Obscure FPS Titles

[Lemming]

Half-Life? Call of Duty? Halo? Wolfenstein? Medal of Honor? Far Cry?

FUCK THEM ALL - HERE'S MORTYR



This is, without a doubt, one of the jankiest pieces of shit I've ever played. The plot makes no sense, you're a man from the future who goes back to 1944 to stop Nazi Germany winning the war, whatever, it's all bollocks.

I had this game as a kid and have vague memories of it at best, so I installed it tonight and, after a few nice crashes and graphical fuckups, got it working.

I wish it had just kept crashing until I gave up.



This is proper garbage, it's too dark to see anything, the enemies just do that thing where they get stuck in place and rapidly flip backwards and forwards making them un-hittable, the level design is utter shit, the MP40 is the only good weapon I've found so far, there's a kick feature that deals no damage, you can fall off the edge of the map without even intending to, etc. etc.

Cookdandbombd GOTY, I reckon.

What are some obscure FPS games you know? If any of them are actually good, you'll get massive bonus points.

[Lemming]

Sorry for double-posting, but it feels weird to have two games in one post.

After Mortyr, let's cleanse the palate with some Chasm: The Rift



It's Quake for wankers!



Demons are using time portals to attack us or something, and only YOU can stop them!

Levels are just corridors and box-y rooms, no use is made of Quake's ability to have catwalks and stairs and things. Totally naff, it's like a bad fan level pack for Quake, except you had to pay money for it back when it came out.

You can blow people's arms and legs off, though, like a proto-version of 2000's Soldier of Fortune (which is a great semi-obscure FPS title, by the way, definitely play it if you haven't)

[biggytitbo]

Area 51, with David Duchovny as a soldier who turns into an alien. Really great game

[Phil_A]

Clive Barker's Undying.

I bought this on a budget re-release years ago and only played it for a couple of hours, it was pretty good though. Has a vibe of incipient Lovecraftian madness very much in the vein of Eternal Darkness.

[biggytitbo]

Another one in the excellent and unjustly unknown category, Cold Winter on PS2. Tom Baker as the villain and script by Warren Ellis, an excellent game with a much better story than usual -

[ASFTSN]

Clive Barker's Undying.

I bought this on a budget re-release years ago and only played it for a couple of hours, it was pretty good though. Has a vibe of incipient Lovecraftian madness very much in the vein of Eternal Darkness.

Never heard of this, looks right up my street!  Thanks for the heads up.

[madhair60]

Does Redneck Rampage count?

[AsparagusTrevor]

Does Redneck Rampage count?

I'd say it's fairly obscure, it was certainly overshadowed by fellow Build games Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior.

[Lemming]

Area 51 looks ace. With no PS2, I'll be forced to run it on an emulator, and playing FPS games on a PS2 emulator is pretty tough. No matter, it ADDS TO THE CHALLENGE

I've been playing some more of Mortyr. Apparently I killed Hitler at some point, without ever encountering him? An in-game note (the only way the game has of giving you plot) said I'd killed him, anyway.

Now I've travelled back to the year 2093 or whenever I'm meant to have set off from, and I have a laser pistol with which I'm shooting ambiguous people. Maybe they're Nazis from the future trying to stop me from killing the Nazis in the past? I don't know.

One thing I do know is that this game is fucking amazing.

Here's another obscure FPS anyway, which I've been checking out alongside Mortyr - it's Witchaven!



Dare to enter indeed, because within lies a bunch of stupid bullshit.



The way this game approaches level design isn't up my street at all - mucho backtracking, constantly running into doors locked by keys or switches, etc. It took me a while (no manual) to figure out how to use the spellbook, but the spells themselves are pretty cool.

In fact, it's a good thing the spells are cool, because you have to use them - weapons break. Weapon durability sucks shit in the best of games, and in Witchaven, it means that you'll be resorting to the useless short-sword because the big fuck-off Axe of Slaying that you just picked up shatters into a thousand pieces when you swipe it against a goblin's face.

Probably unfairly, I'm comparing it constantly to Hexen in my mind and wishing I was playing that instead. Just so I don't appear overly down on Witchaven, the monster design and animations are really good, the weapons all feel unique (for the 5 seconds you get to use them before they shatter), and enemies seem to have spell weaknesses which calls for tactical spellcasting. There are also a variety of potions you can use, which helps add to the "tactical" feeling the game sometimes gives you, that makes you feel like it's a little more challenging than just mowing through hordes of enemies.

[Kelvin]

Clive Barker's Undying.

I bought this on a budget re-release years ago and only played it for a couple of hours, it was pretty good though. Has a vibe of incipient Lovecraftian madness very much in the vein of Eternal Darkness.

Is that the one set in an old family house/grounds? I'm sure my friend played through it on my pc at uni, and remember thinking it looked quite good.

[biggytitbo]

Area 51 came out on Xbox too, so maybe you can play it on backward compatibility? That's one of the things I wish I had an Xbox  one for, Microsoft have done an amazing job making all those old games playable again. They just made the orange box compatible too, which is annoying as there is no way of playing any of those valve games on ps4 I don't think.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Is [Undying] the one set in an old family house/grounds? I'm sure my friend played through it on my pc at uni, and remember thinking it looked quite good.

Yeah that's the one. I remember it has some funky fatality like death-scenes for when your character dies.

Clive Barker's next foray into games wasn't as successful, the QTE-fest Jericho.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Area 51 came out on Xbox too, so maybe you can play it on backward compatibility? That's one of the things I wish I had an Xbox  one for, Microsoft have done an amazing job making all those old games playable again. They just made the orange box compatible too, which is annoying as there is no way of playing any of those valve games on ps4 I don't think.

After a shaky start, Microsoft are doing everything right this gen. Backwards-compatibility, UHD drives (even in the S), cross-play etc

Sony are being pretty anti-consumer but still winning in sales. Shit, even I have a PS4 and not an Xbox. To be fair though, Sony has the better exclusives by far.

[madhair60]

Witchaven is so fucking shit! Would be interested in how you work the spells though.

I also nominate Chasm: The Rift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCjVx1iPOBg

[Z]

Lifeforce Tenka, was on the third "Demo 1" for the PS1. Could never figure out how to play it at all, confusing interface, way too dark, really janky controls.



Prey, the 2006 game, looked kinda cool at the time. No clue if the game from last year is related or not

[Mister Six]

It's not, other than the developers having the rights to the name.

There was a demo of an FPS game on the PC that I can't recall the name of - you played a bounty hunter (a woman, a guy or a big cow thing... And maybe a robot?) who had to complete certain objectives, like collecting particular items or killing certain bad guys. The demo level was set during a riot in a space prison, I think, and collecting the warden's head was one of the objectives.

This is probably around Duke Nukem 3D era. 2D prerendered sprites on a moderately complex 3D space with sloping floors and such. Very grey, as I recall. You could open airlocks, which would lead to a little prerendered video of you being launched into space with the message "Do not taunt happy fun airlock."

Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

[kalowski]

Half-Life? Call of Duty? Halo? Wolfenstein? Medal of Honor? Far Cry?

FUCK THEM ALL - HERE'S MORTYR



This is, without a doubt, one of the jankiest pieces of shit I've ever played. The plot makes no sense, you're a man from the future who goes back to 1944 to stop Nazi Germany winning the war, whatever, it's all bollocks.

I had this game as a kid and have vague memories of it at best, so I installed it tonight and, after a few nice crashes and graphical fuckups, got it working.

I wish it had just kept crashing until I gave up.



This is proper garbage, it's too dark to see anything, the enemies just do that thing where they get stuck in place and rapidly flip backwards and forwards making them un-hittable, the level design is utter shit, the MP40 is the only good weapon I've found so far, there's a kick feature that deals no damage, you can fall off the edge of the map without even intending to, etc. etc.

Cookdandbombd GOTY, I reckon.

What are some obscure FPS games you know? If any of them are actually good, you'll get massive bonus points.

"We want you to go back in time and stop Nazi Germany winning the war "

"Nazi Germany didn't win the war."

"Yes, but we want you to go back to 1944 and end it early."

"Why don't I go back to 1938 and kill Hitler and other Nazis. That would stop the war."

"The machine goes to 1944."

[madhair60]

It's not, other than the developers having the rights to the name.

There was a demo of an FPS game on the PC that I can't recall the name of - you played a bounty hunter (a woman, a guy or a big cow thing... And maybe a robot?) who had to complete certain objectives, like collecting particular items or killing certain bad guys. The demo level was set during a riot in a space prison, I think, and collecting the warden's head was one of the objectives.

This is probably around Duke Nukem 3D era. 2D prerendered sprites on a moderately complex 3D space with sloping floors and such. Very grey, as I recall. You could open airlocks, which would lead to a little prerendered video of you being launched into space with the message "Do not taunt happy fun airlock."

Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

In Pursuit of Greed

https://youtu.be/uf7mKiFzHLI

[Lemming]

"We want you to go back in time and stop Nazi Germany winning the war "

"Nazi Germany didn't win the war."

"Yes, but we want you to go back to 1944 and end it early."

"Why don't I go back to 1938 and kill Hitler and other Nazis. That would stop the war."

"The machine goes to 1944."

Don't worry, the plot all comes together at the end. You fight three gigantic robotic spiders, walk into a room, a very short FMV cutscene plays of you planting a bomb on the wall and then the game just abruptly cuts back to the main menu, complete. Firm choice for 1999 Writers Guild Award for Videogame Writing.

Witchaven is so fucking shit! Would be interested in how you work the spells though.

Function keys to select spells, which I only discovered after pressing every single key on the keyboard several times and weeping as the spellbook remained unresponsive. ' key to cast spells, for some reason. I haven't found a way to re-bind these. It's all worth it for the Nuke spell, which really does just obliterate everything nearby.

[Mister Six]

In Pursuit of Greed

https://youtu.be/uf7mKiFzHLI

Brilliant, thank you!

[madhair60]

Brilliant, thank you!

This thread ate itself - looking up the Mortyr game, I stumbled across that only yesterday.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

In Pursuit of Greed

https://youtu.be/uf7mKiFzHLI

I know that's using an old engine, but even so, going from that in 1995 to Halo in 2001 (which to me felt completely normal at the time) the pace of change feels absolutely fucking incredible when you compare it to game/graphical development in FPS' in the last 8 years.
https://youtu.be/VX8hRASKXaM?t=198

[madhair60]

Not to mention Quake, the very next year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TskWpeEpWg

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Not to mention Quake, the very next year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TskWpeEpWg

On the subject

Goldeneye 1 year later
https://youtu.be/a4qJ8wNfgXY?t=275

Then a year later Half-Life. Three years between those muddy jagged textures in In Pursuit of Greed and Half-Life in 1998 is fucking unreal.
https://youtu.be/JoV9o6b91Sc?t=1440

[biggytitbo]

It's interesting how the advances in games tend to be less to do with the steady increase in computing power and more to do with the development of specific graphics techniques. Stuff like Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Fear were massive leaps forwards because of things like advanced shadows and lighting, bump mapping and the physics engines, which then lead to only incremental improvements for 5 years or so after. Then we had stuff like ambient occlusion, screen space reflections and global illumination which was a big leap forward in the xbox 360 and ps3 era, but it doesn't seem like we've had much else other than incremental improvements since then, even though the hardware is orders of magnitude better. I guess the ray tracing stuff will be the next big leap.

[New Jack]

This thread has a distinct lack of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Don't even get me started on Kingpin

[Lemming]

Love Kingpin, despite basically everything about it being crap. The opening segments where you're armed only with a pipe and a shit pistol with limited ammo are genuinely tense, and the later stages where you're racing around the weird retro-futuristic city blasting the shit out of gangsters with cyborg bits are hilarious.

Here's a game I don't love, though.

Project IGI: I'm Going In



We take on the role of some guy, armed with guns, who has to stop... Russians, maybe? Who've stolen a nuclear warhead.

It's a "tactical shooter", which of course means it's a regular crap FPS but you die in a couple of hits. Big pointlessly open maps ensure that you're spending 90% of game time just walking through empty space. No saves, either, so if you get killed you'll have to do it all over again.



The game implies that you can utilise stealth (your handler keeps telling you to be covert, don't alert anyone, etc) and there's an alarm system, but I literally can't do a single one of these missions without it turning into a bloodbath. I'm not sure enemies even have to reach a physical alarm to activate the whole system, they just see you and sometimes telepathically alert everyone else in that instant.

Only five levels in, but so far it sucks.

[Ferris]

I played some absolute dross on PS1/PS2 but can I think of the title of one of them? No.

Still, I am enjoying this thread.

[biggytitbo]

Back to the ps2 memory lane, deus ex spin off Project Snowblind is excellent





It's not quite the immersive sim of the mainline deus ex games, but it still contains a great deal of options in how you approach the game.

[New Jack]

Love Kingpin, despite basically everything about it being crap.

No way, totally reflected my childhood in rural Cheshire

Rise to the top of your own gang of thugs, and then take on the street's top dog, the Kingpin. You wake up in a dumpster only to realize you're now in a violent area where only the tough survive. Grab a lead pipe and prepare to make your way to the top of this urban nightmare.

the multiplayer was bear good. Bagman. Still seems to have a cult following. Ah, Bagman.


Obligatory FPS Mentions: No One Lives Forever . Trespasser, a bit. Blood 2, not Blood 1. That modern SiN sequel thing that did fuck all