the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[ColonelFatso]

Except for the obvious bit about superiority of mouse/keyboard over controller, nope.

[1up]

didn't the ps3 version of Borderlands have horrible framerate drops? Or am I thinking of something else? Maybe they patched it already...

Borderlands is great. Especially if you can find 3 friends to team up with

[Ed Oscuro]

Totally agreed on all 3 points. Also, Pathways Into Darkness (a pseudo-prequel to Marathon) was very close to System Shock 1 in terms of gameplay (but not story). Though some say that it was a shitty game

I enjoyed reading a walkthrough of it some years back, but yes, I have the strange feeling it's a shitty game.

I own it actually, just haven't found one of my old Macs fast enough to play it, similar to my Alone in the Dark (another on the verge of being kusoge IMO) situation. A Mac TV isn't fast enough, although I can't really compare its specs directly to something else (except to say that it's slower than a 25MHz LC II).

[Schrodinger's cat]

Anyone tried the Marathon trilogy by Bungie?

HELL YEA! This was my favorite game compilation back in '96-97 when I was in middle school I think I used to spend more time with Anvil (program used to change game assets/parameters/etc) than I did actually playing the game. I had a blast making machine guns that SHOOT OUT EXPLODING PEOPLE, weapons with recoil ridiculous enough to make you fly to the ceiling after one shot, and rocket shotguns among other things. It was easy to change a projectile ID from being a bullet to a person; all you had to do was change a single number.

I'm really not a modder though so I haven't done anything like that since Marathon. The most fun I've had afterward with ridiculous weapons was playing this Half-Life 1 mod called rocket crowbar, where you had a crowbar that shot randomly moving "drunken" rockets, a shotgun that shot screaming and exploding scientists, and a black hole hand grenade.

A few years back there was also a version of Garry's mod version that had LUA scripting for custom weapons that was pretty cool, but it was harder to find unique and interesting ones amidst the masses of ridiculous superguns that did 1000000 damage per shot or "realistic" weapons when it first came out. Go figure. Some custom weapons are absolutely hilarious though. Check out the car launcher and microwave gun : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpwwbhZsZ7M

[Diabollokus]

Just did all of COD MW2 on veteran. Much easier compared to COD4 and COD2's verteran modes. I am going to give up on the 69 stars in special opps though. Playing the multiplayer a bit, but I think COD4 was better in terms of balance.

Does anyone have a solution for kids running around with dual 1887 shotguns + stopping power? the range on those things is rediculous.

[Damocles]

http://www.destructoid.com/serious-sam- ... 8242.phtml

Let's hope it's better than 2.

[Thunder Force]

Does anyone have a solution for kids running around with dual 1887 shotguns + stopping power? the range on those things is rediculous.

Infinity Ward recently said they fixed the overpowered dual 1887s in a patch for PS3 players, and they will eventually be rolling out that fix to 360/PC versions of the game as well.

[1up]

Does anyone have a solution for kids running around with dual 1887 shotguns + stopping power? the range on those things is rediculous.

Infinity Ward recently said they fixed the overpowered dual 1887s in a patch for PS3 players, and they will eventually be rolling out that fix to 360/PC versions of the game as well.

I dont see a lot with this combo anymore, but its nice that it gets nerfed as the range is redicilous. The problem with multiplayer thats really getting to me is the private server glitch where people will somehow chose a small FFA map in domination and set the score crap to 10,000 points.

Non-stop death streak

[Ed Oscuro]

Man, I've been on a roll finishing up some old games from 2002.

A couple days ago I finished Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, the finale for a series that I barely got into before (I've only had some experience with the original game in the series, Dark Forces, which I've gotten a ways into but not finished - pretty fun game for the era though). Sniping combat - not fun (inch around the corner and hope you can just spot a limb of an enemy before they get you). Other weapons - either not enough ammo or useless (like two of the three types of explosives, and the bowcaster - hey, nice Heretic reference, Raven). Lightsaber combat - honestly, just chopping up enemies got to be a chore, for some odd reason. The offensive part is well-implemented, but I'm not so sure about the defense (or the fact that it takes so many damn hits to bring down an enemy - remember how many it takes to off Obi-Wan?). It also takes an excruciatingly long time before the game decides to gift you with useful Force powers. I guess around the midpoint of the game I just turned on teh chetz and by the end of the Big Ship (that's not a spoiler; this is Star Wars) I stopped going through levels before the switch to find the rest of the secrets.

I really hated the save system (save names being wrong and the system tends to load the wrong one unless you switch back and forth to the newest save) and there were other problems as well. The game also doesn't like God mode on in the cutscene before a boss fight on Cloud City.

Multiplayer looks like it has some legs although I'd rather have seen some of the unique force powers tree and the balancing there implemented in the full game.

Aside from the sniping combat, I think that the level Streets of Nar Shaddaa has got to rank among my favorite levels ever. Great opening cutscene ("garbages"), great scenery, and dizzying heights (lots of opportunities to clench your gut or something else from near misses) play out well in this level. The remake for multiplayer is a sad retextured monstrosity, but still should be a bit fun.

Unfortunately it goes downhill after a while, and eventually you're stuck in Yet Another Star Destroyer-like Thing and corridors start to look the same. Ironic I should feel that way since the original Dark Forces had a lot of corridor blasting. The communications array puzzle has got to be one of the dumbest things I've seen in an FPS, though. I guess my patience with the game can be summed up in that I didn't correctly re-attempt a level section where I could only turn a light off once (for stealth) correctly, and another time I didn't even bother restarting for a stormtrooper conversation I missed.

I think one of my favorite unexpected moments in the game was when an Ugnaught ran away from the console he was working at and went straight off a short ledge, faceplanting on the floor slightly below. Poor lil' fella.

My favorite moments overall were when I had disarmed a ton of stormtroopers and either left a single blaster in the room, or just ran back into the room randomly. Also, any time Billy Dee Williams or the main character got to speak some lines.

Basically, the game still suffers from the same things I hated back at release. Not bad by any stretch, and it ought to be commended for getting Jedi stuff so close to right - but not a favorite. Still, it's putting me closer to having played every Raven Software game.

As thanks for reading to (or just skipping to) the bottom of this page, here's just a small sampling of why Billy Dee Williams is awesome.

[Damocles]

Sniping combat - not fun

I remember only a few things from that game. One of which is how much I hated that damn level and those insta-kill snipers. Slicing off limbs and force choking Stormtroopers off cliffs was fun, however.

[1up]

starting to get burned out on MW2 after playing it basically non-stop for a month and a half. What keeps you going is unlocking new weapons and addons but its getting to the point where it feels like grinding so better put it down for now.

Might go back to Borderlands and download the DLC and play that.

[Ed Oscuro]

Sniping combat - not fun

I remember only a few things from that game. One of which is how much I hated that damn level and those insta-kill snipers. Slicing off limbs and force choking Stormtroopers off cliffs was fun, however.

The odd thing is that I love Counter Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, a game built almost entirely around this concept of edging around corners and shooting the limbs of bad guys before they can see you. I mainly like that game for the scripted sequences and just the general awesomeness of it - again the corner sniping I view as a chore.

All things considered, with more modern gunplay that level would be worth replaying.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yay, let's bring this thread into the new year!

I just downloaded a few of HL2 / HL2 Ep 2 mods, so I'll see how those go as I get the chance.

Recently, I completed three FPSes:

Medal of Honor (1999, PlayStation, via pSX v1.13 this time):

Very good production values, but the crosshair needed to be more accessible (there may be a better controller mode than the one I use, but the ones I tried seemed worse than the default). I forgot that this game wasn't lots of fun - mostly "line up your crosshairs in the time before the enemy soldier shoots you." It does have some interesting awarded codenames at the end of each level dependent on where you shoot enemies the most - like Discount Barber and Headhunter for lots of head shots, Winger for arm hits, something else for leg shots, and my favorite thus far, Torgo, which seems to be a reference to the character from Manos: The Hands of Fate, and also possibly the fact that the actor killed himself with a shotgun (all the other awards I got were for area hit, though, not weapons used). Okay, that's a bad reason for it to be a favorite.

About the game: The lacking fun factor is amplified when you have to replay the forest or final levels three or four times before you realize that you haven't found all the enemies (that spawn out of nowhere) to get the Excellent rating. It's worse when you're playing with a 360 controller that somehow loses the stick click-in for bringing up the aimpoint, and savestates just let me feed my perfectionism complex (lol close to 100% accuracy ratings and no hits taken on a couple levels). The game isn't as anal as that, but it felt like it. The multiplayer mode sucks hard too. This was a great-looking and great sounding game for the time, but no matter how far the series has been thought to go downhill, the original really has a good reputation only because it essentially started the "realistic" WWII FPS as Madden-type yearly release genre (ironically, it's not very realistic). The only thing left to do is shoot every enemy soldier in the crotch for a level to see what that would award. I'm not too keen on that, though. In short, people rag on Goldeneye but they forget that just one little change - the guns automatically moving about the screen to show you you're tracking an enemy, instead of "sometimes it works" automagic aim - made all the difference at the time. Much better multiplayer and levels too.

The one endearing thing about the game (imo) is the way it gives you these little bite-sized chunks of kitsch flavor for each level - I can't say how many guys have fallen over balconies (in the first stage) or off tree stands (in the forest) but it never gets old. With the PlayStation's texture mapping magic the game is a very surreal WWII.

The Wheel of Time - another game from 1999, for PC.

I started this one back in August but didn't complete it until a few days ago. I slapped on the cheats for the endgame (allammo is the only one you really need). I didn't really think about it, but this really puts the poor 1980s architecture of the PlayStation to shame. The game might have looked a bit dated by the 2000s, but so far it's been one of the most graphically amazing games I can think of - even without the portal views working correctly on my nVidia card (I remember what it was supposed to look like from having played the demo years ago, and other effects look good, so I don't think I missed anything). It's an Unreal engine game developed by the late Legend Entertainment, who would end up going on to make Unreal 2 (a poor game by comparison, though). There are some quirks, but overall my feeling is that the original Unreal gets showed up to be unimaginative crap by comparison - fighting words, I know, because the original Unreal isn't bad.

Quickly, it seems that the game is loosely based on the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. You play a girl who doesn't wear pantyhose and who can't use magic the same way as most other people - in D&D terms she can only cast from "scrolls" (little wooden carving-looking artifacts called Ter'Angreal which in game sounds like Tear Angry All, which is an appropriate name after all), which is different from the usual computer game playing magicka system. It's not a bad idea because you have to find magic around the levels and hoard the powerful stuff, instead of just waiting for it to respawn (also it kept Legend from having to waste time modeling various detailed first person view models, like the usual guns in an FPS).

Unfortunately, there are problems with the system: First, there is a ton of magic (maybe more than 50 pieces if there are ten categories), which isn't bad per se except that the mousewheel won't scroll between the five options (say) in the first-level menu, so you're stuck using the number keys to select a new one from the same slot anyway (a better system would've maybe been a click to move between each category and then again to select within the five internal options). You can pre-plan a bit, though, by selecting a specific bit of magic - it'll stay the first choice to be selected when you scroll back to that one, which is helpful. Some - a lot - of the magic sucks or is otherwise redundant - the Decay magic's icon (a sitting dude who is skeletal on one half) is cool but all it is is a slow damage effect, like poisoning. You run out of ammo very quickly, so (if I hadn't just slapped on the cheats and used the weak Air Pulse attack over and over) you're usually scrounging around the environment, more than you really should be. Sometimes ammo pickups only give you a few units, but other times it gives you most of your max count, which could be very frustrating if you just wanted to top off or if you desperately needed more units. Each ammo type has its own arbitrary cap - the pretty useful fireball spell (which really should have been the default, not the weak Air Pulse) is limited to 35, while the Dart spell is limited to 100 - think one belt of ammo for a machine gun and you're on target, except each dart is about as painful as a BB shot, apparently (even weak enemies took 20-30 of them to go down, although difficult enemies were severely damaged by the full count too). Then there's types that are very powerful, like Balefire, which is supposed to instantly remove something from history, but doesn't always do that instantly here - still pretty much a railgun though, but are too rare (and enemies fidget enough that often you miss, which is a pain since you only get a couple charges per pickup).

Gosh, there's yet more complaints about that system. The magic attacks aren't clumped together in a rational way, I don't think (more on that in a bit). You can select each one and press F2 to read a bit about it, along with a sampler of horrible adjective-laden "flavor text" (they credit like 8 people with finding them for the game) which usually casts some doubt on the late Mr. Jordan's prose abilities, though not his imagination (it's a pretty decent world I think). There are a lot of pretty dang cool attacks available in the full list but not in the single-player game, like a floating eye that you can use to see around the environment. Not as useful as the eye from Thief II, but it does shoot needles at enemies, which in-game wouldn't know to target it. There's even a "disguise" attack (found maybe once in the whole game) which isn't very useful but all the enemies react to it (nice touch). Makes you run faster too (your model turns into the male allied guard character, interesting). The result is that you can do almost anything you'd like - if you can just select the right combination in time. My favorite magic items so far (besides Balefire, zap-POW - even removes dropped dwords and rubble with a little glow and leaves a purple-fringed black hole on walls it hits, nice touch) are:

Earth Tremor, which causes waves of brown stuff to ripple out from where it hits (even lightposts), bouncing enemies and stuff around the place. Very handy for keeping a large group of enemies at bay; shame it's rare.
Reflect, which causes boss characters to bone themselves (watch a huge stream of deadly magic attacks bounce right back into them).
Another attack lets you absorb (and take away) the attack the enemy used. It made some bosses run out of magic, which was quite amusing. Another, who is apparently the chief evil in the world (aside from the Satan stand-in, who is locked away anyway) just resorted to infinite fireballs, which were perhaps not better than the other stuff.
Yet another depletes the amount of magic you have (I got hit with this by a boss, very unpleasant) and another, Soul Barb, causes using that attack to hurt them immediately (speaking of redundancy, the more common but still damn rare Fork causes an enemy to take damage from damaging you, meh).

Jack of all trades, but too clumsy to be a master of much of anything. Preplanning (or GOD mode) is key. There would have been ways to mitigate some of these problems, but overall I'm very happy they at least tried.

Unlike other games which shall not be mentioned (Half-Life 2, cough), trying out combinations you shouldn't during single-player actually doesn't break the game. Bodies split into gibs (look in the deep settings menus to find a more realistic gibs option and more goodies, but leave the "curved surfaces" setting False); Shields will visibly wear down and get bounced high in the air by Earth Tremor (nice effect), you can see through portals (as mentioned before), physics applies to everything a bit - Fireballs bounce enemies a foot or two in the air, Balefire is a rocket jump (only seems to be possibly intended for one multiplayer level - the readme warns against it), and there are yet more fun things to be found.

The levels are a mix of monastery-like interiors, crumbling sewers and creepy haunted city with a few mechanical devices still functional, enemy forts, and even a few extremely nice (even nice by Unreal standards) wide-open levels. No loading is needed once you're into a level (although this one would have been an extremely slow-loading game back in the day, probably akin to System Shock 2 levels of slowness). They don't really show off how good the engine is in places, but if you fly around you'll often see that natural skylights in rock (say) have a top to them (something the FPS wizards at Valve would have lopped off as strictly irrelevant) and can be seen through other parts of the level. There are some goodies hidden about, though exploration generally isn't quite as deep with all the dead ends I would have liked - still dang good for what is essentially a linear FPS though.

Final notes: The movies didn't work on my PC, but thankfully somebody has uploaded them all on Youtube; they aren't amazing but they get the job done with a bit of bonus cheese. I was rooting for the bad guy to survive (woops, guess that's a spoiler). I'm not so big on multiplayer right now, so the Citadel mode (i.e. castle defense) tutorial in the single-player game led me to believe that I might actually have a citadel level to play with - no such luck. There are a couple levels which would have been great candidates but they didn't put it in, which is very strange because it seems perfectly suited to holding off AI (and I didn't see any technical reason not to put it in; the Tutorial level handles it perfectly). On the plus side, the final set of levels are a fetch quest which take you though smaller parts of places you've been in previously, so you really feel you've been somewhere. After the single player game's done, you can still play multiplayer on a few servers running - after more than 10 years, that's quite an accomplishment. Even Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, a game whose multiplayer seems the closest thing I can think of to this, will be essentially dead and forgotten by that time.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, 2006, Shit In A Basket Company

I am partial to this game even though it runs like crap and is extremely buggy (even after about five patches). Basically, developer GRiN took a bunch of assets from the console GRAW 2 and put them together in a game without a cover system. It doesn't have much in the way of cinematics and the ending is a lot more depressing than it probably should be. However, they put some attention into having a pretty OK multiplayer mode (coop is nice, although again buggy, but at least it's there, and it's very challenging - I played a bit and sqeaked out with 38-30 against mercenaries before it crashed). It looks nice (even if it goes with the cliche lol Mexico / Texas are barren dusty wastelands), has some challenging shooting (but this time I used a trainer, lol don't use it with the shotgun and especially not with the standalone grenade launcher - underslung launchers are fine - or rocket launcher), and generally has some good moments.

Not a lot to say - think a Rainbow Six game in city environments, and even a few wide-open ones. The few sticking points I have with the game, which any player should know about:

1.) The command menus. They mention in the tutorial that you can view video from your squad's helmets, and also in the first stage that you can order a team member to use a mounted machine gun (one of the damn few times that'd be useful), but you generally think this means the little wireframe-style video with blue walls which shows up in the top, and that you can issue orders from the tactical map (gee, I wonder why I would think the tactical mape would be a place to issue specific orders instead of just move commands?). Not so - with the G key and the middle mouse click (which I remapped to selecting different weapons, which is not a bad choice because I hate my squad anyway) you can bring up extra stuff. One of these brings up live video from the squad member you currently had selected, and you can order them to do things from their view. The other lets you to get anybody - including people who don't have your squadmates' fancy equipment (IMPORTANT!) to follow you or do other things.

This is very important because the otherwise rather nice stealth stage, "Get Me Rosen," has a horrible, horrible bug whereby a VIP (Rosen) won't get into a helicopter at the end of the stage. What you do instead is get him to move out of his holding cell, then immediately use the extra menu to make him follow you, and then go to the helicopter. If you try to get him to do stuff by the time the helicopter is there the menu likely won't even come up. Ironically, he's pretty competent at fighting for somebody who just was in a wreck; he already has a silenced pistol when you find him (probably an oversight from the slapdash PC remake) and doesn't seem to get targeted by enemies much. Sadly, I've forgotten how I fixed this the first time I played through, so I had to rediscover the answer all over again.

2.) Related to the last point, you can only carry one portable homing missile. Originally I never beat the second-to-last mission, and part of that might have been that I was running around trying to shoot down two helicopters with small arms instead of getting my teammates to target the second one.

3.) In coop mode, I used to notice that enemies wouldn't appear from very far away, and by the time they would magically pop into view, you were essentially in their range. Lotta good that .50 caliber M99 sniper rifle is going me now, huh? I didn't notice this quite so much playing a coop level by myself tonight, though. There was just one time that muzzle flashes were coming outta nowhere and I couldn't shoot what had to be the (invisible) source.

Some other fun tales:

With the trainer, I can take all sorts of damage and survive. I got to see the lower part of a dam after being blown off it by a chopper missile, nice.

I finally got to play Ageia Island. There I learned the important skills of not using the M32 grenade launcher, how to throw grenades, how to easily shoot everything up with an underslung grenade launcher with infinite ammo (the fools who designed the level only give you one launcher round, instead of the usual three or so, and there's no rearming point / MULE in the level, so you're limited in how many ways you can destroy targets, big oversight for what's supposed to be a fun level), and the like.

I was halfway through the game before the novelty of making things explode with a huge bang (and watching the rendered physics fallout) started to wear off, a little.

At the endgame, there's a scene where you are supposed to designate a target (some improbable physics and storyline shit going down here), then try to run out of an underground bunker before it gets blown up. First time, I had teh cheetz on, so I survived and saw the depressing ending. Second time, turned it off, some guy appeared and shot me, and then I died by explosion. Third (successful) attempt had me getting close to the target point so the "Press End to..." prompt appeared, then walked as far away as I could before the "get back to the fight" message played, hit it, then started sprinting away. I made it all the way outside and into another building. The game doesn't expect you to go that far so you get the depressing ending again of your dude coming out of a ball of flame and some "I SEE NO LIFE SIGNS" Star Trek dialogue from the support cast.

I think the best thing about the game is the 80s Latin American protest footage they use to show MEXICANS IN REVOLT and the way that they throw together a whole ton of sound recordings (some with radio filters on, some without) over very short movie loops to try to approximate oldschool Rainbow Six briefings (where obviously the footage was originally set over lots of cinematics and other junk), and how the game crashed when I shot one of the new marketing billboards, one of the ones for "The Book of Eli," which ironically is a pretty loltastic choice for the endgame because it talks about "HOPE." These are next to the same old 2008 Dodge Avenger and Oakley Sunglasses billboards that have been in place since the game launched.

Alright, that's a lie. If it weren't for shoddy crap like that the game would have a more favorable reception. However, what other PC game do you know of makes grenade rounds spin off to the right if you shoot it at your feet? That's right, none.

A gripe - fonts don't scale with the resolution. What year is this again? 1996? Oh, 2006? Bad job, GRiN. Also, in the Co-op level Quarry, the game likes to spawn the Demolition class looking the wrong damn way, so players usually go on a little hike to a dead end around a curve before they go out to be slaughtered by some AI mercenary who can shoot your arm around a corner. Nice. I think they added the plot element of "the bad guys are actually mercenaries, it's not an indigenous uprising oh nos" because people in Mexico were sick of it.

[Ed Oscuro]

Egh, I forget what I've done lately in FPSes, but I just remembered that I still needed to get Command & Conquer: Renegade. I last played it when the demo was out years ago. Thirty minutes later I was ready to go! >_>

The single-player game is better than I had expected, and each mission has felt like its own epic small-scale war so far. Save civilians, snipe badguys, watch masses of tanks get blown up by bombing sorties, awesome. It's different from what most folks are used to playing since you can quickly get ripped apart by stuff if you attack it wrong. Sometimes going on foot is better than being in a tank, surprisingly enough. You can cheat the game a bit by not triggering enemies (sometimes you have to do specific things to get them to appear), which happens a few times in the second mission. On the third, however, not activating all the secondary objectives was harmful as you won't get as many equipment drops.

Renegade doesn't have classic "secrets" but there often are hidden pathways, and just making your way around various installations (although they are cookie-cutter prefabricated things) can take a lot of time. Each map is pretty huge and full of variety and details, though, which surprised me; there's a lot less of a cookie-cutter feeling than I had expected. At one point I felt that it was a bit like Red Faction with the vehicles...except more of them, and without Geo-Mod, and basically a whole lot better.

There's also an unusual ranking system, based on time (I don't worry about that so much, as long as I keep moving, but it's where my ranking suffers), objectives completed (including "hidden" ones which I haven't found yet as at least the first two missions don't have any), and not loading saves, which sucks when you're doing some trial and error stuff, or if the game crashes / you have to quit / etc. I have to go through the whole third stage again just to get back to something right at the end. Thankfully it creates an autosave point at the beginning of each map, so it's not completely terrible.

I tried to blow up the friendly GDI power plant with the infinite rockets at the training base's shooting range. No go...you can only take it to half health.

[Radiant Cinnabun]

I only just played System Shock 2 for the first time about a year or two ago (I remember seeing it brand new at the store and never buying it when it first came out because I didn't know what it was and was stupid and thought all PC gaming was complicated or over my head. Still kicking myself over that).

Even knowing the major twist and a lot of the plot points, I still found it pretty intense. I had trouble playing it for extended periods of time because I'd keep looking over my shoulder. It was stupid and childish, but that game really got to me. Especially those horrible midwives. I made the mistake after killing one of looking at it closely because I like to know what I'm fighting.

I ended up wishing I had not done that.

[Ed Oscuro]

Just be glad they can't peek around a corner at you like human players can (in multiplayer).

To be honest, my memories of all the slapstick fun from multiplayer destroy any feelings of "scariness" the game could have had. I remember wincing at the "autopsy" audio log when I first heard it, and to be sure there's some tense stuff in there. But it's not so bad as people often say. Still a great stab at a truly scary game for the time it was released. Oh God! Fencing Monkey Guards!

[Radiant Cinnabun]

Just be glad they can't peek around a corner at you like human players can (in multiplayer).

To be honest, my memories of all the slapstick fun from multiplayer destroy any feelings of "scariness" the game could have had. I remember wincing at the "autopsy" audio log when I first heard it, and to be sure there's some tense stuff in there. But it's not so bad as people often say. Still a great stab at a truly scary game for the time it was released. Oh God! Fencing Monkey Guards!

Is that the one where the doctor turns his employee into a midwfie? The acting was awful ("I don't want to change"), but man, that still got to me. I knew all about it ahead of time, too, because I'd heard it spoken about on a podcast, and it still bothered me. And then, as you're reading about it (I think the part where the woman first discovers the design specs and her name on the doctor's computer), she actually comes stomping out of the damn closet next to you.

There's also a scene in the game where you're given the chance to disobey Shodan and explore a room she doesn't want you to go into... and I almost did until I heard a midwife talking in there.

[EinhanderZwei]

System Shock 2 is the scariest shit I've ever played. The concept of The Many, the crew members that always die 5 minutes before you encounter them, overal creepiness and combination of cheap thrills a la Resident Evil with horrifying and graphic backgrounds - I don't want to replay this game anymore because when I first stepped into The Many's lair, I thought I'd shit myself

[Ed Oscuro]

Is that the one where the doctor turns his employee into a midwfie?

Nope, much earlier in a small sickbay-type area. Can't really remember much about the one you mentioned, though I recognize the line and remember the nook you find it in. Two words for the one I was referencing: "tearing noises"

[Limbrooke]

QuakeLIVE is presently down! NOOOOOooorrrrr.....

In related news, SS2 is an ok but nowhere to in the same class as the Thief series, as far as Looking Glass is concerned (despite the limited work outside the Dark engine aspect). SS2 was creepy to a point, once your character was strong enough (depending on the class) to take on anyone and with enough ammo/psi points. I think that happened for me around 1/2 through on Deck 5 (Rec.) and I no longer was worried about any enemies. Decent game overall but I never bothered to go online once I beat it. Word of advice, play it on a Windows9x machine, XP is just full of headaches.

[Mortificator]

It's been a long time since I played System Shock 2. I was on an XP box at the time, and I think there was something I needed to do to get the game working... maybe a fan patch, or changing a config file value. Anyway, I didn't have any problems at all once the game was running. I don't know how it'd work of Vista or Windows 7. The original System Shock did crash sometimes, but nowadays it could probably just be run in DOSBox.

I get the feeling that people tend to strongly prefer either Shock2 or the Thief games where the Dark Engine is concerned, and I'm definitely in Shock's camp. Sneaking isn't much fun when the guards are dumber than dirt. I got the feeling that even the devs weren't very confident with the thief aspect of Thief, as just as many missions have the player running around tombs and caves killing zombies.

Anyway, Renegade looks pretty cool.

[Limbrooke]

It's been a long time since I played System Shock 2. I was on an XP box at the time, and I think there was something I needed to do to get the game working... maybe a fan patch, or changing a config file value. Anyway, I didn't have any problems at all once the game was running. I don't know how it'd work of Vista or Windows 7. The original System Shock did crash sometimes, but nowadays it could probably just be run in DOSBox.

I get the feeling that people tend to strongly prefer either Shock2 or the Thief games where the Dark Engine is concerned, and I'm definitely in Shock's camp. Sneaking isn't much fun when the guards are dumber than dirt. I got the feeling that even the devs weren't very confident with the thief aspect of Thief, as just as many missions have the player running around tombs and caves killing zombies.

I just went through SS2 and it's extreme frustration thanks to levels or sequences not loading/initializing, especially concerning the final areas. Luckily I was able to transfer my save over to a clean, normal install in 98 and I was able to finish my progress. I'm sure many people have no trouble at all in SS2 on XP, but I tried many ways to patch and have it installed and it totally wasn't worth it, I would never do it again for all the bs it caused me. 9x or bust.

To each their own, sure the guards weren't too smart, but I think this is limited to Thief 1 mainly. I cannot blame them for any anxiety either considering it was alone in the field as far as how the game should be played. Thief 2 solved many issues and cut down on the zombie routing for sure. I must admit though, despite taking a detour from the 'supposed' method of play, I found the zombie/ghost/ruins areas far more creepy in Thief than I found most of the work in SS2. Perhaps it's due to the fact I only played SS2 many years afterwards, but still it has it's moments and it doesn't lag too much behind. Just a different flavour of scare I suppose.

[EPS21]

Anyone trying the new Aliens vs Predator demo? Its up on steam right now.

After playing a few rounds, its apparent the PC version of the game has recieved some bastardization to cater to console ports (marine pretty much plays like Halo) but its still been pretty fun. I'm really liking the aliens, if played right they can escape out of nearly everything, and climb on all surfaces to be sneaky like Solid Snake.

I'm surprised they decided to do deathmatch only for this demo, team based play in your respective races is much more fun imo.

[Zeether]

Serious Sam HD is awesome.

[Sparky]

Anyone know a good frontend to run Doom on Mac OS X Snow Leopard? I have the original discs for the game with the WAD files just need something to load it.

Thanks!

[Ed Oscuro]

Anyone know a good frontend to run Doom on Mac OS X Snow Leopard?

Sure, it's called Boot Camp.

[Stormwatch]

*facepalms*

Check here, Sparky.

[Ed Oscuro]

http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=11857

epic

[Damocles]

How is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising? I was very interested until the reviews came out and pointed out shoddy AI and whatnot. After checking out youtube vids I noticed they actually implemented bullet drop, so I'm slightly interested again.

[Sparky]

Um, no bootcamp here that's what the netbook is for.

Thanks for the link, Stormwatch! I'm going to set it up this weekend.