BIL wrote:Ohoho. Good to see you're alive and well Mr. Oscuro.
Thanks for suggesting Vagrant Story a year or two back, by the way!
SH4 is pretty great - I remember being wowed when I first played it on the Xbox. Unfortunately, the combat was pretty poor, as you say. I still haven't beaten the game - I found that end boss fight or whatever pretty vile. I'll have to get back to it sometime.
I've been on a "let's learn about all sorts of odd and mostly bad DOS FPSes I didn't know existed" kick lately, watching a lot of YT videos - and one of them had the DOS (not the Win32) version of Nitemare 3D, from 1994!
Way back in the day I bought a shareware CD that advertised having both Wolf 3D and DOOM (so I recall) on the back. It didn't have either, but among the tons of legitimately awesome stuff on it, it had all four of the David P. Gray games - the classic Hugo's House of Horrors adventure trilogy (must-plays, really), as well as the rather late 1994 Wolfenstein 3D style game from the author. Since then I've found three versions of the shareware (old graphics, new graphics, and Win32) but never was able to track down the full thing (I've still got half a mind to email the author someday about getting a real copy).
Installed DosBox for the first time in a few years and got the game running.
A short overview: Hugo's girlfriend Penelope has been kidnapped, again. You need to run about a bunch of levels, finding keys, keycards, and shooting classic horror movie monsters (the first episode has bats, mummies, Frankenstein's Monster's, witches, other kinds of witches, skeletons, bugbears or something that come out of walls, and perhaps some other things). Owing to the Wolfenstein and DOOM influence, the character's portrait gets nastier and nastier as you lose health - around 20% you look just about like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies, except the "mask" is a thin layer of blood-drained skin. Gruesome, but also hilarious, especially when you're still alive while the character portrait is basically worn down to a bare skull! There's an older version (I think David P. Gray hired somebody on to revamp the graphics later, as mentioned in the credits) with a simpler looking Hugo, and simpler enemy graphics, but these were all direct replacements (as far as I know). The grand total of weapons in the game is four - default is a somewhat quickly-firing semiautomatic "plasma pistol" (it's blue and has a gold racing stripe!), a magic wand with a gold star on the end, a rickety pistol which rattles after firing (an oddly endearing sound effect), and finally a fully automatic plasma pistol. You only get 100 shots for each weapon (except the plasma pistols which share the same ammo pool), and recharges come in packs of 20 (or special instant fillup crystals, which you should pick up at map end just for the extra points if you're playing that way - these are the only point items of the game). A major feature of the game is the emphasis on complex levels - multiple stories (warping doors, actually), explosive walls (they don't hurt anything - you just need to open them with a shot from the plasma or wand), and lots and lots of fiendishly placed secret panels. To help things out you can activate a map view and enemy overlay, powered by huge, floating eye pickups and crystal balls, respectively. Unlike Wolfenstein, there isn't an emphasis on picking up huge amounts of useless loot for points. However, you do get 10000 bonus points for achieving two objectives in each stage - all "guards" killed and all secret panels opened.
I love this game, but - wow, it is HARD on the highest difficulty level, especially on the second level. It's a "save well behind every corner" kind of deal. Some of it was me not being all that talented in days past - there's no excuse for being hit by melee monsters or the bats - but the game is fiendish. Firstly, there's an issue with the controls - the graininess of Hugo's (the hero) rotation with either the keys or the mouse is pretty bad so it's hard to catch a lot of things running slowly across the screen, and many of the props block your default weapon. Using the mouse (which is set up pretty nicely - you can move with the mouse, hold button 2 to strafe or just press it to activate things).
Secondly, there is the slight matter of hitscan enemies - all the enemies that have a ranged attack will hit you instantly, and a lot of them can hit you from around a corner, so saving regularly and trying to plan attacks carefully is a must. It's an interesting "feature" of the game that makes this title stand out, but which could have been developed better. Additionally, the ranged enemies seem to do a lot more damage when you're close - which is a real problem. You do more damage, too, though, so if you can keep a melee monster stunned it is probably best to approach them - if you can get away with it. Most of them will continue to run about even while 'stunned,' so it's a difficult feat even in a corridor. Near the end of the second level you need to go to a different "floor," and on the other side of the door is a magic-using vampire witch (in a white nightgown). No problem if you can keep her stunned with constant plasma pistol shots - but if you don't, you'll get killed in one hit! At a slightly longer range they'll only take off half your health, and less beyond that; but any encounters with these fast-moving nuisances is a problem, especially when you consider health comes in blue and red potions for a mere 10 and 20% healing. The third level is nice later on, though - there's a lot of 100% fillup items (for health and ammunition) later on, but before you can get to them it's pretty hairy.
There are some pretty neat touches to this game. The first map makes use of Mr. Gray's favorite number, as you find the combination for a safe on a magic chalkboard (it animates when you use it). Later levels have some sokoban-style crate puzzling, and in one case you need to push some stones around down corridors to prevent turret guns from shredding you (it's kind of strange when the "cover" stone is only about knee-high, though, and the turret is far above on the ceiling...). Other neat features include thunder synced a half second after lightning flashes in the windows, and even an area where a radio makes some monsters dance along to Thriller! Speaking of which - despite the presence of a music credit for this game, a lot of the audio seems distinctly ripped from other games, at least in the melodies. I believe the fourth stage music tune comes from The Last Ninja Remix, for example. There are some minor bugs (like the menu tune staying on when you load from the menu, unless you go to the menu again; today I also managed to glitch an enemy's sprite to look like another's, and shrubs turned into a gold and yellow mess).
Overall, it's an interesting title that does things very differently from other FPSes of the era, and while it does get repetitive (run through level on edge -> spend another two hours finding the last hidden panel), it doesn't really seem that much more repetitive than, say, Wolfenstein 3D. It's no DOOM II, but it was a nice alternative to DOOM for kids, and for parents, at the time. I can't give it top honors because the necessity of switching from keys to mouse for long-range precision shooting, which isn't precise at all unless you use the hitscan pistol, and the generally underpowered nature of the weapons when combined with the extremely nasty enemies makes it nearly impossible to play on skill alone. Anybody who is doing playthroughs of this on YouTube has to be playing it on one of the two easier difficulty settings.
NG1's gameplay is accurate down to tiny glitches only diehard fans would notice, let alone care about, so it's easy to get back into the old groove. And these games kick ass... I'd consider getting this if I had absolutely no way of acquiring the original carts. But god damn, what a shot in the foot aesthetically. I guess that's why I'm amazed the gameplay wasn't fu - I mean "improved" similarly. Ever wanted to hear Basilisk Mine Field 
