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March 28, 2024, 09:40:28 PM

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FPS NIGHTMARES

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

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H-O-W-L

That's one of many things that made me fuck off Cyberpunk 2077. Everything in the game had this "F0RG3T IT 5N4K35, IT'5 CYB3RT0VVN!" bullshit edge to it, even the main fucking plot! What a load of old arse.

Ferris

Part of me would love to play CyberPunk 2077 to see if its as much of a total dog egg as everyone says.

Mister Six

My plan is to play it when I eventually get a PS5 in about three years. I'm still going through games that came out 15 years ago at the minute, so it'd be wasted on me.

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 24, 2022, 06:01:46 PMThat's one of many things that made me fuck off Cyberpunk 2077. Everything in the game had this "F0RG3T IT 5N4K35, IT'5 CYB3RT0VVN!" bullshit edge to it, even the main fucking plot! What a load of old arse.

I loathed the RDR 1 side missions for the same reason. The conclusion to the flower-picking mission got a grisly laugh from me, but it rapidly became apparent that every single one had a "hilarious" nihilistic ending, to the point that it was quite easy to guess the twist from the set-up.

It's also why I raised my eyebrows at someone earlier in the thread saying that RDR 1 seemed to have a world worth saving, because once you get away from Bonnie's farm the writing takes a massive nosedive into edgy, cynical R* """""satire""""" territory and never recovers.

H-O-W-L

That was me and I stand by it.

samadriel

Quote from: Mister Six on January 24, 2022, 04:32:53 PMevery subquest feel like a stressful slog until I just gave up caring and went with whatever felt right at the time.

? What were you doing beforehand? I liked that you had to just go with what felt right (or what you think Geralt would do).

Mister Six

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 24, 2022, 06:18:02 PMThat was me and I stand by it.

Which parts seemed worth saving? Pretty much every character outside of Bonnie, her dad, the Marshal and that one Native American guy (and maybe that prostitute you periodically have to rescue from the knife-wielding punter in the first town) seems some combination of selfish, stupid, shallow, hateful or arrogant to me. Plus, obviously, the world you're "saving" is slowly being ground beneath the heels of the oppressive, racist American government following the expansion of the settlers and their so-called manifest destiny. It's just relentlessly dour and cynical. RDR 2 seemed like an improvement but I didn't play it for very long.

Quote from: samadriel on January 25, 2022, 01:44:52 AM? What were you doing beforehand?

Not sure I understand - before I played the game or before I did the missions?

samadriel

Quote from: Mister Six on January 25, 2022, 04:40:06 AMNot sure I understand - before I played the game or before I did the missions?
Before you went with whatever felt right - surely that's what you'd always do? (Unless you're role playing as a Geralt with a different world view, but even then, you'd just be choosing whatever you imagine that Geralt would do).

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Mister Six on January 25, 2022, 04:40:06 AMWhich parts seemed worth saving? Pretty much every character outside of Bonnie, her dad, the Marshal and that one Native American guy (and maybe that prostitute you periodically have to rescue from the knife-wielding punter in the first town) seems some combination of selfish, stupid, shallow, hateful or arrogant to me. Plus, obviously, the world you're "saving" is slowly being ground beneath the heels of the oppressive, racist American government following the expansion of the settlers and their so-called manifest destiny. It's just relentlessly dour and cynical. RDR 2 seemed like an improvement but I didn't play it for very long.

It's been a while since I played through RDR1 but by and large it seemed to take place in our world, and to me the fact that people like Sister Calderon, Bonnie and her dad etc can exist even on the heavily violent and tumultuous frontier told me that it was a world worth doing the right thing in. That it was a world that decent people could live in eventually-- maybe they wouldn't always get what they deserve, but ultimately it wasn't one to be condemned or ignored.

I.D. Smith

Quote from: Mister Six on January 24, 2022, 06:17:33 PMI loathed the RDR 1 side missions for the same reason. The conclusion to the flower-picking mission got a grisly laugh from me, but it rapidly became apparent that every single one had a "hilarious" nihilistic ending, to the point that it was quite easy to guess the twist from the set-up.

It's also why I raised my eyebrows at someone earlier in the thread saying that RDR 1 seemed to have a world worth saving, because once you get away from Bonnie's farm the writing takes a massive nosedive into edgy, cynical R* """""satire""""" territory and never recovers.

Yes! It's been years since I played it, but I do remember feeling the steady creep of Rockstar's cynical snarky humour creep in. Again, from memory, one example being the quest involving the man building a flying machine.
Spoiler alert
From what I recall you help him build it and then the game sets it up for you to watch him then attempt his first flight. I was expecting the game to know I was expecting him to fall, and therefore subvert that by making him fly off into the distance but no, lolz, he falls to his death with Marston not giving much more than a shrug, despite him being the earthy, multilayered protagonist up to that point: the former outlaw with a heart
[close]

I still loved RD1 though, (and 2), but moments like that I could do without.

Ferris

RDR1 was (and still is) a top 3 game for me, absolutely loved it. Played the PS3 version the other day and it looks a bit rough but largely holds up.

Was it snarky? Maybe it was a bit.

Mister Six

Quote from: samadriel on January 25, 2022, 05:25:37 AMBefore you went with whatever felt right - surely that's what you'd always do? (Unless you're role playing as a Geralt with a different world view, but even then, you'd just be choosing whatever you imagine that Geralt would do).

I generally try to do the least harm possible, so what feels right is what feels least damaging, which is of course impossible to predict in W3. Plus, I never felt like I had a particularly good handle on what Geralt's personality was supposed to be, since I wasn't playing a total cypher like in New Vegas or Dragon Age: Origins or whatever.

I accept that this is more of a matter of taste than anything else, mind you. Maybe if the game wasn't so bloody massive or the combat more interesting I would have stuck with it.

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 25, 2022, 08:21:48 AMIt's been a while since I played through RDR1 but by and large it seemed to take place in our world, and to me the fact that people like Sister Calderon, Bonnie and her dad etc can exist even on the heavily violent and tumultuous frontier told me that it was a world worth doing the right thing in. That it was a world that decent people could live in eventually-- maybe they wouldn't always get what they deserve, but ultimately it wasn't one to be condemned or ignored.

Glass half full, I see! I forgot about Sister Calderon. I do think the tenor of the game is largely unpleasantly nihilistic though.

Really liked the poker games, mind you.

Quote from: I.D. Smith on January 25, 2022, 08:54:47 AMYes! It's been years since I played it, but I do remember feeling the steady creep of Rockstar's cynical snarky humour creep in. Again, from memory, one example being the quest involving the man building a flying machine.
Spoiler alert
From what I recall you help him build it and then the game sets it up for you to watch him then attempt his first flight. I was expecting the game to know I was expecting him to fall, and therefore subvert that by making him fly off into the distance but no, lolz, he falls to his death with Marston not giving much more than a shrug, despite him being the earthy, multilayered protagonist up to that point: the former outlaw with a heart
[close]

I still loved RD1 though, (and 2), but moments like that I could do without.

The flying machine one was another of those quests where the conclusion seemed blindingly obvious from the beginning. Although I was more upset by the canonical main mission where Marston becomes complicit in mass gang rape by assisting the Mexican general. My Marston went around calling women "ma'am" and rescuing sex workers. He wouldn't have stood for that.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Mister Six on January 25, 2022, 03:04:17 PMGlass half full, I see! I forgot about Sister Calderon. I do think the tenor of the game is largely unpleasantly nihilistic though.

Perhaps, but so is a lot of frontier fiction. It's the old thing of people planting trees they'll never sit under. To me all that mattered was John's family getting out alive -- and they did. I wholeheartedly refute the interpretation that Jack becomes a violent outlaw too; nobody's gonna give a shit about Ross's death, and even if they do they're never gonna find Jack, because he's just gonna wander off.

Jerzy Bondov

Are you meant to feel bad gunning down Ross at the end? I didn't, I put one in his head and one in his cock.

Ferris

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on January 25, 2022, 05:55:14 PMAre you meant to feel bad gunning down Ross at the end? I didn't, I put one in his head and one in his cock.

First draft of Friends finale revealed.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on January 25, 2022, 05:55:14 PMAre you meant to feel bad gunning down Ross at the end? I didn't, I put one in his head and one in his cock.

I get the impression that you're not really supposed to think Jack is a badass at the end.

But it's not very well communicated, and it's still rubbish if that's what it's supposed to entail

"ooh the futility of revenge though"

nah, just went and shot the cunt who unambiguously hunted down and killed my dad when he was minding his own business, for which I suffered no consequences.  Don't feel bad to be honest.

Jerzy Bondov

Yeah you can't do 'violent revenge is not satisfying' in a game because shooting men dead in games is fun and basically the only reason to play them.

druss

Quote from: H-O-W-L on January 25, 2022, 08:21:48 AMIt's been a while since I played through RDR1 but by and large it seemed to take place in our world, and to me the fact that people like Sister Calderon, Bonnie and her dad etc can exist even on the heavily violent and tumultuous frontier told me that it was a world worth doing the right thing in. That it was a world that decent people could live in eventually-- maybe they wouldn't always get what they deserve, but ultimately it wasn't one to be condemned or ignored.
Agreed, it's the only Rockstar game where I haven't gone around being a cunt and shooting people at random.

samadriel

Let's take the morality/choice/story chatter elsewhere so we aren't crashing Lemming's thread, hey? I started one: https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=92410.0

Lemming

Wanted to do more reviews because they're fun, but also due to a number of vaguely-defined reasons, it's hard to do the FULL FPS NIGHTMARES EXPERIENCE right now. So what I thought I'd do is just skip around through my list of games and do ones that I already have installed or close at hand, in the interests of keeping the thread going. I'll make sure to note which games I'm skipping and potentially go back for them one day, so never fear, fans of Clive Barker's Undying. Anyway:

Red Faction (2001)





RELEASE DATE: 15th February, 2001

STORY: Due to abysmal working conditions and a plague running rampant, a rebellion breaks out among the downtrodden miners of Mars. A man with the IQ of a sponge is swept up in events as he tries to flee the planet.

PROTEST THIS, MINER!: Mentioned this back in the Half-Life review (getting the mandatory Half-Life talk in early on this one, very first line!), but I'm not really convinced that Half-Life had quite the impact on the FPS genre that it's often said to have had. It obviously had a seismic effect in changing people's expectations and could be argued to have played a substantial part in hastening the demise of already-declining elements of the genre (like maze-like levels, keycards, secrets, etc), but there's not really any "Half-Life clones" subgenre in the way that there were countless, say, Doom clones. You can definitely see elements that are Half-Life-y in games from the years immediately after it, but you could just as accurately trace the inspiration back to Unreal et al.

Red Faction is the first game since Half-Life that really feels like it's actually trying to ape Half-Life. It follows a very similar sort of design philosophy: a story is told from an entirely first-person perspective in which the protagonist is silent (barring some short cutscenes) and events are shown happening right in front of you. Maps consist of corridors for combat which typically lead into big setpiece rooms, with scripted sequences designed to invoke a sort of "cinematic" feel.

The stories are even virtually identical - an unassuming civilian finds himself trapped in a crumbling science facility while an armed force attempts to kill him as part of a cover-up. The soldiers begin to lose their battle when greater foes show up (although in RF's case, it's "mercs", not aliens, which is utterly hilarious and which we'll get into later), and the situations our hero finds himself in become gradually more and more batshit until the big finale in which the facility is about to be destroyed by a nuke unless our hero can flee (Gordon) or disarm it (Parker) in time.

So let's cover the story first: Parker is a hapless fucking idiot who got scammed into working for a mining company called Ultor. The opening cinematic gives us a bit of background - he's a dunce who signed up because he thought it'd be a bit of fun, and is now trapped working 300000-hour weeks in mines where people are frequently worked to death and live in shitty dormitories. Abuse from the guards is common. To make matters worse, a fatal plague is spreading among the miners. These conditions ultimately lead a rebellion to break out, which happens to occur right as Parker is on his way home from his shift. Since everyone is shooting at him, he has to return fire, and through typical game protagonist luck, Parker ends up being the only survivor from his sector. He's contacted by Eos, the leader of the rebellion and the actual main character of the game, and Hendrix, some tech nerd who's having a really good time watching Parker's antics over CCTV and, presumably out of pity, wants to help.

Parker spends most of the game in a Freeman-esque panicked sprint through the facility, fighting off innumerable bad bastards. Contact with other members of the Red Faction rebellion is rare, because most of them are really pathetic and their main contribution to the uprising is to leave their corpses lying around with ammo for Parker to scrounge. Parker makes his way up to the offices, and must wear a disguise - oh god, more on that soon - in order to capture Gryphon, an administrator for Ultor. Gryphon informs Parker that "[Ultor] set this whole thing up". I love this line because it's seemingly absolutely critical to the plot, but it's never expanded upon. Ultor set what up? The rebellion that's killing their troops and destroying their facility?!

As he battles his way through one of Ultor's many evil labs, Parker encounters the villainous Capec. Capec's character design is so good that it actually has to be seen to be believed.

Got lost on his way to Warhammer 40k.

Eos specifically tells Parker not to fire on Capec, for he's the only one who can cure the miner plague. Parker, in a cutscene (which is where most of his most big-brain moments occur), attempts to execute Capec on sight, yelling "to hell with orders!!!!". Thankfully for all the stricken miners who would have been doomed, Capec has a SPECIAL SHIELD which deflects bullets. He leads Parker on a chase which sees Parker almost eaten by a Thresher Maw from Mass Effect, until a big confrontation in another, different lab.

Anyway, Parker's nonsensical journey takes him through various exciting scenarios, including a tram ride (where, of course, other trams full of enemies begin pursuit) and a space station (which, of course, explodes mere seconds after Parker escapes in a life pod). The Red Faction uprising starts to gain the upper hand over Ultor - presumably entirely due to Parker, since nobody else does much of anything, except perhaps Eos - and they call in the big guns: a band of bloodthristy mercenaries led by the ruthless Colonel Masako. The first thing Masako does upon arrival is order her troops to attack Ultor.

They're hired by Ultor. They will be getting paid by Ultor. They choose to attack Ultor, just because Masako is "ruthless". This is literally the plot of the game. They quickly take over most of Mars, by the looks of it, and having shot everyone in Ultor, they begin to destroy the Red Faction. They also plant a nuke in the facility, WHILE THEY'RE STILL IN IT. Parker races to disarm it (the nuke also has a beaten Eos tied up next to it, because Masako took her alive just to kill her by strapping her to a nuke, I guess) and finds himself in a desperate mid-air duel with Masako as they both get in these weird flying gunship things and dogfight in a cargo bay. With Masako dispatched, Parker strains his brain to the limit by doing a puzzle where you press the arrow keys in the right order, and the nuke is disarmed. Parker is a hero!

The story is complete fucking nonsense which falls apart even before you give it a moment's scrutiny, but it's absolutely perfect for what the game is. The whole thing is insane B-movie material, the fact that the story is a big pile of shit only enhances the experience.

The combat is really peculiar in a way that's hard to describe. Guns, by and large, don't really have recoil. They're also inaccurate as part of their design, with bullets vaguely heading in the general direction of your crosshair, almost as if you're just suggesting a direction for the gun to fire. Enemies will also eat upwards of ten bullets to the torso without flinching, but a single headshot will take them down. The entire thing is made even more odd by the enemy movement, they tend to slide around at nigh-random speeds, sometimes without even animating, which makes hitting everything even harder.

For the first fifteen minutes or so of the game, you're likely to say "the fuck's going on! these guns are shit!" out loud at least four times a minute. After that, though, you sort of adapt to its shitness, and the game becomes perfectly playable.

Your initial weapons are a stun baton (don't even bother) and a pistol (hideous shite). Thankfully, you get the assault rifle before long, which is an absolute gamechanger in that it actually deals damage, it at least sometimes hits what you're aiming at, it can burst fire or semi-auto fire which is useful, and it has a groovy ammo readout on the side which changes as you fire, which I remember thinking was the sickest and most futuristic thing ever when I first played this. After you get the assault rifle, the texture of combat changes from "oh fuck, there's two guys, well, that's game over for me" to effortlessly breezing through Ultor's goons. Later on, you get the rail cannon, a big piece of useless shit (although it can fire through walls), a scoped assault rifle which is essentially an upgrade for the assault rifle, a heavy machinegun which is good for occasions where you want to make absolutely sure you lose tons of ammo without hitting anything, and some other guns that no reasonable person would use.

I'd be amiss not to talk about Red Faction's big central feature - you can destroy walls! This is a gimmick at the end of the day which doesn't really affect anything, but it is fun. Satchel charges and rockets can be used to blast holes in any rock or concrete wall. There's almost never a reason to do this because, after the very first map, there's almost never secret areas to find, but creative thinking can occasionally make the feature useful. There's a few doors which you can blast around instead of open (the game encourages this), a few floors you can blow through to skip parts of levels, and, most interestingly, you can skip an entire boring vehicle segment if you've saved enough explosives to create a staircase up through the side of a mountain which will take you about five minutes ahead of where you were. Early on, there's also a cool opportunity to destroy a rock bridge which causes an attack vehicle (which would otherwise catch you and force you to fight it) to plunge into a ravine.

Speaking of which, yeah, vehicle segments, still a bit of a novelty at this point in gaming's history. None of them really work but they're at least varied - you get submarines for underwater segments, gunships for aerial combat (both of these control much like the craft in Descent), a big mining machine with two huge drills on the front that can break through walls, a jeep with a mounted gun (WORST SHIT EVER), and some kind of armoured tank thing. They're alright, they don't really detract from the game, at least.

Let's talk about the disguise segments. Fucking nightmare. The first occurs very suddenly - you've just built up your arsenal into a good and varied selection, and as you walk up some unassuming stairs, the game suddenly stops you. There's a Red Faction rebel here, who TAKES ALL YOUR WEAPONS AWAY FROM YOU without warning and forces you to dress in a suit. No!!! You've only got your pistol left! In what I assume is some kind of humiliation ritual enforced on the player by the devs, you're made to walk around an office area, which consists of three agonising maps. If you get close to anyone, they yell "YOU'RE THAT GUY NAMED PARKER!!!" and everyone in the level begins firing at you. The offices consist mainly of small corridors where two guards will walk side by side in opposite directions at once, making getting past near impossible unless you want to sit there like an arsehole for five minutes until the specific gap appears in their patrols that lets you slip through, only to face yet another identical corridor with the same shit.

Most players will, I assume, sack the whole thing off and draw their gun the instant they step into the offices. This is by far the quickest way to do it, and, if you succeed, can get the whole thing over with in a couple of minutes. However, you've got to score perfect headshots, because a) you have no armour so, on higher difficulties, you're dead if anyone returns fire and b) you have very little ammo and only a select few enemies seem to drop any more. To add insult to injury, the guards drop SMGs and assault rifles and other cool shit which Parker refuses to pick up just to spite you for daring to foul the sanctity of the disguise segment.

Your heart will freeze with terror about half an hour later when, after a big boss fight, Eos messages you and tells you to find a disguise to get through the labs ahead. You drop out of a vent into a room with a labcoat, which, if touched, will confiscate all your weapons and send you on a repeat of the previous nightmare. Luckily, there is literally nothing to stop you from ignoring the disguise and walking through the level guns blazing with your existing arsenal.

FINAL RATING: Imagine if Half-Life was less tightly designed, blessed with a nonsensical story and setting instead of an intriguing one, and had some experimental stuff that doesn't really work. If you like Half-Life's design model of trying to put the player in various action movie-esque scenarios, you'll like this too. Despite its flaws, 4 Live Ammo Readouts out of 5.



THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A BOTTOM QUOTE:

druss

Yessssss more FPS nightmares.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Huzzah!

Red Faction was an odd mix of slick and clunky. I guess the developers' ambitions outstripped their means (or maybe their talent). Halo did a lot of the same stuff, but with a lot more style and polish - heck, even the machine gun with ammo counter. It was cool that it kept throwing new stuff at you, but the execution was often lacking. The stealth sections are the obvious example, but I always remember the boss fight with the big robot: It could have been a great set piece, maybe a cat and mouse kind of thing, with you sneaking around, using the environment against it. Instead, it's just this big bullet sponge that floats around and is always facing you, presumably because that was easier than making an ED209 style killdroid, with animation and pathfinding, etc.

Imperfect as it was, I still have a lot of nostalgic affection for it. It was the first game of that generation that really caught my interest. Gimmick though the Geo Mod(c) thing was, I just had to see it for myself. When I got to university later that year and found myself with a student loan to fritter away, a brand spanking new PS2 with Red Faction was the only choice and it didn't disappoint (although going back to 2 player deathmatch after 4 player Goldeneye was a downgrade).

For all the hoo hah about exploding walls, the most impressive destruction effect I remember is the shattering glass. By the standard of the time at least, it looked really realistic, with shards flying away from the point of impact and landing on the ground.

Ferris

I played Red Faction the other day (for the first time since the mid '00s) via the PlayStation on demand thing. I was really enjoying it - it's great silliness and it still largely holds up.

However, my experience was ruined because have to play it on a virtual console (PS1 I assume) which doesn't have a "virtual" memory card inserted because of course it doesn't so you can't save progress at all. The game also doesn't auto save, or tell you that nothing is being saved. I got about 5 or 6 hours (?) into the game over various sessions, loving it, all great, fucked a jump and died and it took me right back to the start. Miner rebellion scripted event, the works. My sniper rifle, my grenades, my memories... gone.

Turned the game off in a puce rage and haven't touched it since. I didn't even check if there's an "insert virtual memory card" option afterwards because fuck you, game.

A grim warning for anyone who tries to play it, there.

Ferris

The multiplayer was fantastic. Happy memories of the facility (?) map, using the grenade launcher to tunnel onto the roof to get the rail gun and camping up there sniping at everyone else through the walls/ceiling.

That and the TimeSplitters multiplayer maps were formative video game experiences for me.

Pink Gregory

I've only played Red Faction 2 - remember that the grenade launcher is basically your default weapon and when you get a direct hit there's just a pair of gruesome smoking boots left.

Old Thrashbarg

My abiding memory of Red Faction (or maybe was it RF2?) was the multiplayer map in a canyon with a multi-level base, of sorts, carved into the cliffs at each end. And the ability to blast through the walls at the side in order to reach the base at the other end was a joy. I seem to remember it being especially good for games of capture the flag.

DoesNotFollow

Quote from: Ferris on March 06, 2022, 02:49:09 PMThat and the TimeSplitters multiplayer maps were formative video game experiences for me.

Likewise for me except Red Faction 2 and Timesplitters 2, respectively.

Ferris

Quote from: DoesNotFollow on March 13, 2022, 05:54:34 PMLikewise for me except Red Faction 2 and Timesplitters 2, respectively.

Remember the snow/bunker one on TimeSplitters 2? Had the big turrets in the central building? That is one of my gaming happy-places.

DoesNotFollow

Quote from: Ferris on March 13, 2022, 06:16:00 PMRemember the snow/bunker one on TimeSplitters 2? Had the big turrets in the central building? That is one of my gaming happy-places.

Yep. Me, my mate Josh (and/or my sister) and a bunch of bots.

KaraokeDragon

Just finished playing through the Timesplitters Future Perfect story again. It's my favourite FPS ever just off the back of how much fun the story mode is. I remembered the challenges not being as good as 2's but I played some of them earlier and thought they were okay.

I never played any of the Timesplitters games online but I played a bit of 2 on splitscreen and remember the hysteric jeering whenever someone got stuck with a timed mine or remote mine. Either hearing the beeping getting more frequent and trying to run into the cunt who stuck you before you get blown up or with the remote mines being completely at the mercy of whoever stuck you before they got bored of taunting you and detonated.

Halo Reach and Call of Duty Blops 1 had the sticky grenades that blew up a couple of seconds after sticking to the target but it just wasn't as sadistic or hilarious.

Looking forward to see what you think of the Timesplitters games if you get that far, Lemming.

Pink Gregory

Had a bit of a rude awakening when I finally decided to try out my old Xbox games on my Xbone.

Timesplitters 2 defaults to inverted Y axis!  Woof.  Those were the days.