the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[drauch]

Far Cry 3 REALLY has me interested, but I'd like to know how much sexual content is in the game before I buy it.

Are you wanting more boobs to warrant the purchase? If so, I can appreciate that.

[trap15]

Far Cry 3 REALLY has me interested, but I'd like to know how much sexual content is in the game before I buy it.

Are you wanting more boobs to warrant the purchase? If so, I can appreciate that.

No, somehow dave4shmups is basically the opposite of a man. He wants less boobs.

[drauch]

I want to murder hundreds of people in creative ways and slaughter all kinds of protected animals. But please, no boobs.

[Ed Oscuro]

Please, he's not even British!

[BIL]

Fuckin' boobs, man. Shit gets into everything. I burnt my copy of Vampire Killer last night because of harpy boobs. Fired up Dracula IV for some wholesome Nintendo action and what did I see: Medusa boobs. Suffice to say my house smells of lighter fluid.

[Mortificator]

Well, at least trolling dave is less of a pussy move than shoving the Amish. Slightly.

[drauch]

I hate the Amish as well.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Fuckin' boobs, man. Shit gets into everything. I burnt my copy of Vampire Killer last night because of harpy boobs. Fired up Dracula IV for some wholesome Nintendo action and what did I see: Medusa boobs. Suffice to say my house smells of lighter fluid.

Can't say no to the SotN statues, though, whichever way you swing.

[drauch]

Those NECA ones they released with the "unfinished" Succubus boobies? Yeah, totally modded mine for the real Cvania experience.

[drauch]

In regards to actual FPS and not trolling, I started the first Witchaven today. Pretty brutal stuff. Kinda like a poor man's Elder Scrolls 1/2 and Ultima Underworld, mixed with a bit of Heretic/Hexen. Game is kinda hard, but mainly due to the poor technical side of it. Still, fun stuff with an evil soundtrack.

[Ed Oscuro]

In regards to actual FPS and not trolling, I started the first Witchaven today. Pretty brutal stuff. Kinda like a poor man's Elder Scrolls 1/2 and Ultima Underworld, mixed with a bit of Heretic/Hexen. Game is kinda hard, but mainly due to the poor technical side of it. Still, fun stuff with an evil soundtrack.

Might I be given to suspect that I was somehow responsible due to uploading the intro to YouTube a while back?

I forget - is that the one where you start out in a kind of canyon with lots of breakable daggers and misshapen claymation badmans?

The second one starts you off near a castle (I think) and is a lot more chaotic-seeming.

[drauch]

Aw, I wish. Nah, I actually came across it on ebay while looking for older PC games. I love 90s FPS and was quite surprised I had never heard of it, and complete for 10 bucks, I went ahead and purchased the first game.

Yeah, you start off in sort of a small nasty canyon area full of crags and hot lava. Two colors of Goblins start duking it out, which surprisingly gives you experience points. They all drop short swords, which yeah, break in about 15 hits or so.

[drauch]

Ed, what's your Youtube channel? Are you Kraileth? If so, then yeah, I've certainly watched some of your videos.

[Obiwanshinobi]

90s FPS

Dude, check out Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi.

[dave4shmups]

Is Metro 2033 worth a purchase? (The XBOX 360 version, that is.) The main review sites seem to think that it's pretty average, but other gamers think it's awesome. It supposedly has some RPG elements in it, and I wonder how much replay value it has, since I don't play online.

Another FPS that interests me a lot is Brink. You can play it offline (I've seen it on Youtube), and the experience system looks interesting, as does the game overall.

[Ed Oscuro]

Ed, what's your Youtube channel? Are you Kraileth? If so, then yeah, I've certainly watched some of your videos.

It's very bare and mostly full of crap but it is, strangely enough, named "Ed Oscuro's YouTube Channel." I need to get some more shit in there.

90s FPS

Dude, check out Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi.

Swedish and released in 2003, if memory serves.

Still check it out. Love the engine (which, yeah, DOES feel like it's from the '90s), and the stained glass + characters you have to save.

[BIL]

Finally, after about fifteen years, got around to trying out Quake's first official expansion pack, Scourge of Armagon. Good stuff - there's been some really entertaining level designs in here with considerably detailed architecture and good intuitive secret-hunting (just made it to the end of the second level set). Got a kick out of the "levelord is impressed!" message after finding one particular secret. There's a real "holy shit" environmental moment at the end of the first episode, too, which will stick in my memory. This stuff totally outdoes the original map sets.

I remember being bored with the second expansion (Dissolution of Eternity) which I owned back then, but I suspect that may have had something to do with its ancient history theme. Bizarrely enough, I didn't think Quake needed any more ruins or castles (crypts, graveyards and mausoleums, otoh, one can never have enough of). I'll be giving it another go to see if I can appreciate it more now.

[Ed Oscuro]

Levelord has at least one other message hidden in the levels.

Really good stuff.

After all the whining about Quake in the other thread, I tried out the game again.

Recently I wondered if I had made an issue out of nothing with my rants on Vsync - started up the game and noticed it didn't feel right. Turned off vsync, which adds some odd flickering (not tearing) all across the screen for a while, and then it disappeared - but the gameplay feel was vastly improved. The flickers didn't seem to come back, so hooray.

Ogres in chandelier-like fixtures are as annoying as ever, but I managed not to take most grenades to the face. Good times. The end of the third map is some baloney though - it's easy to get trapped up there before you've found all your secrets, and speaking of those, I only seem to remember where the quad damages are after I've finished the whole level.

Surprise feeling - I hate the first episode's first levels less than I remember. (Well, hate might not be the right word, perhaps boredom would be better). Sometime I'm going to have to have a look at whether anybody went ahead and recompiled the map sources; John Romero released some map source which included some areas cut from the final game which should be fun to see.

Something fun to do, which I did for most of the maps in Scourge (I think - it was that or the other official expansion) is record a demon on your first playthrough. Aside from the bragging rights, it balances the sense of urgency against that feeling of "how can I exploit these levels?"

Bizarrely enough, I didn't think Quake needed any more ruins or castles (crypts, graveyards and mausoleums, otoh, one can never have enough of).

I remember my feeling when I first stumbled across that graveyard in The Elder God Shrine. After a bunch of square passages, grottoes, and open ceilings, it was nice to see something that looked like people might have had something to do with it (other than going raving mad and eating nails / feeding the shamblers).

I tried that melee-bait thing against the Shambler a couple times, and I noticed that the timing must be pretty precise, because sometimes he started up the lightning attack even when I was right next to him, instead of starting the sweep. Needs more practice maybe. I am sure they weren't so silly that they made it quasi-random what he attacks with.

Question of the day: With his lightning attack being the cause of death in over 99% of encounters, why does the death message say "Player was smashed by a Shambler?"

My answer would have to be - another holdover of Quake's third-person brawler origins.

[BIL]

I noticed the mouselook was a bit sludgy in the client I'm using (DX8 ProQuake 4.93) - checked options, turned out vsync was on by default. Switched it off, mouse control is now razor-sharp. Rocketjump-pirouetting to peppering baddies with jumbo nails has never felt so good.

This is also the first time I've played Quake with interpolated animation and model movement. Holy shit. Looks like something that might've run on Sega's Model 2 board now (The original House Of The Dead comes to mind). Nice and smooth and endearingly blocky.

I got the "levlord giggles" message in the last map of episode 2, too. ROCKETTO JAAAMP:



Oh the humanity! Thought it was kind of funny how you can just run past all the shamblers and leave the generator merrily humming away to end the ep (?). Did the honourable thing and stuck around to press the big red "DO NOT PRESS" button.

Also found Tur Torment's "you're not supposed to be up here!" *boom* The vertical scale in that map is impressive, that's some Where Eagles Dare shit running along the cable car railing. I wish they'd made falling off instantly fatal, like that neat bit in The Lost Mine where you have the option of running along a minecart track and leaping a pit of lava for the Red Armour.

I tried that melee-bait thing against the Shambler a couple times, and I noticed that the timing must be pretty precise, because sometimes he started up the lightning attack even when I was right next to him, instead of starting the sweep. Needs more practice maybe. I am sure they weren't so silly that they made it quasi-random what he attacks with.

I noticed it's seemingly not foolproof too, and also that you can actually interrupt his casting animation (I think I did, anyway...). It works best when you're firing something that can kill him in short order, like the super nailgun or thunderbolt - otherwise I definitely try to have something nearby to duck behind. Will have to investigate further (maybe playing on Hard has something to do with it?)

Question of the day: With his lightning attack being the cause of death in over 99% of encounters, why does the death message say "Player was smashed by a Shambler?"

My answer would have to be - another holdover of Quake's third-person brawler origins.

Interesting theory. I remember the first mentionings of what would become Quake while id were doing promotion for DOOM II, and Romero excitedly talking about demigod chaps swatting each other with their mjolnirs and getting knocked flat on their backs in FPV...

[z0mbie90]

Quake is pure love for me. http://nquake.com/ QuakeWorld is still pretty active, with 3 small tournament in the last couple months. EU has most players, but NA also got some players that still keep on going. So do you love Quake and are intressted in playing the BEST multiplayer deathmatch game don't hesitate to download Nquake or any other QuakeWorld client

[Ed Oscuro]

Also found Tur Torment's "you're not supposed to be up here!" *boom* The vertical scale in that map is impressive, that's some Where Eagles Dare shit running along the cable car railing. I wish they'd made falling off instantly fatal, like that neat bit in The Lost Mine where you have the option of running along a minecart track and leaping a pit of lava for the Red Armour.

Aye, those are some of my favorite bits in an FPS ever.

[Edmond Dantes]

While we're on the subject of Quake, does anyone know a good Source Port that would allow Hexen II and Heretic II to run on Windows 7?

I want to show them to a friend, but its not like I can drag my desktop to his house...

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't know about Heretic II, and I think it uses a different engine, most likely Quake II's.

For Hexen II you probably have just two choices (searching for 'darkplaces hexen' brings up some results but it seems like wishful thinking mostly):

http://uhexen2.sourceforge.net/ - I haven't ever tried this one out
http://www.corvinstein.com/resources/downloads/games - Korax's venerable version works quite well; it might not be quite as "plug and play" as some other versions (you might need to adapt one of the batch files that ships with it), and I always disable the silly bloom effect if it's used. This has been updated since I last used it last year, and the author stated he intends to keep it alive for new software platforms. Definitely worth checking out.

[BIL]

Finally noticed Quake's Nightmare difficulty is a lot more like DOOM's Ultra Violence than its namesake. Faster, more aggressive and more numerous monsters but no respawning. Just had a rollicking good time clearing episode 1. DOOM NM is a great timed puzzle / vehicular combat game, but I always thought it sucked as a shooting game with it making running much more of an asset than anything involving combat, so I never bothered with Quake's.

ProQuake has a "disable bobbing" option which is on by default. After putting several hours in over the last week, changed it out of curiosity and realised it not only cans the onscreen weapon's movement but also the slight tilting of the viewpoint when strafing. Forgot all about that. Have to admit I prefer the game without it, as the enduring best feature of Quake is the simple, sharply responsive 3D action and an unsteady viewpoint doesn't enhance that. But it's a neat reminder of Romero's ideas for taking the game beyond an "always upright" viewpoint.

Finished Scourge of Armagon last night - Army himself was a shitty boss fight (round and round teh mulberry pillar we go) but it was still a great trip. "Only time will tell" if the entity inconsistently referred to as QUAKE is vanquished, you say? Ohoho I see what you did there (or what I think you did there). Onto Dissolution of Eternity then.

[Ed Oscuro]

SoA and DoE were made by different parties so it's strange they would have all this talk. I've always laughed at discussions of "THE FORCES OF QUAKE."

Yeah, I played through a few maps earlier today - through the end of The Grisly Grotto, onto Ziggurat Vertigo (hey, I had NO trouble finding all the secrets in the last two maps, and on the first playthrough too!) and now onto that nasty map, where I was disappointed that the ceiling-mounted spike trap didn't gib a knight, only to eventually fall prey to it later while fleeing a fight later on. Anyway, I've had a change of thought since my last post - the monsters obviously still aren't exactly ideal (Ziggurat Vertigo has always been "lure them into complacency, and then shamblers + the odd unexpected Ogre grenade that actually lands"), the maps are much better than I had remembered, and quite fun to play with a fresh look. Yeah, they're very dark in places. I am still saving a bunch, but having much less trouble getting around and not dying much than I've had in the past, too.

I'm a bit surprised you never tried Nightmare, BIL! I don't think the difficulty itself is easy - rather there are many situations where the monsters are easily dispatched from safety, which is unfortunate. After DOOM's nightmare mode, it really feels far too easy - but I've never gone farther in DOOM nightmare than the second map, for some reasons you've always elicited.

It would be nice if Quake's nightmare mode incorporated some elements or other of DOOM's mode, but the prevalence of tricky traps and relatively close quarters in the maps does limit what can be achieved a bit. Regular DOOM maps have plenty of the wide-open areas that invite you to wade right in, giving that feel Edmond described earlier, and Quake doesn't succeed in that feeling very well. In fact, up until the present time, the Quake-style engine (and their subsequent releases) have led people to assume that iD games have small, almost claustrophobic environments most of the time. There are some really expansive Quake maps, and this is especially true of the expansions, but not quite so many.

[BIL]

I didn't actually bother with even the original DOOM trilogy's Nightmare difficulty until literally 10+ years of ignoring it - I think it was getting into shooters and other arcade-style stuff that made me want to go back and clear it out ("stick that warning prompt up your ass, asshole!"). Knee Deep In The Dead was among the hardest on that setting, I think due to the amount of hitscanning zombies and the lack of plasma rifle / BFG. Also, if that's where you start (logically), you won't know to approach each stage like a speed run - E1 still has the illusion of being friendly to UV's methodical level clearing. There's a nice feeling of constant mortal peril in that mode, but it becomes obvious pretty quickly that there's usually no point killing anything that's not directly in your way, and the game turns into a footrace.

BDOOM's respawning is currently semi-broken (I think due to its monster corpses having so many various states of destruction), and I actually find it's a lot of fun that way. Although the vast majority of dead enemies will stay down, stuff can occasionally pop back up entirely without pattern or predictability, which can make things quite tense on stages where you do lots of backtracking over those classic monster corpse oceans. Single-sessioning The Shores Of Hell on Black Metal plus respawning was my compulsion for a while this year.

[BIL]

Whoa. Finished DOE and was underwhelmed, but went back to clear out the id episodes on Nightmare and "PALACE OF HATE" really impressed me. The architecture is blocky and simple as ever, but it has a nice grand scale, and it's actually a fairly creepy level. Loved the use of expansive, shadowy spaces and interminable corridors full of lurking Fiends. Running down those hearing more and more being alerted and realising I'd lost track of the one I was originally fleeing was a great nightmarish moment. At one point a Shambler went clomping right past me in a dark hallway, which was awesome until I alerted it and the same dreary routine of corner abuse began.

This is what I worry about when I hear "ten-foot Yeti behemoth chasing you down:"



And indeed there's more than one point where suddenly a ten-foot Yeti behemoth is chasing you down. But it's ok, he just wants to do lightnin' magic at you. id should've given them a few lesser swipes and an instant-kill grab attack similar to the Fiend's super-damaging leap, then put them in hard-to-maneuver places where it'd actually be nerve-wracking to encounter such a grasping thing. But that's getting into horror game design, like Silent Hill 2 sending Jimmy into its darkest, least escapable locale immediately after establishing Pyramid Head's horribly omnipresent quality. At some point it'd be cool to have a great big circle-strafeathon with several Shammies in an open courtyard, too. Can't even do that with this lightning BS, though.

They really didn't take rocket/grenade jumping into account with this game's level designs, did they? Or maybe they did and wanted to encourage awesome explosive-augmented gymnastics? I'm sure it's all been documented somewhere, and the scene it birthed is awesome, I'm just a bit surprised that even my sequence breaking-blind ass can see no end of places to chop out 75% of a stage. The end stages of episodes 2 & 3 comes to mind.

"Darn, the exit elevator is ten feet across the water! :[ "
"Crumbs, that level-ending rune is on a bridge a few feet above my head! :[[[ "

Fun as hell, though. Often I'll bust a level open, then clear it in reverse.

Thing I Learned Today: if you need to stop a zombie getting back up, just stand on it.

[Ed Oscuro]

iD did include at least one "rocket-jump" mandatory secret in DOOM (E3M6), though it's more of a kind of speed boost.

I haven't been doing much with the rocket jumps but that's mainly because I'm so scared of nasty, icky damage

[BIL]

Funny how even in that Erebus secret, there was an unintentional exploit in strafe-running. It was years before I learned (via that neat official DOOM FAQ included with The Ultimate) that they'd had rocket backblast in mind - I'd always strafe my way in.

Quake RJ damage isn't too bad if you have at least 40 yellow or red armour, especially if where you're going has goodies, but otherwise it's painful. I think two is the most you can withstand at 100 health and no armour.

Did some reading and there's all sorts of neat stuff like wall-rocketjumping to exploit (aim down while near a wall in the air). Almost makes me wish I had a third mouse button that I could bind shoot+jump to.

According to the Quake wiki id weren't aware of the feature when designing the first game's levels, which makes sense... it's neat that Hipnotic acknowledged it with that hidden message for RJing up to the Ogre's perch at the end of Scourge's second episode. I'm sure there's at least a handful of crazy fan levels out there designed around XTREME mastery of the technique.

[dave4shmups]

Last night, I watched some game play footage of Aliens: Colonial Marines. The sounds of the motion tracker and pulse rifle are perfect! Is this FPS really as bad as the gaming press says it is? It looks awfully enticing.