What are you playing? (2024 Edition)

Malf on 13/9/2024 at 12:47

Quote Posted by Harvester

I also think as Malf says that Quake 3 is superior to UT

Heh, that's actually a bit of a personal joke, referring back to ye olde flame war between the two communities. My Internet "Home" is pretty much Quake3World, where I've been registered since March 2000. There would be regular forum "Invasions" that took place between us and various UT communities, all very funny and quite tongue in cheek, with even Cliff Bleszinski getting in on the fun.

In reality, while I do believe that Quake 3 was by far the winner graphically and for traditional Deathmatch-style play (and to be honest, it hasn't been beaten to this day), I will happily acknowledge UT's superiority for CTF and single-player.
I adored the personal teleporter in UT's CTF, and wish it would make an appearance in more modern games. Some of the best telefragging ever.
And while I felt that Unreal in general unnecessarily complicated weapons with secondary fire options, I deeply loved the Shock Rifle combo.

mxleader on 13/9/2024 at 13:49

Quote Posted by Harvester

Wolfenstein 3D didn't really click with me because I played it after Doom and it was too much of a step backwards. I did have fun with the clone Blake Stone 3D. I finished and had fun with Descent, but as I said I prefer the fast-paced action and atmosphere of Doom. Back then I also liked Duke Nukem 3D more than Quake but nowadays I think Quake is the superior game and I enjoyed the recent re-release. The Quake 2 re-release was also fun but after finishing it I don´t think I'll ever play Quake 2 again, with Quake 1 I'll probably do a replay or play some user-made campaigns in the future.

I also think as Malf says that Quake 3 is superior to UT, but back in those days I played UT more, it has more varied levels and more colorful environments that look more like real places. That appealed to me.

The only thing that really ever bugged me about Wolf3D was the feeling of being glued to the floor as you moved.

Quake is one that I've never played. It looks oddly Thief like though.

henke on 13/9/2024 at 18:03

It's 2024 and we're finally settling it: is Doom or Descent better? Yeah Descent was more complex, but I'm not of the opinion that gameplay gets better by adding more dimensions and buttons, the opposite is more often true. So for me it's DOOM, BABY! I tried replaying Descent not so long ago but gave up when I got to those annoying as heck hitscan enemies. Doom, meanwhile, is still a tight as hell gaming experience.

Wot I been gaming:
Star Wars Outlaws - I'm putting together a crew for the big job and I got one more planet to visit. That's what I'll be doing this weekend.
Star Trucker - I restarted on an easier difficulty cause all the systems in my space truck kept breaking and it was driving me broke and mad. This game would be enormously improved by letting you change difficulty mid-game.
Exo Rally - I'm in the playtest, and I've been playing the daily challenges almost every day. This game is going to be incredible once it's fully out.
Leap Year - a puzzle platformer that was perhaps more interesting than fun to play. How exactly it is interesting I can't tell you, because it would spoil the whole thing.
Crash Time Undercover - This XBox 360 game, the fifth entry in a series based on a German cop show, came out in 2012 and (https://www.metacritic.com/game/crash-time-5-undercover/) got reviews ranging from 5/10 to 1/10. It only recently got its PC debut, releasing on Steam in July. I liked Crash Times 2 and 3. The mission design might've been bad, the voice acting awful and the storytelling even worse, but the driving was solid. The same is true of Undercover. The driving is fun, but man, almost every second mission is a track race. I just wanna chase crooks on the Autobahn dammit!

Jason Moyer on 13/9/2024 at 18:11

Yeah but what's the best Pesäpallo game?

demagogue on 13/9/2024 at 18:56

Clearly Doom should win any general contest because it was the most influential FPS of all time, but as for personal experience it's gonna vary by how you experienced things.

My first experience was with Descent, and while it wouldn't do anything for me now, it hit really hard for 1995, bigger than Doom for me (which I came late to anyway)... but I'd agree it wouldn't stand up today like Doom does.

There were a few games like that, that hit really hard when they came compared to what came before, but they couldn't capture that later once the moment passed, offhand (for me) the first Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Halflife 1, Homeworld, GTA3*, and I thought it peaked at Gothic 2 & Farcry 1, where some scenes were lifelike, and then HL2 came and defined the genre, and no game has really surprised me since.

* Footnote: Notably not Deus Ex. Sure, GOAT game at the time, but looked like ass & clunky even for its time; probably Thief & SS2 are in that category too. They're my favorites and the Holy Trinity, but for the flow of gameplay and conceptually, but not because of the tech or slickness standing next to the FPSs at the time.

Tomi on 13/9/2024 at 21:16

Quote Posted by Thirith

What makes the difference for me is that the Doom maps never registered as locations, perhaps because they used the three dimensions less.

I mentioned this a couple of posts ago. A proper third dimension probably would have helped in making the locations look more like actual places, but I guess that back then no one even thought about aiming for "realism" when it came to the locations. Even Wolfenstein 3D could have had maps that look like interior of a fictional German castle, but they chose to go for something a lot more gamey. Doom and probably every other FPS at the time followed the same path - the maps are full of silly traps and mazes and lava pits and all sorts of things that just don't make much sense. The first FPS that I can think of with somewhat real looking maps is Duke Nukem 3D.

Thinking about it now, it's quite odd really how the mindset in game design was so different at the time. Even Doom was initially going to have a score counter and everything.

btw, Magic Carpet was better than both Doom and Descent. :p

WingedKagouti on 13/9/2024 at 23:07

Quote Posted by Tomi

Even Wolfenstein 3D could have had maps that look like interior of a fictional German castle, but they chose to go for something a lot more gamey.

It's not that they "chose" to make the maps more gamey than realistic, it's that they put together the tools as well as the engine and then made a bunch of "Does this work?", "Wouldn't it be cool if?" and "This looks neat/thematic/awesome in the editor" levels. It's not like anyone had much experience making levels that looked good in first person at the time.

Starker on 14/9/2024 at 02:59

Yeah, there was nobody who was doing Ultima Underworld levels of realism at the time. Except, of course, Ultima Underworld.

Sulphur on 14/9/2024 at 07:37

Speaking of Wolf and Doom and Underworld, this conversation reminds of a game called ShadowCaster, from some upstart studio named Raven Software. It's like a proper halfway point between Wolf and Ultima Underworld, and the engine Carmack wrote for it eventually led to what id used in Doom. I remember being put off by its oppressive and restrictive, Wolf3D-ish labyrinths as a kid, but I think I'd fare better with appreciating it today.

reizak on 14/9/2024 at 10:25

Quote Posted by Sulphur

ShadowCaster

Woah, childhood memory unlocked, I'd completely forgotten that game existed. We got it with our first PC and I was into anything with even a faint whiff of an RPG so I put quite a bit of time into it, but I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and never got anywhere. We also got Ultima Underworld and Ultima 7 as pack-ins so ShadowCaster's fate was sealed. Might be interesting to give it another try, although while I'm better at figuring things out these days I haven't exactly grown more patient with aggravating game design.