the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[Damocles]

Honing my BDv19 enjoyment to a productivity-massacring edge, I'm increasingly interested in a Brutal Hexen. Provided it does for that game's lame-ass attempt at killer medieval gear what it did for DOOM's tired arsenal. I'm talking swords that spill a slaughterhouse's worth of guts on the floor with one stroke and flesh-broiling magicks that cauterise assholes shut. I want to launch an incandescent sphere of cracking hellborn death at a rampaging mob and have only red mist, raining entrails and the odd screaming double amputee left in its wake, BDBFG-style. Then go to work on those unlucky sods with BEEFCAEKORIZOR, my bastard zweihander broadsword.

edit: Needless 2 Say monsters would need a BD kick up the ass too! BD wouldn't be nearly as good without the hyper-bloodthirsty new monster routines.

I got wet.

[Ed Oscuro]

Love that massive health bulge boner, BIL!

Every RPG I've played that used skill points/skill specialization seems to always punish the player for picking the one the programmers didn't plan on/implement well.

That's not System Shock 2 though. I think this boils it down:

SS2 does not resent players thinking they can play the game like a standard FPS - it just shifts the ground under their feet enough to keep them uncomfortable, and anything beyond that is just gravy. In fact we're fortunate that they made such a concession to players in making the assault rifle so insanely powerful, and in giving us an unbreakable one in the MedSci lockup ("Goddamn Bronson and her security procedures...somebody is going to frag her but good one day.") There are lots of bonuses and tricks you can use in SS2 to give yourself more flexibility than the developers intended. Add that to the "makes things easier" positive pile. (Actually, it doesn't make things "easier," but rather more interesting.)

As I said earlier, the wrench is something everybody can use and it is extremely useful. You can rush all kinds of things and just plant that length of steel in their face until they die, and that helps you add to your pile of goodies. There is a risk and reward factor here, but by the time you are brawling along on the Rec Deck, even on Hard you will end up making a net gain in nanites and every other goodie if you keep after things. I wouldn't necessarily try this with cyborgs, but if you know what you're doing (and what they're doing) you can rush and kill them this way too.

Standard weapons weren't meant to be the simple DOOM shooting experience we know and love. Shooting things randomly will sap all your ammunition and make life harder. I did find that using the wrench allowed myself to create absurdly large stockpiles of slugs, shells, and various bullets.

Energy weapons are in a kind of odd position: If you don't mind taking a bit longer to kill an enemy with NORMal shots, or hitting the mode selection key to shoot OVERcharge shots in quick succession, then the laser pistols are okay for lots of things. They are the weakest weapon in the game (reportedly, and my experience backs that up) but if you don't mind not getting into prolonged firefights far from a recharge station, they will take care of lots of problems. There is at least one unbreakable laser pistol.

EMP rifles will help you take care of one of the biggest class of pests - mechanical enemies. Personally, I would rather play matador with the protocol droids, and use an assault rifle for the big bots, because running fast and the assault rifle are far more flexible and are useful in the endgame. There are reportedly four unbreakable EMP rifles.

The wrench is already quite good against most fleshy things, so the laser sword is just an improvement on that. It is odd that it comes so late in the energy weapon progression, but this is a boost to help you make some use of the high strength stat you've been building so that you can carry around multiple energy weapons for huge firepower.

Prisms and frag grenades are plentiful, so there is a reason to look at Heavy damage.

I'm still finding little beakers for worm ammo - I made a typo earlier; I actually found 56 worm clusters, and after that I found at least another small beaker (in the post-elevator hub game).

The bottom line is that you gotta find new ways to have fun and profit from what's available here. It is too easy to say "I'm no good at the wrench and I don't want to do anything but shoot things to death quickly with the assault rifle." Well, this isn't real life where you have to make a choice to save your hide. You can live dangerously!

Yes, you do want to watch out for obvious bad choices, like picking bad O/S upgrades, or getting the dual slot upgrade if you are going to use the recycler's perma-stat boost trick. But anybody who is not a complete idiot can tell that a 15% boost on all your damage for a category (be it melee or ranged weapons) beats the hell out of a one-time 8 cyber module boost, which is equivalent to a piddly Tier 2 Tech upgrade, or an astounding 5 hp boost for "Tank."

[Edmond Dantes]

*Shrug* I really don't have any more to say about SS2. As I said, my main problem was just that it wasn't SS1 (before you go thinking this is a nostalgia thing... I first played both games in 2011, in literally the same week). SS1 just felt like it got everything right, while SS2 felt like it was changing things for the sake of changing things.

But anyway...

So I was watching a show called "Ancient DOS Games" and one of his episodes was about Amulets & Armor, which I can't tell if its an RPG or an FPS (I'm imagining its closer to either Strife or Hexen in its execution). It's apparently been released as freeware now though, so let's all download it, play it, and trade thoughts on it... assuming its relevant to this topic of course.

And let's keep this discussion alive. It's frankly sad that the My Little Pony topic is front-page and this was nearly on page 3.

[Ed Oscuro]

Heheh. Yeah, there's not much more to say about SS2; I finished it up a few days ago. I really don't care to revisit the endgame any time soon. I liked Thief Gold's surreal ending level a bit more and its geometry wasn't so obnoxious. Incidentally, I never needed repair or modify above level 2. I found this classic FAQ again which has even been updated recently. It disagrees in a few important ways from my original assessments, but the bottom line is still that PSI is a nasty thing to do to yourself, especially if you are playing on Impossible. Granted, if you use PSI powers a lot on lower difficulties, going the PSI route gifts you more cybernetic modules (and for my playthrough, I went the PSI route and then ended up dropping my PSI amp).

Edit: Here's some interesting notes about the game, including why the ending is what it is, original plans, and a scrapped zero-g idea:
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/what ... have-been/

Recently I started up TekWar. This is a really interesting game that plays like hell. Unfortunately, there's no version online with Shatner's FMVs intact, so the best you can do is watch this guy's walkthroughs. Surreal maps, variety, a day/night cycle (at least supposedly), a working subway system (in practice you just get on when it arrives and get off at the very next stop, at least through the first three missions), semi-sense maps, awesome music and crazy mid-90s digitized actor graphics, William Shatner yelling at you...in practice it's almost ruined by clumsy gameplay and of course there is no mouselook. I am pretty close to reverting to classic keyboard controls because the mouse moves you forward and back, which destroys everything. It makes having strafe keys pretty much worthless when you can't even turn with the mouse without flinging yourself off into space. In gameplay terms, there are obvious problems, such as that the best clues you ever get are from Shatner, such as "near the hospital" when you don't know which of the subway stops you'll even need to get off at. Still there are some interesting things you can do here, and the dense maps are actually pretty fun to travel about in.

[Edmond Dantes]

I've read the novel TekWar, never played the game (when I learned it was by Capstone--IE "the Corridor 7 people"--I kinda figured it wasn't worth it). Kinda surprised TekWar was a thing for so long. The book wasn't horrible or anything but it was hardly good reading. Practically every chapter had some B.S. cliffhanger where the hero entered a room and "Suddenly, somebody who wanted to kill me was there!" It got silly.

And thanks to ADG, I really wanna play Descent again (I only have Descent 3, which... I have yet to play actually).

There should be a rule, that sequels always come packaged with their predecessors. That would be awesome.

[Ed Oscuro]

There were actually some new TekWar comics five years ago. I love the Free Comics Day one, with The Shat looking over us all.

The game is definitely kind of interesting. I'm mostly playing it for the ambience of detailed BUILD maps - some of the later ones are pretty fun to faff about in. Not much to say about it otherwise, though.

"Suddenly, somebody who wanted to kill me was there!" definitely is the FPS mentality.

[Edmond Dantes]

It might make sense in an FPS, but in a novel it got kinda funny.

"I went to my apartment... all the sudden, some hulking man with a knife sprung on me!"
SHATNER: Wanna know how I survived? Read the next chapter!

(I'm not sure if the hero was really a stand-in for Shatner, even though he was the supposed author--I say suppsed because I think he actually hired a ghost writer. The story itself though is the kind of thing Shatner would write. The guy clearly is right at home in hard-hitting action stories that don't require much brains).

I'm kinda wondering how much the plot of the FPS follows the book, now that I think about it. It's hard to remember what the book was even about tho, save that it used the illogical classic device of a detective framed for Tek smuggling (Tek being a drug) and sentenced to... hibernation. Yeah. But he's woken up early for some reason, and I forget what happens from there.

Speaking of books, ever read the Doom novels? There's apparently also novels based on Descent.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

or an astounding 5 hp boost for "Tank."

Tank's usefulness is directly tied to difficulty. On Hard and Impossible, where each Endurance point only gives +3HP (and Impossible starts you off with a paltry 7HP base + Endurance), it's actually a really darn good upgrade. It changes you from being one-shottable early on to actually being able to take a decent hit in Impossible and survive, which is pretty darn good. It's much less useful on Normal where it represents just one extra Endurance worth of HP, and Easy, where it's half that.

The bottom line is that you gotta find new ways to have fun and profit from what's available here.

This man gets it. Games like this are awesome because there's no single 'right' way to play.

The wrench is already quite good against most fleshy things, so the laser sword is just an improvement on that. It is odd that it comes so late in the energy weapon progression, but this is a boost to help you make some use of the high strength stat you've been building so that you can carry around multiple energy weapons for huge firepower.

The Laser Rapier really is a great upgrade to the Wrench. Not only does it have higher damage and longer range, it does double to mechanical things, so it's quite effective for chopping up Cyborgs and Midwives. Its only real issues are that it's quite pricy if you're just after a melee boost (if you're going to get it you might as well max out Energy and get the Rifle), and if you're just after a melee upgrade, you could save your points for a bit of Research and Exotic, and get the Crystal Shard, which is ridiculously powerful against everything (half damage to mechanical, but it's got such high base damage that it's still reasonably effective). The Rapier is pretty handy in a melee-only run since the final boss is immune to the Wrench and Shard (there's a way to damage the final boss without ever hitting it yourself in a Wrench-only run, but this is annoying to do).

but the bottom line is still that PSI is a nasty thing to do to yourself,

On lower difficulties it's not bad to get some PSI abilities for offensive and healing backup, but since even non-PSI users can use their points for something like WormMind protection, and PSI has some steep initial investments for the Navy and Marine if you want to use them, PSI really is best if you start out with it. Some of the higher tier abilities are really damn powerful (Localized Pyro, Soma Transfer), but the sheer costs in modules and PSI Hypos to use them really does make PSI something that's not recommended for beginners and too costly for its worth in Impossible (it's fun to play a pure PSI build in Impossible for a challenge).

The PSI blade kinda sucks though, the Laser Rapier and Crystal Shard are better investments usually, though it's not too costly to pick up if you're getting other PSI abilities anyways and will damage the final boss too if you want to run up and use melee. You can't use other PSI while the blade is active though, and frankly that's a big enough downside that I stay away from it.

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

If you are good at shmups people admire you and cheer you on
If you are good at online first person shooters people hate you

[drauch]

Pretty sure that goes with about any competitive gaming where you actually have a foe.

[Mortificator]

Speaking of books, ever read the Doom novels?

The ones where...

Spoiler

... the "demons" turn out to be genetically-engineered soldiers based on medieval man's fears created by aliens involved in a six-million-year war over literary criticism who fear the human race because humans are capable of dying, while every other thinking species in the universe is totally and completely immortal?

I have a strange fondness for them.

[Ed Oscuro]

or an astounding 5 hp boost for "Tank."

Tank's usefulness is directly tied to difficulty. On Hard and Impossible, where each Endurance point only gives +3HP (and Impossible starts you off with a paltry 7HP base + Endurance), it's actually a really darn good upgrade.

Yeah, I realized that after making my post. There are still a variety of useless O/S upgrades, but Tank is better than I had thought for some users.

About the Laser Rapier - unlike the Wrench and Crystal Shard, you don't get bonuses from repeated upgrades to Energy. I think that the game's real terrors are the fleshy things coming in at Deck 6 and later, not the robots which are basically extinct after the Rickenbacker - it's just too easy to keep a pistol and stocks of AP ammo around for the random security bots, turrets, and ninja. Still, I'm sure it's easy to pair Energy Weapons with some other type that fares well.

PSI actually sounds like an interesting challenge to try on Impossible - from what I've read, straight-up PSI is the most difficult way of playing the game on any difficulty setting, and on Impossible it's only more so. I have a good idea what's required. I think mainly I'm just too upset with the awkward way that PSI works (the amp, burnout, and switching powers are all clumsy, but I said that before) to want to put up with it. I'll probably give it a go on Babby Mode sometime, though.

Thinking back on it now, really my main disappointment is with the way the game seems to peter out a little after the core decks of the Von Braun. I really don't care for the Body of the Many now that I've visited it again, and there's not much in the way of a cap to the game. Shodan's area is just too small and strange to really make a big impression.

[Damocles]

I've been on an original X-Box FPS kick. As such, I revisited Nightfire and remembered how much fun the multiplayer is. Namely, pistols only. Are there any other FPS of that generation (or whatever) that fit the criteria of relatively slow-paced action with quick deaths. It's nice to headshot a kitted out enemy from half a football field away with a lowly P99.

Agent Under Fire has bots but plays like Unreal while Goldeneye: Rogue Agent has no bots. The closest to that type of action seems to be XIII, but even that seems too twitchy. Maybe Winback 2 or Counter Strike?

Also, much to my chagrin, Nightfire on the PC uses the Half-Life (I think) engine and plays nothing like the console versions. Too bad. Too twitchy and weapons don't do enough damage. Maybe mods? Hmm...the patched version allows for it...

[Ed Oscuro]

I've been on an original X-Box FPS kick.

Get that aerogel supercap outta your (pre-1.6) Xbox, if you haven't already. Nasty business! Actually just on the verge of posting some possibly interesting / handy information in the Hardware Forum; it turns out there are a few cheap tricks you can use with the Xbox. But the aerogel thing can kill your box dead.

Did you check out that Urban Chaos game by Rocksteady? How about Black (which is pretty okay on the PS2, but should be much better on the big box)?

Also, much to my chagrin, Nightfire on the PC uses the Half-Life (I think) engine and plays nothing like the console versions. Too bad. Too twitchy and weapons don't do enough damage.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I noticed the developer and that naturally aroused my suspicions, but I didn't look into it further because the game and engine feel is essentially nothing like Half-Life. From the horse's mouth:

According to Gearbox's Marc Tardiff "there is about as much left of the Half-Life engine in Nightfire as there was of the Quake engine in Half-Life."

Also, Barbara Broccoli wanted to take see-through x-ray goggles AND VIOLENCE out of the games. Madness. Madness!

I agree about the weapons - I do like twitchy gameplay, but shooting yakuza full-on in the face with 15 rounds before they drop is nuts. Boss fights are the worst thing ever. Autosaves / quicksaves are wonky too.

Additionally, on the PC I'm having severe bug issues - the elevator level breaks (and I have tried to salvage it repeatedly with restarts and autosaves) so I have to use a console command to get to the next one - this loses a cutscene, which sucks.

Maybe mods? Hmm...the patched version allows for it...

There is a community patch available here - I'm not sure all their fixes are for the good, because the outdoors elevator still breaks (I don't know if this is a Windows timer issue or something else), but they have updated it lately.

I did get ahold of the PS2 version recently, haven't found time for it yet.

Sometime I'd like to try out For Russia With Love, which looks like a really promising game. Connery's likeness AND all new voice work from the actor! Many other great faces and voices too.

[Damocles]

I "tried out" Black and was relatively bored with it. Oddly enough, Nightfire and *ahem* Land of the Dead are currently my two most played X-Box games right now. "The Thing" is in there too... I'll have to check out Urban Chaos.

Sometime I'd like to try out For Russia With Love, which looks like a really promising game. Connery's likeness AND all new voice work from the actor! Many other great faces and voices too.

Don't get too excited. Seeing a young Sean Connery with the old man Sean Connery voice is off-putting. It wouldn't be so bad, but goddamn he's gotten gruff over the years.

[Ed Oscuro]

Make sure not to get mixed up with the PlayStation 1 / PC "Urban Chaos." It's an interesting kind of mix of a Tomb Raider with a GTA but has not aged well (and performs horribly on the PlayStation).

Fiddler's Green...ehh, it can't be as bad as that other zombie game I played a year or two ago. Now that was some bad stuff.

[Damocles]

LOTD actually made me tense in the beginning. ...before I found the shovel/axe and the heavy melee attack of doom (TM). Seriously, there's no need to waste ammo when you can one-shot any walker with a heavy axe strike.

Also, Gungriffon: Allied Strike isn't half bad. It's not half good, but still. So many things could have been done better, but it was still enjoyable. No ending to speak of. Not that it needs anything with that half-assed excuse for a story.

Looking back, I may very well be a kusogame magnet.

[Acid King]

I received a copy of Bulletstorm as a gift recently (All hail Amazon wishlists!) and I'm really digging it. I'm on my second playthrough, first on normal, now on hard, and I really like the trick shots and the fire fights. My only gripes so far are the anticlimatic final battles and the lame story. The last bits of the game are great in terms of standard fights. The Final Echo soldiers are a sight tougher than the previous enemies and the more confined locations are good for more straightforward shooting action, but the giant plant monster and the giant fucking skyscraper sized monstrosity got me seriously looking forward to an epic final battle. The lame QTE shit at the end was pretty fucking disappointing. I didn't mind the gutter humor as much as some people seem to, but the rather maudlin tone to the end of the game just didn't fit all the wacky, over the top in game antics.

Regardless of the flaws, the gameplay is right up my alley. Sliding around, knocking enemies in to man-eating plants and spikes, blowing torsos apart with the shotgun, drinking random bottles of liquor and getting bonus points for killing people while fucked up, it's a real shame we'll never see a sequel.

[Ed Oscuro]

Regardless of the flaws, the gameplay is right up my alley. Sliding around, knocking enemies in to man-eating plants and spikes, blowing torsos apart with the shotgun, drinking random bottles of liquor and getting bonus points for killing people while fucked up, it's a real shame we'll never see a sequel.

Well, you can always go back and alternate plays of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic and the Action DOOM 2: Urban Brawl episodes.

[lilmanjs]

Bulletstorm is really the only game I ever rented, played and couldn't stop playing. If I hadn't been on kid watching duty I would have probably finished the game in a single day rather than the 3 days it took. I think it was the whole aspect of there being a scoring system in the game, moreso than all the language that caused it to sell poorly. I thought the gameplay was very good and made me want to keep going.

[Marc]

Finished the first chapter of Doom 3. Kind of enjoyed but wondering if it opens out or gets any more frantic over the next chapter, because I don't think I can be arsed to play more otherwise.

[Mortificator]

Hell is a bit more open than the corridors and caves that make up the rest of the environments, though it's a relatively small portion of the playtime.

Frantic, the game gets less so. You pick up a weapon around the midpoint that lets you instantly kill any enemy and refill your health, and you can fire it once for every five enemies you kill through other means, which takes away almost all pressure. There are some more enemy types, but a large part of encounters will continue to be imps. Right up to the end, the game will regularly pentagram-spawn a solitary imp behind you, and you'll wonder why it even bothers.

[Marc]

Ah, fuck that then. Shame, because there is potential there, smothered by some really baffling design decisions. Not an FPS as such, but just picked up Dead Space dirt cheap, worth starting anyone?

[Ed Oscuro]

It's been a while since I got to hell in DOOM 3, but it seemed to be like just a few twists and turns, and maybe an hour of the game (at most). There's many parts of it that are really just the same as the rest of the game - not all of it is open. That floating geometry stuff really impressed me at the time but it felt like like too little, too late even then.

[BIL]

Plus theme park voiceovers. Oh noes, my soul is going to burn in hell. I'll get you Dr Wiwey!

But first I've got to retrieve the magical herb

[Ed Oscuro]

For the princess.

[Damocles]

I think I've found a way to cure my main problem with Nightfire PC. I'm at work, so I have not tried editing it, but skill.cfg lists tons of values for weapon and location damage modifiers. I'll crank up the headshot modifier and see if I can get 1HKs. I'll report back later.

I want fast and furious deaths, damnit.

[Ed Oscuro]

Good stuff. Please also let me know if you get insta-killed in the elevator sequence at various times, and if you used an original or new timer with the fan patch system (if you use that at all).

[Damocles]

I have not tried to modify the weapons yet, but changing the body multiplier from 1 to 12 results in instadeaths with the pistol. Changing body, limb, and head modifiers respectively makes for a much more satisying experience.

BTW, I'm running the basic game with patch v5.67 applied. When I ran the game today it told me there was another update available.

Good luck, and enjoy.

[Ed Oscuro]

Did you see my earlier post about SS2Tool and the latest unofficial patch, which allows running the game at any resolution with many modern-compatibility tweaks? It's straight bugfixing, no gameplay changes:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 65#p998265

That should give a good baseline from which to play the game. By the way, I wasn't able to find this v.5.67 you speak of...and it didn't ring any bells either. Is it an official patch?