*sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thread)

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ZellSF
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by ZellSF »

I don't like Doom autoaim, it either makes fights too easy (not having to aim vertically) or makes them too hard for entirely bullshit reasons (fired a rocket launcher at an enemy in front of you? There was a enemy standing just below you you missed, so you'll be hitting your own feet).
CyberAngel wrote:Oh come on. It's like you've played Doom, reached E1M3 and complained that the game has too many zombie hitscanners and no hellish vibes.
What? E1M3 is great, so are the maps preceding it. Doom's an old shareware game, it doesn't get better as it goes farther, it has the best stuff first, to sell you on the full game.

Something I wish these retro throwback games would try to simulate, rather than wasting their time simulating how shitty games used to look without mipmapping (looking at Amid Evil, Dusk and Ion Fury here, though at least Amid Evil's TAA helps and Ion Fury is because of an eDuke32 engine deficiency that's supposed to be corrected eventually). On that subject...
ZellSF wrote:IMO the pixel crawl of turning texture filtering off really bad, I recommend leaving it at trilinear, setting HQ resize mode to Normal4X, precaching GL textures and setting gl_texture_hqresize_maxinputsize to 1024. It's not as sharp as no texture filtering, but it's still pretty sharp (I play at 4K though) and no pixel crawling.
I thought I would show people how this looks. Unfortunately, Youtube compression is crap at lower settings so you have to set quality to 4K60 to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJg9i-Oj7-M
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drauch
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by drauch »

I mean, Ultima Underworld changed everything and it rules, but it's nothing like any of these aforementioned games...
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

ZellSF wrote:I don't like Doom autoaim, it either makes fights too easy (not having to aim vertically) or makes them too hard for entirely bullshit reasons (fired a rocket launcher at an enemy in front of you? There was a enemy standing just below you you missed, so you'll be hitting your own feet).
Quake was about the time that mouselook was becoming the expected norm in FPS. If you played keyboard only it had limited autoaiming vertically similar to Doom, but like later Doom ports have proven, the ability to manually vertical aim is still superior.

I'm a bit sad nobody's mentioned Descent yet in here. The tension from exploring cramped hallways in zero gravity environments where deadly robots can come at you from all sides? That's real first person horror right there. The sequel generally improved a lot, mainly because it didn't have the stupid hitscan driller enemies except in fan-made mission packs that were a terror in D1, but the original game is still a lot of fun. It's great nowadays with an Xbox pad using twinstick controls; you don't need the aiming precision of a mouse to hit reliably thanks to your relatively large projectiles on primary weapons, large enemies, and secondary weapons that almost all have some kind of homing property.

Quake 2 was a cool game, but the PC version specifically gets a LOT easier once you get the energy armour which essentially serves as a permanent and massive buff to your survivability (it requires almost no cells to use, too). Quake 2's endgame is generally far easier than Quake 1's was, not just because of the sheer amount of ammo you'll be carrying but because your defensive options are much better. I also played the N64 port of Quake 2 (which loved blues as a primary colour for representing the enemy base instead of browns and oranges), and it felt a lot harder due to powerups being instant use similar to classic Quake, and no permanent energy armour upgrade.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Xyga »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Descent
Right, we all tend to forget about that one, but I'm sure many played and enjoyed at the very least the original.

I have played both the Dos and PS port, and the biggest surprise for me back then was how good the controls were. I expected horrible manoeuvrability, but it was actually a smooth ride in both cases.
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drauch
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by drauch »

I personally never consider it since you're in a space ship and the range of your view is so different, but I get it since it is indeed a shooter in first-person. 'FPS' is just so synonymous with playing as just a dude running around I find it hard to call anything else it.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

The view is first person within the cockpit though. :P

I think Descent and other similar 6dof FPS games (six degrees of freedom) get largely forgotten because people just aren't used to those being a common thing. Most people's experience with that style of movement or lack of gravity usually is in flight or space combat games. Descent's still definitely a FPS though in terms of how it plays, how its levels are designed, how it's paced, how your strafing movement works, etc, just one where you're weightless in a zero-gravity environment and can rotate and strafe in any direction.

The 6dof FPS subgenre never really took off understandably, as having maps with no "true" up or down in them is not always easy for people to understand. Descent did its best to make levels easy to navigate with a very robust minimapping system and level textures that clearly had "floor" textures on one side and "ceiling textures" on the other (often with lights embedded) so that individual rooms often had a clear up and down you could orient yourself to if you wanted, but it's still going to be disorienting for people who aren't used to weightless navigation.

What are people's general opinions on early "flat" FPSes like Wolfenstein, where there's no height at all in levels? I don't know what this subgenre was called, and I was never crazy about Wolfenstein specifically, but there were some good ones out there. I was always fond of Catacomb 3D, the one where you're a wizard pumping out fireballs exploring a decrepit tomb, but there was also Blake Stone, a fairly complex one where you're infiltrating an enemy installation and interrogated scientists, stuffed your face from vending machines for health, etc.

A recent one I discovered that feels like it's a very early rendition of a System Shock game is "Wrath of Earth" I'm sure I've gushed about on the forum already. You're in a complex power-suit with a wide array of HUD functions, in a solar-powered armoured suit that recharges in sunlight or brightly lit indoor areas (or from batteries you can find). It's quite complex, with you having to watch out for extreme cold or extreme heat that will slowly drain your shields, or sources of high radiation or lava, which can kill you pretty much instantly if you wander into them (your temperature/radiation meters will give you plenty of warning when you're in the area where this is a hazard, and you can switch your suit to an infrared mode that can detect areas of extreme cold or heat).

Interestingly, for a "flat" FPS it's very complex, and you'll find it important to get to lit areas to autorepair when you're seriously injured as your suit systems actually can get damaged when your shields take serious hits, such as causing flickering, making weapons fire less rapidly, losing lock-on abilities so you can't fire homing weapons, losing the ability to see any of your HUD meters, etc.

There's a few cool weapons such as homing plasma and homing missiles that automatically lock on to up to 4 different targets to fire at, but you also have to deal with enemies that can jam your homing systems, forcing you to use dumbfire missiles or cannons, enemies with cloaking systems that automatically stop to disguise themselves as various bits of terrain when looking at them (until you turn away and they start firing, or you get wise to their antics and fire on them in advance). Wrath of Earth is pretty neat, honestly, and it's got of different wall/environment textures as part of the artwork, like I'm only in the early part of the game and there's way more than even in DOOM.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Mischief Maker »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I'm a bit sad nobody's mentioned Descent yet in here.
I mentioned Overload!
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Austin »

Mischief Maker wrote:I don't get the hype. Maybe it gets better in the latter stages? (I quit after the Intoxigator because it bugged out and the exit switch didn't work so I couldn't finish the level).
You might consider spending a little more time with it, there's a lot more game left to experience. Intoxigator is like, ten minutes into the game, heh.

I did enjoy Dusk, but having finished it twice now, I don't think it lives up to the hype. It is certainly a good game, definitely recommended for classic Quake and Blood fans that want a mix between the two themes, but there are issues. Some of the enemy design and texture work is laughable at best (particularly on humanoid enemies), which takes me out of the experience. Some of the weapons also feel awkward to use (such as its equivalent of a grenade launcher).

Amid Evil was the better of the bunch in my opinion, but that also didn't satisfy as well as I would have liked. Its initial episode is really good, but it doesn't take long for it to start focusing more on exploration, veering away from frantic battles with dense enemy patterns (a shame because it excels at that so well). Its entire last area is a pain in the ass, too.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by it290 »

Speaking of Descent, I'd be curious to hear opinions on Forsaken. I rented this game back in the day for the PSX after playing Descent and thought it was trash, but still strangely compelling somehow. Did anyone have a good/bad time with this one?
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SuperDeadite
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by SuperDeadite »

I liked Dusk a lot more then Amid Evil. AE is just too easy, never really gets intense enough. The episodes are too short as well, only 2 real stages each, so as soon as things start to pickup and get going, you are already at the boss.

Forsaken is a solid game. The PC version shits all over the ports though.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Marc »

I remember having a good time with Forsaken on N64 back in the day. I don't find that type of game anything like as compelling as a traditional FPS though. I think it's because, at it's best, Doom almost feels like a shmup - it's about prioritising threats and taking out the most immediately dangerous targets as quickly as possible, that always feels a lot more difficult to process in a Descent-type game, and they tend to lack that feeling of absolute urgency the best FPS's offer.

My next buy will be Ion Maiden or whatever it's called now. Really looking forward to that from the previews.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Xyga »

Marc wrote:I don't find that type of game anything like as compelling as a traditional FPS though. I think it's because, at it's best, Doom almost feels like a shmup - it's about prioritising threats and taking out the most immediately dangerous targets as quickly as possible, that always feels a lot more difficult to process in a Descent-type game, and they tend to lack that feeling of absolute urgency the best FPS's offer.
Doom really gives arcade vibes at higher difficulty, yes.

Some other FPS games do too, but not that well IMHO, guess it's that particular flair that makes the game still popular today.
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Austin
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Austin »

Marc wrote:I think it's because, at it's best, Doom almost feels like a shmup - it's about prioritising threats and taking out the most immediately dangerous targets as quickly as possible
Doom can play slow if you want it to, but for experienced players it's definitely on the arcade end of things. Fast movement and rooms chock-full of enemies to rip through.

Modern Doom "slaughter" map sets have taken it to a whole other level, too. Thousands of enemies in some maps with large scale battles that basically turn the game into a first person bullet hell. It's good stuff.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by CyberAngel »

Okay, gave Ion Fury a try and my impression is OW FUCK MY EYES. Sorry, instant refund.

I've had bad suspicions about its visual design ever since the first gameplay video I've seen and they've been proven true in practice. Enemies and powerups don't stand out enough. In fact, they barely stand out at all at a quick glance, which is a horrible thing for a fast-paced FPS that this game tries to be. Compare that to old games where you could tell what's what from a mile away in 320x200. Granted, things were made easily recognizable back then more out of necessity, but that doesn't mean it's an idea that can be just ignored even in the age of Full HD monitors. I don't want to be forced to squint just to see what the hell I am about to pick up, or be unable to notice the enemy standing in plain sight while it melts half of my health away, no matter how old or new the game I'm playing is. Some might argue this design in aimed at realism, but realism is what I expect and want the least in my RETRO STYLE FPS DAMMIT

This isn't even the only thing this game messes up completely. Half the enemies use the same sound clips so good luck figuring out what to expect when you hear them. To be fair, a lot of them behave and have to be treated the same way, but that's more like yet another flaw instead of a valid excuse. Also, you run by default and can't change that without editing the config or using console. Really weird move for a world so rich in details.

To be fair, I do have to point out one thing this game does a stellar job at, and that's the soundtrack. Been rocking to it at work for a few days now, and it was what did push me to try out the game in the end. Sadly, that alone doesn't save the experience from lacking any kind of gameplay enjoyment because of all the problems.

Bottom line, if you can enjoy it then good for you, but diehard fans of old-school FPS stuff should take the hype with a grain of salt.
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drauch
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by drauch »

Really confused on what you're saying. Never experienced any sort of difficulty with recognizing items.

A lot of those soldiers have the same voice, but their weapons certainly don't. You take a quick peak or duck behind something, and if you didn't see what they were you'll certainly hear what weapon they're firing.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by it290 »

All this talk about 'arcade FPS' makes me want to play the first Serious Sam again, and Painkiller too.

Also, speaking of arcade FPS, am I the only one who thought Outtrigger was a cool game? It kinda feels like Virtua Cop:FPS edition and I love the idea of an arena-style FPS arcade game.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Austin »

Outtrigger was fun, especially when you played with a keyboard and mouse setup on the Dreamcast.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by CyberAngel »

drauch wrote:Really confused on what you're saying. Never experienced any sort of difficulty with recognizing items.

A lot of those soldiers have the same voice, but their weapons certainly don't. You take a quick peak or duck behind something, and if you didn't see what they were you'll certainly hear what weapon they're firing.
If you have to take cover and listen for the weapon sounds then odds are you've already messed up the fight. At least that's what two-decades-old FPS skills tell me. And for a game that claims to be the successor to games of that era, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to work just as well as they used to. Yet there I was, hearing the enemy firing loud and clear and having an idea about their general direction from the shot tracers, but completely unable to locate where exactly they are, multiple times even in the first few levels. Not knowing WHAT to look for because the devs decided to save on voice acting and the shots don't sound nearly distinct enough definitely doesn't help at all.

For items, I guess it's that while they are noticeable enough by themselves, it can be hard to make them out when there's a lot of trash sprites around. And I haven't seen a game this cluttered with them since Redneck Rampage. This probably depends on the area but I still don't like when it's a thing one has to deal with.

Well, I guess all these could be just my personal hangups that nobody else will have problems with, but I've been on the fence about this game for quite a long time and just feel like venting my thoughts about it now that I tried it. This MIGHT be a fine game if you can get used to it, but for me it fails to pass the threshold of interest. (And I do admit I'm quite picky - I consider Duke3D to be too lame.)
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by qmish »

cave hermit wrote:
Yeah there's a brutal doom thread, and that's fun and cathartic and all, but there's more to retro FPS than just brutal doom. Like smooth doom for example!
I liked this thread just fine and without boomer meme:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18069

Or it was no retro enough? ok
ZellSF wrote:Brutal Doom is for children.
Nah, Brutal Doom is for fans of SWAT or Rainbow Six. (Or at least these are my impressions from playing BD in coop on harder difficulties)
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drauch
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by drauch »

CyberAngel wrote: If you have to take cover and listen for the weapon sounds then odds are you've already messed up the fight. At least that's what two-decades-old FPS skills tell me.
:roll:

Yeah, and if you don't like Duke we're done here.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Austin »

"Duke Nukem 3D is too lame."

:roll:
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by CyberAngel »

He's nowhere near as cool as Lo Wang or Caleb. And not even half as fun to play as either of them. Deal with it 8)
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

CyberAngel wrote:I consider Duke3D to be too lame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX56D9GzCQA
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by CyberAngel »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
CyberAngel wrote:I consider Duke3D to be too lame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX56D9GzCQA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPOJ8VWATIw

(Guess I do have to also admit that Ion Fury indeed has its share of neat quotes. Even Shelly has more personality than Duke :P )
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by ZellSF »

Wrath: Aeon of ruin is in early access now (that's the Quake engine one). It has the same problem all other retro inspired FPS games have: if I want retro FPS gaming, there's still plenty of excellent Doom wads I haven't played.
qmish wrote:
ZellSF wrote:Brutal Doom is for children.
Nah, Brutal Doom is for fans of SWAT or Rainbow Six. (Or at least these are my impressions from playing BD in coop on harder difficulties)
Most people who play it seem to find more similarity with kid games like Call of Duty. Maybe you should play Rainbow Six and SWAT again, if your mom will let you.
Spoiler
I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish by replying to a post that was obviously just to rile Brutal Doom fanboys up.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by bottino »

Marc wrote:I've probably played through Duke 3D on every machine I've owned that it's been available for.
Even the Mega Drive version?
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Marc »

I spent quite a bit of time with that POS just for amusement value. Brave attempt in fairness.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by Austin »

bottino wrote:
Marc wrote:I've probably played through Duke 3D on every machine I've owned that it's been available for.
Even the Mega Drive version?
To add to that--

Game.Com or Tapwave Zodiac versions?

:lol:
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by qmish »

ZellSF wrote:I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish by replying to a post that was obviously just to rile Brutal Doom fanboys up.
I expressed my impressions from playing BDoom in coop with friends.

It reminds me those tactical games and that's it.

Not your usual "omg gore omg action" what everybody says about bdoom. No, you act accurately as squad (cause as you die you will only respawn when level is finished), with all that iron sight shenanigans and learning the way which parts of level to clear, while advancing further pretty cautiously.
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Re: *sip* yup, Quake was a good game. (Retro FPS/Boomer thre

Post by guigui »

I was recently tempted to try a DOOM game as my first shot at an FPS game. Heard DOOM 2016 is quite good.

Though I received an PS VR headset for Christmas, and saw that DOOM VFR is currently on sale. Any feedback on this one ? Good game for a first try at the genre ? VR well used ?
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