FPS NIGHTMARES

[popcorn]

Set phasers to frag, ffs

[Mister Six]

That's Ronaldo isn't it?

Is possible.

[Wonderful Butternut]

The overwhelming amount of combat wouldn't be a problem if the game told a typical Star Trek style story about diplomacy or emotional intelligence or peace or something, but it doesn't. The plot is kind of vaguely annoying, if anything - Munro (the player character) is portrayed as being right about everything, s/he demands that the Hazard Team be unleashed and allowed to kick the shit out of enemy forces, and yells at the regular characters for not being aggressive enough. Eventually, Munro convinces Janeway to authorise a pre-emptive strike against the main antagonists, which results in a rampage through the alien ship which culminates with Munro killing the alien's leader.

Best part about this is that once we'd blown up the dampening field that keeps us in the graveyard, we were going to happily walk away from Vorsoth (or whatever his name is) and leave him to build a new graveyard to harvest genetic material from various species to make perfect soldiers. Until he telepathically communicates with us and tells us he was just going to make a new graveyard after we leave. Just keep your mouth shut, dumbass.

As it for it being poor use of the license with loads of killing, it's got nothing on Star Trek Online. I think by now my STO character has murdered more sentient lifeforms than Hitler.

I had that, and I got the expansion pack which was VERY thin stuff. You could wander round the Voyager doing fuck all and there was a holodeck mission and that was it. However you could vaporise crew members with your phaser which would lead to you being put in the brig.

You could murder your crewmates in the full game and when eventually subdued by security officers beaming in (and anyone else present drawing their phasers to stop you) would get a randomised cutscene with a character from Voyager coming to visit you in the Brig and console you.

Tom Paris for example would tell you that the captain would eventually get over it, accept you made a mistake and given you another chance. Even if you've vapourised the captain. Or Tom Paris himself. Or even better, used cheats to make yourself invincible to vapourise the entire bridge crew (and any security that beam in) and then activate the autodestruct.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Ah cheers I was misremembering that. Why the fuck did I buy the expansion pack then?

I've just looked it up and it says apart from 'Virtual Voyager' and some new multiplayer maps and modes, the other thing it added was voice acting from Jeri Ryan, who didn't do the original game for some reason. I doubt that was a factor. I don't even like Voyager!

[Chollis]

fuckin Biessman!

[Ferris]

Lemming: a question for way out in the future - will you look at VR FPS games? I'm thinking of SUPERHOT which I've been playing (and massively enjoying) for the last few days. It's an FPS, and feels like sort of an evolution? It has a clever mechanic and a few unexpected bits and I'd contend it qualifies.

Hardly an immediate concern but thought I'd add it to the list (if there is a list).

[Lemming]

Sure! I've played the regular non-VR version of SUPERHOT and enjoyed it, I'd love to check out the VR version too.

I've been holding off buying a VR headset purely due to Oculus Quest 2's forced Facebook integration. I keep almost buying one anyway (mostly for Skyrim VR) but I'm waiting to see if any alternative/better headsets hit the market any time soon.

[Ferris]

I had the same reservation, and ended up creating a Facebook account in the name of Bumly McStaggerz and turned all of the privacy info stuff off. Not perfect, but as good as I'll get.

Didn't realize there was a non-VR version! There are a number of good VR FPS games if you're interested, though I guess all games in VR count as FPS?

Separately - if I got skyrim on my laptop via steam, could I play it on VR? This question is very important.

[Lemming]

I had the same reservation, and ended up creating a Facebook account in the name of Bumly McStaggerz and turned all of the privacy info stuff off. Not perfect, but as good as I'll get.

This was my planned solution too, but on their site, they make a big thing about how you "MUST USE YOUR REAL NAME" because "WE BELIEVE IN SOCIAL-POWERED GAMING EXPERIENCES". There's obviously no way they'll ever know, but apparently if the FB account you use with the Oculus gets banned or suspended, you can't access the headset at all anymore, which still puts me off.

Separately - if I got skyrim on my laptop via steam, could I play it on VR? This question is very important.

As far as I understand it, you have to buy (or otherwise obtain) Skyrim VR on Steam, and then use some crazy link cable to connect the Quest to the computer.

[popcorn]

They've recently released a beta feature to let you stream from PCs rather than having to connect them, so the link cable will be obsolete soon.

[Ferris]

Jokes on them, my real name is Bumly McStaggerz so who's the idiot now?!

I'd consider buying skyrim again just for the novelty of having it on a bajillion platforms, and I think it's brilliant so it's not a hardship to own it again. Will have to investigate this streaming/link type stuff, I have a half decent laptop so might be worth having.

Anyway I'm going to go and cry about the Leafs for a bit so will look into it later.

[druss]

The Elder Scrolls games were good weren't they, shame they stopped making them.

[Lemming]

Going out of chronological order, but it's been a while since I posted a review, so:

No One Lives Forever (2000)





RELEASE DATE: November 9th, 2000

STORY: H.A.R.M., an evil organisation, are out to fuck shit UP with a virus that causes the victim to explode, with anyone caught in the blast also exploding, leading to chain reactions that could kill millions. U.N.I.T.Y. operative Cate Archer races to prevent catastrophe, while everyone around her complains.

MUSIC: Pretty excellent 60s-feeling soundtrack. The game even has its own theme song with vocals!

I DO NOT LIKE BEING SHOT AT: The year 2000 is an interesting time for videogames. A mere 5 years earlier, action games generally didn't bother with plots - either there's some backstory in the manual or you get a couple of blocks of writing between levels telling you what's meant to be happening. By 2000, videogames were really starting to lean on the medium of movies - a well-told plot was now increasingly being considered as something that could be crucial to a game's success, rather than unnecessary baggage or a nice but unneeded addition. Thus, here comes No One Lives Forever, a game that leans as far as it can go into spy movie cliches.

The game starts with a long cutscene, which even has an intro sequence with its own theme music that introduces the main voice actors. Oooh, aaah, etc. NOLF's movie influences go beyond the two and a half hours (!) of cutscenes, though. Every mission has you acting out some kind of cinematic scenario, whether it's a snowmobile chase, fighting through an aeroplane (a mandatory requirement in videogames from 2000), falling out of the same plane, SCUBA diving, going into space, or a shootout in basically any environment you can imagine.

The game's big strength is in all this level variety. There are a ridiculous amount of different locales, and many come with their own playstyles. You travel through Morocco, East Germany, a tropical island, into outer space, aboard a train speeding across Europe, into a shipwreck and plenty more. There's even a level based entirely around an extended dialogue sequence. Just as you're starting to get bored, the game changes pace and style to keep things fresh. A couple levels don't come off - the forced stealth levels just don't work at all, and the space station is a cool idea which ends up going on a bit too long - but for the most part, every level is hugely successful.

To bring up Half-Life for the mandatory once-per-review mention, this feels like a game that actually is building on Half-Life in a meaningful way. Half-Life's success is in constant variety and forcing you to learn new things every few steps (compared with something like Doom, Soldier of Fortune, etc, which are great but essentially revolve around doing the same thing over and over for the whole game). No One Lives Forever is the next step up from that - it constantly switches up the contexts and ways in which you're getting shot at, but also goes balls-to-the-wall and changes the game mechanics too. Sometimes in NOLF, a new level can feel like a new game, which is excellent.

Graphically, the game is absolutely amazing for 2000, probably the best looking FPS of the year. LithTech 1.0 (as seen in smash hits like Shogo and Blood II) was fucking garbage, but LithTech 2.0 is absolutely mint. Looks amazing, for real. The stylised look of the game helps, but the graphics are impressive on a technical level too.

The combat is fun, which is good considering how much of it there is. Enemy AI gives you a good challenge and the gunplay is satisfying. There are different ammo types, which basically just translate to doing more damage. The only issue is that the game doesn't have leaning, which is a shame because on the hardest difficulty, the combat is very fun but also very tough and a leaning mechanic would have made everything a lot smoother

Story-wise, Cate Archer is a cool protagonist, and the game has a pretty clever trick to help merge the player's experience and hers. For most of the early game, you unavoidably "fail" every mission due to crazy things happening outside your control (including you being sucked out of a plane), and yet every time, Archer - and by extension, you - is forced to endure a bollocking where everyone doubts your competence, throws a ton of sexist shit at you, and whines that you're just not performing well enough. The game's humour made me laugh a few times and not-laugh many more times, but even if the comedy isn't your style, the novelty value of a videogame that takes you through every possible trope in a semi-pisstake of spy thrillers keeps the story moving along nicely. The voice actors all do brilliant work, too - Archer's occasional commentary is funny, and every enemy type will make you laugh at least once with their combat taunts.

As far as criticisms go, one thing that really winds me up about this game is that it sort of presents itself as a stealth game. The story repeatedly refers to Archer's ability to handle things quietly, in briefings you're often told not to raise the alarm, almost all your gadgets are focused around stealth (taking out cameras, distracting guard dogs, knocking out enemies, distracting enemies, etc), and the game occasionally decides to force you to remain stealthy for a whole level or face an instant game over. It even gives you a disguise a couple of times.

I don't have a clue why it does this, because it's not a stealth game. It's a stealth game in the sense that something like the original Far Cry is a stealth game - which is to say, you can sometimes work your way around people, but stealth is essentially just a means of getting the first shot in before combat starts. The result is bizarre - a lot of gadgets you might as well not bother with because you're going to get caught anyway, and as soon as the alarm goes off the game's going to spawn about 15 enemies who magically know exactly where you are, so why even bother with the half-implemented stealth? I did everything I could, and I feel confident in saying there's absolutely no way to remain undetected in the East Germany mission. As soon as you get inside through the sewers, you get detected no matter what you do, barring some utterly ridiculous, AI-exploiting shit. After the shipwreck level I completely stopped trying to remain hidden because it didn't seem to be much of an option. If it's a case of me just being too shit to handle the stealth then I'll own it, but I looked up other people's playthroughs online and nobody seems to have achieved the level of stealth that the dialogue and briefings indicate to be possible.

The only other criticism is that, as mentioned earlier, a couple of levels don't really come off, but they're in the minority and the game keeps switching it up so fast that you're never stuck on something for very long.

Oh, by the way, there's a level after the credits! Don't make the mistake I did of stupidly turning the game off as soon as the credits come up (in my defence, I was in a hurry for something or other), because the post-credits level is actually one of the most straightforwardly fun levels in the whole game.

FINAL RATING: It's straight-up great fun with plenty of cool tricks and gimmicks and varied gameplay. The only real criticisms are that stealth just doesn't work at all and that some of the levels in the game's big grabbag of styles don't quite come off. But the majority of the game comes off perfectly - 4 Uncontrollable Snowmobiles out of 5.



THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A PEEP SHOW QUOTE:

[Ferris]

This looks dead good. I think '99 to about '08 we're just brilliant for games. Indie studios hanging on, and mega-gaming hadn't really taken hold yet, so if you had a studio and a mad idea you could genuinely compete with anyone.

It looks like No One Lives Forever was released after my beloved TimeSplitters so the countdown is on. TS2 was better, but that's for a later page in the thread.

[St_Eddie]

Due to some complicated rights issues, No One Lives Forever, its sequel and the spin-off title, Contract J.A.C.K., are unavailable to purchase anymore (details here), so fans have made all three games available to download for free here (along with patches applied for modern operating systems).

[MojoJojo]

From the look of it and the timing I'd assume there was an Austin Powers influence there - does that show up much in the game?

[thelittlemango]

I love this game, one of my all time favourites, it just feels so great to me and I adore the tone.

With you on the stealth but as I'm a naturally cowardly player I usually choose stealth as the default so didn't notice it being as much of an issue as you. Some of my favourite parts are when you're sneaking around and overhear conversations among the guards (I love this whenever it appears in a game) and the little in-jokes about the goats etc. some of it genuinely made me laugh. Also the little details like in Morocco when you can shoot the fez from the top of enemies heads.

I never played the sequel weirdly considering how much I loved the first but need to give it a go as I've heard good things.

From the look of it and the timing I'd assume there was an Austin Powers influence there - does that show up much in the game?

A little bit. Some of the other characters are cartoon-ish in a similar way, and there is campness sprinkled throughout, but generally I wouldn't say it shows up too much.

[purlieu]

That looks like a lot of fun. It's gone on the list.

[popcorn]

I only played a bit of NLF, I remember finding it quite boring as a kid, but I do think it is quite Austin Powers-y, in the sense that it's an exaggerated and very 90s vision of what the 60s were like.

[Lemming]

It looks like No One Lives Forever was released after my beloved TimeSplitters so the countdown is on. TS2 was better, but that's for a later page in the thread.

About to dive in to TimeSplitters now. Anyone have any last-minute advice on emulation?

Unless anyone's got a better idea, planning to go for PCSX2 with mouse injector and see how it goes.

[Ferris]

Suspect the GameCube version (maybe on Wii?) will be easier to get going but actually no idea.

Worthless post, sorry.

(Weird that "GameCube" auto corrects on my phone!)

[I.D. Smith]

Just saying again how much I love this thread, but also how amazed I am at how quickly you burn through and complete these games. Even if I love a game and can't stop playing it in my free time, it still usually takes me at least 6 months to get through it start to finish.

[ProvanFan]

I asked a stranger at HMV to buy me NOLF with my money after getting a knockback off the guy at the till. Well I asked two, the first was appalled and wanted away from me as quickly as possible, the second was an absolute lad whom I bet would've got me eckies too if I'd asked.

Could get served at the local at 15 but couldn't buy the one of the campest, silliest (and admittedly violent but nowhere near violentest) games around. With hindsight it was a dodgy pub.

[NoSleep]

About to dive in to TimeSplitters now. Anyone have any last-minute advice on emulation?

Unless anyone's got a better idea, planning to go for PCSX2 with mouse injector and see how it goes.

Get an original-style PS2 for £60 or less[nb]PM me and I can send you a PS2 that will be fit for this purpose[nb]CD/DVD drive is a bit wobbly when trying to read CDs (which the occasional PS2 games come on; OK for DVDs; but you're not really going to need to ever use the CD/DVD drive).[/nb] for the cost of postage.[/nb], buy a memory card with Free McBoot preinstalled (£13), install an old 3.5" hard drive (SATA, can also be done with an old IDE with the correct adaptor, too) into the PS2 with a Kaica hard drive adaptor (£23). And you will be good to go for downloading almost any PS2 game you can find on the net (just checked here and all three Timesplitters games work fine this way).

FreeMcBoot: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brand-Playstation-McBoot-1-953-Memory/dp/B01M0K5H06/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=free+mcboot&qid=1624021259&s=videogames&sr=1-3

Hard Drive Adaptor: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Adaptor-Adapter-PlayStation2-McBoot/dp/B071ZQ2PMR/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=kaico&qid=1624021068&s=videogames&sr=1-9

[AsparagusTrevor]

I asked a stranger at HMV to buy me NOLF with my money after getting a knockback off the guy at the till. Well I asked two, the first was appalled and wanted away from me as quickly as possible, the second was an absolute lad whom I bet would've got me eckies too if I'd asked.

Could get served at the local at 15 but couldn't buy the one of the campest, silliest (and admittedly violent but nowhere near violentest) games around. With hindsight it was a dodgy pub.

I remember thinking it very weird that NOLF was rated 18. Apparently the BBFC found this spy spoof more violent than the likes of Doom, Max Payne, SiN and thought it belonged with Kingpin, Soldier of Fortune, Carmageddon etc. The fuck were they smoking sometimes?

[St_Eddie]

The fuck were they smoking sometimes?

You kind of answered your own question there, in a roundabout way.  The game's rating was arrived at for containing drugs & smoking, along with sex and nudity.  The censorship boards in the UK and America tend to come down very harshly on such things.  Violent content is often dealt with relatively leniently in comparison to drugs and sexual content, just providing that the violence is not extreme.  Sadly, it says a fair bit about the sorry state of society and its moral judgements, when violence and murder is deemed to be preferable over natural attraction/urges and self-medication.

Lest we forget the utterly ridiculous and hysterical Hot Coffee controversy with GTA: San Andreas.  Going postal and committing a mass murdering killing spree of innocent pedestrians = acceptable entertainment.  Simulated consensual dry humping whilst fully clothed = ban this sick filth!

[Ferris]

I remember Rockstar's Manhunt was similarly pilloried though I suspect it is laughably tame having never bothered to play it in the intervening 15yrs.

[The Crumb]

I remember Rockstar's Manhunt was similarly pilloried though I suspect it is laughably tame having never bothered to play it in the intervening 15yrs.

The violence wasn't too graphically bad compared to something like Soldier of Fortune or Turok 2, but there was a grounded element to it that could be seen as more worrying. Beating normalish people to death with household tools without the level of obvious farce in GTA definitely gives it quite a disturbing tone, on top of the generally sleazy, cynical atmosphere.

It was a decent and atmospheric action stealth game, but I doubt it would hold up well today.

[Ferris]

I just remember Keith Vaz jazzing himself to death on the front of national newspapers being more disturbing than any videogame.

[aunt mildred]

I always thought Manhunt was a creepy game, no idea why Rockstar made it tbh. Ahh, it was just to be controversial wasn't it? See also Bully.

Hi, I'm a newb here, long time lurker. Thanks lemming for this thread, I've enjoyed reading it all as a lurker.