Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 12:08:30 AM

Login with username, password and session length

FPS NIGHTMARES

Started by Lemming, November 17, 2019, 12:23:16 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jim Bob

Quote from: Lemming on January 08, 2020, 10:53:14 PM
It was retitled Exhumed in the UK

Oooohhh, it's Exhumed (a far more apt and infinitely cooler sounding title, it must be said)!  My overriding memory of Exhumed was of seeing screenshots in gaming magazines, which showed some gorgeous looking lighting effects (fire and weapon shots lighting up the walls and floors with a lovely coloured glow.  I can't remember whether this was the PC version or the PSOne version, but a quick glance at a couple of playthroughs on YouTube failed to display the lighting effects of my memory.  Strange.

I'm kinda sad to hear that it's a great game, as it makes me think of how my teenage self should have actually gone ahead and purchased a copy, which I was this close to doing at the time.  Ah well, c'est la vie.

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on January 08, 2020, 10:58:39 PM
Just catching up on this great thread and I've got a fact to share: Adrenaline is the hormone, Adrenalin is a trademarked product of some pharmaceutical company. I learnt this fact and somehow still remember it from an Amiga Power review...

Another related fun fact; 'Amiga' is Spanish for 'girlfriend', which seems appropriate, given that back in the 90s, the Amiga home computer was probably the only thing which saw any finger action from many a teenage boy.

popcorn

Quote from: Jim Bob on January 09, 2020, 12:23:46 AM
My overriding memory of Exhumed was of seeing screenshots in gaming magazines, which showed some gorgeous looking lighting effects (fire and weapon shots lighting up the walls and floors with a lovely coloured glow.  I can't remember whether this was the PC version or the PSOne version, but a quick glance at a couple of playthroughs on YouTube failed to display the lighting effects of my memory.  Strange.

Might have been the Saturn version you're thinking of, which I know had different effects. And also the Saturn is great and the PS1 is for twaaats

I also vaguely wonder if you're thinking of the Saturn port of Quake, which was ported by the Exhumed devs (Lobotomy) and had extra coloured lighting effects and stuff, rockets whizzing by and lighting up the walls and so on.

Jim Bob

Quote from: popcorn on January 09, 2020, 02:13:25 AM
Might have been the Saturn version you're thinking of, which I know had different effects.

Ah, thanks, popcorn.  It was indeed the Saturn version which I was thinking of.  Rather inexplicably I used to buy the official Sega Saturn magazine, despite not owning the console, so I must have seen the screenshots in there.

popcorn

A part of you was longing to not be a twat is what was happening there.

Sad...

Mister Six

Quote from: beanheadmcginty on January 08, 2020, 10:58:39 PM
Just catching up on this great thread and I've got a fact to share: Adrenaline is the hormone, Adrenalin is a trademarked product of some pharmaceutical company. I learnt this fact and somehow still remember it from an Amiga Power review from about 1993 of a game called The Adrenalin(e) Factor, which I have never played.

Ha, also where I learned this fact. +Karma

Mister Six

Quote from: popcorn on January 09, 2020, 02:13:25 AM
I also vaguely wonder if you're thinking of the Saturn port of Quake, which was ported by the Exhumed devs (Lobotomy) and had extra coloured lighting effects and stuff, rockets whizzing by and lighting up the walls and so on.

That happened in original PC Quake too!


Mister Six

Ah, coloured lighting. Gotcha.

madhair60

I finally got a decent Saturn emulator running the other day and by christ there is very little worth playing on it. Exhumed is great though, one of the best games on the system (which is quite funny when you think about it)

madhair60


Jerzy Bondov

Lobotomy were heroes to Sega Saturn fans. Sega Saturn Magazine worshipped them. Exhumed runs on Lobotomy's own engine, SlaveDriver. When they did the Saturn ports of Quake and Duke 3D, rather than trying to port the Quake or Build engines to Saturn, they entirely remade both games in the SlaveDriver engine at short notice.

If you have an Exhumed or Quake save on your Saturn, you can unlock DEATH TANK ZWEI in the Duke 3D port. Alternatively you can unlock it by destroying all the toilets and sinks in the game. Death Tank is a real time Scorched Earth for up to 7 players. It looks like this. That video doesn't have the theme tune so here's the theme tune.

For some reason porting PC FPS games to the Sega Saturn in an extremely labour intensive way wasn't a route to profitability so Lobotomy never got to make any more games. They apparently had a Quake port for the PlayStation up and running, but couldn't get a publisher. Still, never mind.

popcorn

Quote from: madhair60 on January 09, 2020, 07:49:36 AM
I finally got a decent Saturn emulator running the other day and by christ there is very little worth playing on it.

To be honest it wasn't until the PS2 came along that I started finding more than five or six games I truly loved on a single console. Until then it was just a smattering of gems and a lot of interesting distractions.

But the Saturn has a smattering of gems all right. I wish someone would play Panzer Dragoon Saga and post about it on CaB one day. It truly does make me sad that no one ever fucken played that one, it's very special.

Jerzy Bondov

Quote from: madhair60 on January 09, 2020, 07:49:36 AM
I finally got a decent Saturn emulator running the other day and by christ there is very little worth playing on it. Exhumed is great though, one of the best games on the system (which is quite funny when you think about it)
I bet you only installed it for Astal. That's got you all over it.

CHRIST I just remembered Blam! Machinehead. Get that played Lemming.

madhair60

Quote from: popcorn on January 09, 2020, 11:44:38 AM
To be honest it wasn't until the PS2 came along that I started finding more than five or six games I truly loved on a single console. Until then it was just a smattering of gems and a lot of interesting distractions.

But the Saturn has a smattering of gems all right. I wish someone would play Panzer Dragoon Saga and post about it on CaB one day. It truly does make me sad that no one ever fucken played that one, it's very special.

I probably could now with the new version of SSF. But first obviously I have to finish Clockwork Knight.

popcorn

Quote from: madhair60 on January 09, 2020, 01:11:42 PM
I probably could now with the new version of SSF. But first obviously I have to finish Clockwork Knight.

Bear in mind that if you give it anything less than five Craymens out of five I will crush yer feet.


Lemming

To add to the Lobotomy Software praise, I'm playing the DOS version of PowerSlave/Exhumed right now and even though it's a far weaker game than the console version IMO, the fact that they basically decided to make a whole new game for the Build engine with a huge amount of work going into it (new weapons, new textures, new sprites and enemies, entirely original maps) is pretty amazing. Does anyone have the full history of why they chose to do this? I gather from really brief reading that the SlaveDriver engine didn't port over well to PC or something, and the original game couldn't be remade in Build.

Apparently they were working on PowerSlave 2 at the time they closed down, which was to switch to being a third person game, sort of like Heretic 2 presumably. It's a real shame they never completed it, I would have loved to see what they'd come up with.

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on January 09, 2020, 11:54:59 AM
CHRIST I just remembered Blam! Machinehead. Get that played Lemming.

It shall be done. The phallic nature of the craft draws me in.

Lemming

PowerSlave (DOS) (1996)



Here's the alternate cover art with the alternate title, just for variety.

   

This is PCExhumed, which runs on the same tech as EDuke32, I think.

STORY: Special forces guy, Egypt, Ramses, etc.

MUSIC: It's the same as the console version. I couldn't hear any new tracks, but then I wasn't really listening for any.

THE VERDICT: To reiterate just in case anyone reads the thread backwards or something, there's two versions of PowerSlave/Exhumed. The console version is fantastic, the DOS version is less so, it turns out.

Apparently, I've had the facts the wrong way round until now - the PC version was actually made first. The console version was made afterwards when they discovered that porting a Build engine game direct to consoles was too tricky, and they'd have to make a new game for consoles. Thank fuck for that, because they made one of the best games I've played so far in this thread.

The PC version, on the other hand, is often uncharitably described as "Doom in Egypt", and that's a fair comment to throw at it. The Metroidvania aspects are not present, and you don't collect artifacts which grant permanent powers, so the game lacks two of the core features that made the console version so great. Additionally, the ammo system I praised from the console version is instead just a standard ammo system - weapons have dedicated ammo types which you'll just have to hope you find lying around.

The change in ammo system means that you can't use your exotic weapons whenever you want anymore. That would be more of a problem if there were more exotic weapons, but a few of the console version's coolest weapons are absent, and the weird golden grenade thing (which was my weapon of choice for most of the game) is now a shitty regular frag grenade that totally sucks balls and has the most insane physics I've ever seen. The result is that you're basically stuck using the M60 for most of the game.

Combat isn't as fun, either. Aside from a worse selection of weapons, enemies generally take more hits than in the console version, and without your powers to spice up combat (like leaping over enemies or escaping them by levitating to high ledges), we're stuck with very standard 90s FPS shooting mechanics.

The level design generally isn't as intuitive and logical as in the console version, so instead of having fun with the puzzles I just got pissed off more than anything. Whereas you slowly learn the layout of each level in the console version and know exactly where each special exit is, the PC version's maps are larger and often confusing since everything looks basically the same. Every level is just the classic "find the key, walk around in circles for a bit until you find the corresponding door, do it three more times, then fuck off" model of gameplay that characterises games from this era.

This review reads like I'm being really hard on the game, which I don't mean to be. Nothing about it is actually bad, more just sort of boring. Still, here are some good points: there are some great visuals, the Build engine is used to render some impressive outdoor areas (though you get the feeling this exact game could have easily been done on the Doom engine, and the SlaveDriver engine is notably better), there are still a varied amount of enemies who take different strategies to kill, and a few maps show glimmers of the type of tight level design that make the console version so much fun. The better levels focus around recognisable, vaguely "real-life" areas like towns and rivers, and some of them are good fun to play. The levels I enjoyed far less are the ones that focused around giant abstract temples with an endless spiderweb of samey corridors.

This version also has a couple of boss fights which don't re-appear in the console version, and they're pretty fun.

There's also a magic system which isn't in the console versions. It's essentially an items system, as in Duke 3D or Heretic, but the items require mana to use, which is never really a problem since its insanely plentiful.

Oh, and sometimes you turn into a mummy for no reason. I didn't get how that worked. Mummies sometimes fire a screaming skull at you which causes you yourself to briefly turn into a mummy, giving you a powerful attack that kills enemies nearby, before you quickly change back. Yes, enemies have an attack that briefly powers you up and lets you kill them easier. Confused. The viewmodel (what's the sprite version of a viewmodel called?) for the player getting mummified is wicked though.

Oh, and yet another thing, the guy you're playing as talks now. A lot. He says stupid shit like "SEE YA!" when he kills people. Thank fuck they removed that for the console version.

FINAL RATING: This isn't a bad game, but it's pretty mediocre in virtually every respect. If the console version hadn't existed, I would have played this and probably forgotten it ever existed after like a week. If you're a big fan of 90s FPS games and you've never played this, you might want to give it a look-in. It's competently made and if getting lost in sprawling multi-storey mazes trying to find keys is something you enjoy, this game will give you that. And plenty of it, too - the game has a lot of maps and will easily take you like 8 - 10 hours to complete.

2.5 or 3 seems like the right score. Let's go for 3 Horrific Animated Constantly-Breathing Lungs That Are In The Status Bar Constantly out of 5, just to be nice. Needless to say, I think you should play the console version instead if for some reason you end up in a situation where you can only play one of these games.



Next game: Alien Trilogy (1996). Might be a while longer than usual due to an assortment of reasons.

Just caught up on this thread. Brilliant stuff. Would buy as a book.

mrpupkin

Hello women reading this book

Lemming

Alien Trilogy (1996)



   

STORY: Again, movies aren't my thing. I have seen Alien, and this doesn't resemble the plot from it in any way, so I'm not sure what's up with the title. Anyway, Ripley has to shoot at aliens!

MUSIC: It's weirdly chilled out considering the raw HORROR of having xenomorphs run at you. I actually really liked the soundtrack.

THE VERDICT: I don't know what engine this is, but it's pretty interesting. It feels quite outdated - no looking up and down, much more basic movement than Build games, no crouching or jumping etc - but it's capable of some decent visual tricks and levels have staircases and catwalks that you can shoot from.

Anyway, it's a corridor shooter in every sense of the word. You slide around corridors kicking the shit out of everyone until you find a locked door, then you slide around looking for the switch that opens it so you can leave. It's a tried and tested gameplay model, but one that doesn't offer anything too exciting, especially not in light of all the innovation going on with other games in this period.

Everything's really dark, that's one of the big problems. You can't see more than like one inch in front of your face at any given time. My screenshots turned out crap (in fact, they turned out fucking awful and completely un-representative of the game, but as you can probably tell I'm just hitting take-screenshot at almost random times while playing these games) and there are more brightly lit levels, but you still have a constant draw distance limit of about 1 meter around you at all times. You get to go to some weird alien hive thing towards the end and weirdly I think that was brighter than the human military base.

Auto-aim is just insane. Fire at the wall and the bullets will curve magically as they leave your gun, flying into the nearest enemy. Aim directly at the enemy and bullets will hit the wall behind it. It's mad!!! Even without that, the controls are kind of awkward. Mouse and keyboard are both enabled but really not intended to be used together, so you're essentially looking at either playing entirely with the mouse or entirely with the keyboard. I found the mouse unuseable (and I've been using mouse-only for plenty of games up until now) so I was stuck using arrow keys to rotate and left control to fire, like a fucking animal.

The arsenal is large enough and full of a variety of weapons - there's a nice mix of hitscan guns and projectile guns to keep you switching for whatever's best at the time rather than just relying on one gun.

Speaking of switching weapons, ammo is a huge problem, especially in the early levels. By a huge problem, I don't just mean the game is hard, I mean it's possible to literally run out of ammo, with none left on the map to pick up. There's simply too many enemies on the top difficulty, especially if auto-aim fucks you over. You have no melee attack, so fuck you, it's over. You get more ammo at weird bonus level type things where you have 60 seconds to race around a maze grabbing all types of ammo, like a demented Supermarket Sweep. If you don't manage to collect everything you need on these levels, you can get fucked over pretty easily.

Facehuggers get actually stuck to the screen for a few seconds, which is kind of a nice touch. They're dinky though, they barely even hurt you.

Levels sometimes have objectives other than simply escaping - kill every alien, collect a certain type of item, etc. You can just ignore these and your "MISSION" score at the end of the mission will suck, but it doesn't seem to penalise you at all.

Ripley NEVER shuts up. "C'MON!!!! C'MON!!! C'MON!!!". Relentless. She even does this while being tragically forced to kill possessed humans. She is, however, the first ever female protagonist in an FPS game, not counting games that let you select a male character instead. Hooray! Still not an original character, though, since she's from a film. The hunt for the genre's first unchangeable, original female character CONTINUES.

FINAL RATING: Overall, it's not great - it's not bad either, but it doesn't have anything properly outstanding or original. It's got the same sort of mindless, methodical nature to it as something like Wolfenstein 3D, where you roam around the mazes shooting everything in sight and drifting from door to door looking for the one you need to proceed. This obviously isn't a bad thing in itself and if you just want to shoot at aliens with a ton of weapons then the game offers that, and offers it in a pretty solidly-made game (other than the autoaim). But in an era of innovations in both technology and gameplay, it feels like it's falling behind on both.

For what it's worth, I played the DOS version - the PS1 version looks like it's significantly smoother, and has some FMV sequences that didn't seem to be in this version, or maybe just didn't load.

2 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH out of 5.



Next game: Angst (1996). Also maybe Witchaven 2, but it seems very very similar to the first game, same interface, engine, weapons and everything else, so I might skip it for the same reason I'm giving Descent 2 a miss. It's the last Capstone Software game, which means we must now say goodbye to the titanic, ultra-reliable company that has seen us through the earliest days of FPS NIGHTMARES. Let's all take a moment to reflect on the truly great times offered to us by the likes of William Shatner's TekWar, Operation Body Count, and Witchaven.

Jim Bob

#260
My overriding memory of Alien Trilogy is renting a copy, it being scratched, me returning it to Blockbusters and the scratched disc being replaced with a disc which wasn't scratched by an employee who was indifferent.  Good game 10/10.  Bad disc 1/10.  Overall score 5/10.

samadriel


Mister Six


Lemming



Behold, Angst. A game which, it seems, is often referred to as "the worst FPS ever made".

This is me with my 1550 health on the first level. I tried to jump between two platforms - which was the only way to proceed, not some weird glitchy area I wasn't meant to be in - and fell between them. I'm now stuck between two narrow walls and cannot move. Can you see my gun on the screen? No, me neither, it blends into the rest of the graphics, but it's a weird metal bar that fires arrows.

Good game so far!

Jim Bob

Angst by name, angst by nature.

purlieu

This thread has inspired me to start playing a few games again. Bought Half-Life yesterday, playing that for the first time ever. Lovely stuff. Cheers!

madhair60

I saw a film called Angst, about a serial killer. Now that was good.

Dewt

I saw Angst II: Cunt Done It Again

Lemming

Progress on Angst is moving slowly because it's genuinely terrible. I try not to buy into conventional wisdom when it comes to videogames, so when I saw that Angst was "the worst FPS ever made", I thought the worst case scenario would be that it was just a standard boring Wolfenstein clone with comically bad graphics. But no, it is actually pretty fucked on every front. I keep falling off the map or into inescapable narrow spaces. I don't necessarily see myself finishing it (I don't even know how long it is) so might make a mini-post instead for Angst instead of a FEATURE LENGTH post, and then we can move onto the next game, which I think is Quake. 

Quote from: purlieu on January 21, 2020, 02:28:56 PM
This thread has inspired me to start playing a few games again. Bought Half-Life yesterday, playing that for the first time ever. Lovely stuff. Cheers!

Good to hear! Hope you enjoy it, it's easily one of my favourites.

PlanktonSideburns

still loving this thread

keep getting annyoed when someone posts in the

will it please snow now FFS thread

as i momentarily think its another post in this