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FPS NIGHTMARES

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

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king_tubby

QUAKE QUAKE QUAKE!

Please recreate my own Quake playing days by eating a load of hash and listening to the first Salaryman record/Blue Jam on real time radio whilst playing.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


king_tubby


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


druss


druss

Fucking shit myself and died with that lad.

Jim Bob

Quote from: Lemming on January 21, 2020, 07:32:16 PM
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.

If nothing else, your description has ensured that I will be playing this game on my Awful Gaming Stream at some point, so at least know that you shall not be suffering alone.

Lemming

Calling it quits on Angst. I went back and replayed the first level and recorded it. Hopefully this gives a reasonable impression of why this has just been filed under UNPLAYABLE in fpsnightmares.txt, my trusty text document.

Here is the video.

Quote from: Jim Bob on January 22, 2020, 02:40:31 AM
If nothing else, your description has ensured that I will be playing this game on my Awful Gaming Stream at some point, so at least know that you shall not be suffering alone.

It will be perfect for an awful gaming stream. It seriously manages to surprise and amaze with a new awful thing every 10 seconds or so, it's almost an inverse masterpiece in a way.

purlieu

Quote from: Lemming on January 21, 2020, 07:32:16 PM
Good to hear! Hope you enjoy it, it's easily one of my favourites.
It reminded me why I don't normally play games, I've been up until 4am the last couple of nights. Argh.

It's very bloody good, though. I've watched a couple of friends play the second - pretty much all the way through, as if it was a TV series - so I had a feeling I'd enjoy it. I like that it's more puzzle-based than a straight-up shooter (one reason I've never really dabbled in FPS's is the lack of interest in killing-based games). Took me a while to realise the random weapon-switching was because of my over-sensitive Apple mouse, and a couple of automatic save points have resulted in me not being able to move at all, involving some annoying back-tracking from an older save, but otherwise it's been great. I've only had about three WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?! breakdowns, too.

Jerzy Bondov

Quote from: Lemming on January 22, 2020, 04:19:38 AM
Calling it quits on Angst. I went back and replayed the first level and recorded it. Hopefully this gives a reasonable impression of why this has just been filed under UNPLAYABLE in fpsnightmares.txt, my trusty text document.

Here is the video.
Haha this is amazing. You have demonstrated immense fortitude in playing it for more than five seconds

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Lemming on January 22, 2020, 04:19:38 AM
Calling it quits on Angst. I went back and replayed the first level and recorded it. Hopefully this gives a reasonable impression of why this has just been filed under UNPLAYABLE in fpsnightmares.txt, my trusty text document.

Here is the video.

It will be perfect for an awful gaming stream. It seriously manages to surprise and amaze with a new awful thing every 10 seconds or so, it's almost an inverse masterpiece in a way.
Oh, but don't you see? Its mechanics have been deliberately crafted to instil a sense of angst in the player. Hence the title.

purlieu

Quote from: Lemming on January 22, 2020, 04:19:38 AM
Calling it quits on Angst. I went back and replayed the first level and recorded it. Hopefully this gives a reasonable impression of why this has just been filed under UNPLAYABLE in fpsnightmares.txt, my trusty text document.
Fucking hell, that's a masterpiece of awfulness.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


Lemming

Quake (1996)



   

This is the Darkplaces source port. There's hot debate around which Quake source port is best, I thought this one was fine. The only problem with it is that it replaces the original particle effects with worse ones, and occasionally has really fuck-ugly lighting effects that grate heavily against the rest of the game.

STORY: Marine, demons, etc.

MUSIC: Experience the dark industrial sounds of TRENT REZNOR, THE NINE INCH NAILS MAN.

THE VERDICT: I've run into a problem here, which will probably become a recurrent issue going forward. In every game so far, I'm playing single player only, and ignoring multiplayer (the only exceptions to this I can see will be Unreal Tournament and Q3 Arena, for obvious reasons, unless we end up playing Counter Strike or Battlefield or something fucking crazy like that).

I don't think it's the height of controversy to suggest that with Quake, the multiplayer is the focus. I like the singleplayer but I've rarely randomly launched Quake just to play through the singleplayer campaign in the same way I have with Doom.

Anyway let's talk about the game. First of all, the most obvious thing: the Quake engine is crazy. True full 3D is here, with mouselook and everything. In a lot of ways, Quake has more in common with later games than it does with the likes of Doom and 90% of everything released up until this point, so it feels like we've finally reached a landmark moment in the genre. Playing FPS games chronologically like this, you can really feel how much of an advancement Quake is on a technical level. And it still looks great - particle effects, lighting, the visual design of enemies, all that. Sadly this was partially lost when I decided to switch to the aforementioned source port, but whatever. Sharper.

All of Quake's weapons are good, bar the single shotgun and maybe the shitty axe. The double shotgun feels oddly underpowered but is a reliable fall-back weapon, the rocket launcher is one of the best in any game ever and just as useful for throwing yourself across the room as it is for killing enemies, the nailguns both feel like no gun in any game before now thanks to the Quake engine letting them fire out a rapid stream of real 3D projectiles (I've not seen this in any game before - Alien Trilogy and Terminator Future Shock both had rapidly-firing 3D projectiles, but they felt weird and weightless, for lack of a better word). The grenade launcher works for a similar reason - your grenades will arc through the air and bounce semi-realistically off walls and into gaps, allowing you to take on enemies around corners or above and below you. The lightning gun is just fucking sick.

Quake's movement is also in a league of its own compared to virtually every game before it. Everything feels natural and like you're tightly in control. No awkward sliding around like a jackass as in almost every other game up until this point, no completely fucked jump feature. Full 360 degree movement, with physics! Shoot yourself across the map, yessss.

This movement works well together with the enemy types, because it's essentially a game about dodging, and at any given time you're going to have melee enemies moving in to rip your face off at the same time as an array of projectiles sail towards your balls. Getting good at jumping left and right and twirling majestically around like a Trent Reznor-voiced ballerina is the main gameplay of Quake's singleplayer, and it can be a lot of fun.

Enemy animations are spectacular, because not only do they have pain and death animations, they have idle animations. Sounds like a mundane thing to get excited over, but I think this is seriously the first game to have fully 3D enemies who play idle animations. There's also that fucking thing that leaps up at you when you get near it, every single Shambler animation, the way gibs bounce around, the animation work is all great.

One thing about the enemies, though - the AI sucks way more than I remember it doing. I wonder if it's a symptom of being an early 3D game, but you're so fast and some enemies - especially the human soldiers and the ogres - are so shit that walking around behind them to blow them away while they ineffectually try to turn towards you is something you'll be doing a lot. The only enemies who can really give you trouble are the leaping bastards and the Shambler, who despite being the biggest and most cumbersome-looking enemy, can actually turn to face you in an instant and roast your dick with lightning. But yeah, all the human/ogre enemies are fools, and the knights who charge at you aren't much better. You can actually completely disarm ogres by walking up to them so they switch to their chainsaw and then just walking around them while they sort of awkwardly twist to meet you. It's very noticeable when comparing with sprite-based games where enemies could just instantaneously flip 180 degrees to face you.

If I had to make one proper criticism about Quake's singleplayer, it's that the level design is often pretty weak. A lot of people describe Quake's level design as "masterful", "perfect" and all that. I honestly don't see it at all. The maps make good use of the Quake engine's features, incorporating some impressive vertical rooms, underwater sequences and the like, but they're almost universally smaller and far less complex than a standard Doom map. Because maps are so quick to navigate, powerups are even more overpowered than in other games, and you'll sometimes even end up stacking multiple invulnerabilities and quad damages on top of each other. There's also limited amounts of enemies on most maps. They're placed well and thoughtfully so you still end up with fun combat encounters, but you can still end up taking out like three quarters of an entire map with one quad damage rampage.

Levels themselves often look great though. The twisty architecture is memorable (and Reznor's eerie soundtrack really helps you feel like you're in some kind of nightmare realm) and the game has a very distinct look. There's some rooms with inexplicable stained glass windows and things that might be altars - everything looks almost recognisable, but is so weird that it feels like a bad dream made of half-real images. It's a fantastic visual look when it comes off properly. On the downside, everything is brown and grey and when the whole scary-nightmare-dimension stuff doesn't quite work on certain maps, it feels like you're just running around a really uninspired set of murky corridors.

Of course, it has to be mentioned that one of the greatest strengths of Quake is the modding community. Like the Doom and Build engine games, there's a fucking shitton of fan maps for Quake, still made today. Check out Arcane Dimensions if you want your mind blown to fuck. I've played through a few fan maps and a lot of them really bring out the strength of Quake's gunplay and movement better than id's own campaign does.

FINAL RATING: The singleplayer is good, the multiplayer is outstanding. Let's say 4 What The Fuck Is This Thing out of 5.


If you're old enough, and I very barely am, to remember gaming magazines from the late 90s, you will be aware that we are now on a quest to find the QUAKE-KILLER. What will be the QUAKE-KILLER? Can anything KILL QUAKE?

Next game: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. If you've played it, you know what that means. Yes, it's time to spent about a week secluded alone in this room, cut off all contact with everyone, and get lost in dungeons for like 10 real-life hours. GOODBYE UNTIL THEN.

Jerzy Bondov

I really like how the enemies in Quake are animated. They have quite a low frame rate which almost makes them look like stop motion. It makes them scarier to me. Might be smoothed out in the various source ports though.

madhair60

Quake singleplayer is superb besides the woeful "bosses"

Al Tha Funkee Homosapien

Also if you've got a snazzy RTX card then the Quake II RTX is worth a look at (YEAH, i know we haven't done Quake II yet). The ray tracing and lighting really is amazing even with the fairly basic textures.

Jim Bob


falafel

From what I recall multiplayer only really became the focus in Quake 2. I thought reviews even were mainly focused on the single player. Is that just because I didn't have the internet back then?

Lemming

That's interesting. Maybe it's because I wasn't really old enough to be playing Quake when it came out, but I always perceived Quake 2 as the more singleplayer-focused game of the two, given the lengthy campaign that tries to have a semblance of a story going on and the occasional scripted sequences.

Quake 1's singleplayer is plenty of fun on its own but the real joy of the game for me was kicking the shit out of my brother in two-player deathmatch while hopping around like a dick.

Meanwhile in Daggerfall, I have stumbled across what appears to be a Cookdandbomb'd meetup:



The loincloths conceal the phismosis.

Jim Bob

Quote from: Lemming on January 28, 2020, 10:15:55 PM
Meanwhile in Daggerfall, I have stumbled across what appears to be a Cookdandbomb'd meetup:



Nah, 1/3rd of the group is female and 2/3rds of the group have hair.  That's a fantasy Cookdandbomb'd meetup, at best.

Jim Bob



Now, this is a Cookdandbombd meetup.

MojoJojo

Quote from: Lemming on January 28, 2020, 10:15:55 PM
That's interesting. Maybe it's because I wasn't really old enough to be playing Quake when it came out, but I always perceived Quake 2 as the more singleplayer-focused game of the two, given the lengthy campaign that tries to have a semblance of a story going on and the occasional scripted sequences.

Quake 1's singleplayer is plenty of fun on its own but the real joy of the game for me was kicking the shit out of my brother in two-player deathmatch while hopping around like a dick.

Not a straight forward question. Original Quake's multiplayer was designed around LAN, and was shit over the internet because it didn't have any mitigation for the lag the internet introduced. So deathmatch was really only enjoyed by computer geeks who went to university in a narrow window of time.

Then QuakeProxy was developed to try and fix that, which eventually developed into QuakeWorld which was playable over the internet, and was really the first online FPS.

I remember Quake 2 as being more multiplayer focused, and the single player being a bit dull. Not sure how I'd find Quake's single player today, at the time it was cool just to have all the proper 3D stuff going on.

QRDL

Quote from: MojoJojo on January 29, 2020, 04:29:25 PM
I remember Quake 2 as being more multiplayer focused, and the single player being a bit dull. Not sure how I'd find Quake's single player today, at the time it was cool just to have all the proper 3D stuff going on.

I played it last week for the first time in my life and it was indeed quite dull, especially compared to Quake 1. It must've been all the flashy graphics which earned Q2 a 10/10 in the biggest Polish gaming magazine back in the day. Or the multiplayer, but I don't remember that even being mentionaed in the review.

remedial_gash

Quote from: MojoJojo on January 29, 2020, 04:29:25 PM
Not a straight forward question. Original Quake's multiplayer was designed around LAN, and was shit over the internet because it didn't have any mitigation for the lag the internet introduced. So deathmatch was really only enjoyed by computer geeks who went to university in a narrow window of time.

Then QuakeProxy was developed to try and fix that, which eventually developed into QuakeWorld which was playable over the internet, and was really the first online FPS.

I remember Quake 2 as being more multiplayer focused, and the single player being a bit dull. Not sure how I'd find Quake's single player today, at the time it was cool just to have all the proper 3D stuff going on.

I used to dial up my next door neighbour who was about 11 at the time - worrying when I was 18 at the time, but it sort of worked. Plus my little brother wasn't reallly into games - can't stand online gaming now - I'm too old and it's just weird racists or kids innit?

ZoyzaSorris

Remember being blown away when Quake first came out and I certainly never played it multiplayer. Played loads of single player and seemed like a total revolution at the time. But then same for Quake 2, looked crazy advanced when it first came out and I enjoyed the single player campaign which again was my only experience of it - bet it seems very primitive now but I remember feeling it was very immersive at the time. Never got into multiplayer pc gaming, played modern warfare on the Xbox for a bit when I had one and that was it.

Mister Six

Quake 2 let you choose whether your character was left-handed, which I thought was very progressive.

Bazooka

Quake 2's soundtrack is banging, used to blast the cd-rom in my CD player.

purlieu

Which is the one where one of the bosses - possibly even the final boss - is some fat bastard in a pit in the centre of a square room, and no matter which way you approach, he's always facing your way?

Inspector Norse

Quote from: purlieu on January 30, 2020, 07:51:41 PM
Which is the one where one of the bosses - possibly even the final boss - is some fat bastard in a pit in the centre of a square room, and no matter which way you approach, he's always facing your way?