend not to be hitscan you're forced to continually dodge and wait for them to come to a stop (especially since they're pretty quick on their feet). I'm just getting to the second mission after you get your force powers (the garbage dump filled with dozens of those annoying fuckers lobbing grenades and snipers - thanks for introducing them as soon as I get the ability to block shots, you dicks!). I will say, the levels are pretty but it runs squarely into the same problem I had with the original Dark Forces when I was a kid and Dark Forces II during the ten minutes I played it - that is to say, I find myself too often asking "where the gently caress do I go?" The levels are large and jam-packed with technological gizmos that look cool but all too often you're backtracking and looking for one random switch hidden on a console covered in neon lights. The worst offender so far was the mining level where (after consulting a walkthrough) I realized I had to walk outside onto a catwalk, stare down under my feet and look for a pipe that protrudes out from under the catwalk roughly once every ten seconds to drop into. Who decided that "let's hope the player walks out here with zero indication and stares straight down for a while to notice this pipe" was intuitive level design? There were a few other parts where I sort of walked around wondering what to do but that was the most egregious. Probably my favorite level so far (the surface level where you're running from giant walker mechs and manning laser turrets to protect escaped prisoners) was my favorite since it was relatively short, straightforward and didn't wear out its welcome. Even if it did have an entire segment consisting of waiting on elevators to backtrack while 3-4 storm troopers occasionally spawned, but at least that told me I was going the right way.
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Apr 11, 2016 08:57
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I remember reading about Walmart only selling special censored versions of FPS games with the parental lock permanently switched on - for example, a version of Blood was sold with all the blood cut out. I wish they had kept this practice on for longer as the Walmart sanitised version of Kingpin could have been quite something. Perhaps swear words could be overdubbed with duck quacks, lead pipes changed to foam fingers, and the Cypress Hill soundtrack changed to Michael Bolton.
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Apr 11, 2016 11:53
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Convex posted:I remember reading about Walmart only selling special censored versions of FPS games with the parental lock permanently switched on - for example, a version of Blood was sold with all the blood cut out. They really should have gone all the way and called it "Unspecified Bodily Fluid" instead.
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Apr 11, 2016 11:57
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KozmoNaut posted:They really should have gone all the way and called it "Unspecified Bodily Fluid" instead.
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Apr 11, 2016 12:00
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Goon 1: The only reason you're alive is because Mickey wants you to remember the beatin' we gave ya. Now keep ya fuckin' rear end outta Poinsonville you gently caress. Goon 2: Yeah! Kingpin: Life of Crime writers: That's a wrap, boys.
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Apr 11, 2016 12:38
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I remember reading in the magazine that the publisher (Eidos?) sent to some unspecified people (game journos maybe?) bloodied envelopes with photo of a dead body (in reality, a cropped screenshot from the game), with "you're next written" and cd with demo version of Kingpin. Kingpin had some potential in expanding Q2 engine, with light squad management, hub system and overall atmosphere, but goddamn those trapezoid heads of dudes were always cracking me up
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Apr 11, 2016 13:02
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laserghost posted:Kingpin had some potential in expanding Q2 engine, with light squad management, hub system and overall atmosphere, but goddamn those trapezoid heads of dudes were always cracking me up It looked like everyone was a few seconds from exploding, like that guy in the pressure chamber in Licence to Kill I should play that game again sometime. So many games, such little time 
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Apr 11, 2016 14:51
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