I could never get Shadow Watch working, making it only one of 3 games in my life where this was true, though it and one other (DK2), I only tried on like one system and maybe a slightly upgraded version of that system (as an aside, the Third is Darkstone. Which failed to work across to completely different systems - a p2 and a p4, iirc - and an additional 4 video cards and 3 sound cards. Fuck you, Darkstone).
What I seem to recall was that it squad members who were highly specialized. Maybe a precursor to Silent Storm in that respect, except the specialization was more pronounced. I also seem to recall that it frustrated people because movement was fairly limited, relative to it’s kith and kin. And that it was possible to wander down the “wrong” path in sprawling mission layouts, and have to take forever to get back to where you were. But a lot of people really liked it.
Geryk and Shadow Watch from back in the day. Includes bonus Odium coverage. In the olden days, there was some really good stuff here other than that contributed by Tom.
Blizzard was at ECTS, with private showings of Warcraft 3, which was little changed from its E3 showing back in May, and their new venture, the multiplayer online RPG, World of Warcraft. With Westwood immersing their fans into a 3D C&C world with Renegade, it’s no great surprise to see Blizzard following a similar path. A while back, there had been rumours that Warcraft 3 was going to be 3D, with a heavy RPG element. That didn’t happen, but it seems a few of the shelved ideas have carried forward into World of Warcraft. It’ll be massively multiplayer, it’ll offer you the ability to play as creatures of any one of at least three races (human, orc, or tauren), and it certainly looks and sounds exciting. Those of us who suffered theBattle.net woes with Diablo 2 will be anxious to know how a repeat of that debacle will be avoided. Unfortunately, one solution might involve more resources on the server side. And that probably means pay per play fees. It’ll likely be 2003 before we see the game released, so there’s plenty of time for Blizzard to work on it.
I remember theorizing that WoW was a whole different ball game and it was up in the air (with me) as to whether they could translate their RTS success…
Seriously, any newish folks should browse the actual front page if only for nostalgia’s sake. A lot of great stuff. (This should be shouted from the rooftops. :) ) Geryk had his own site with lengthy and excellent game analysis. Great, dry wit as heard on some of the FoS podcasts. I wish those were archived somewhere.
If Tom is listening, I wonder if there is anyway to hit up Brooski for those and store them on Qt3: The Website, somewhere.
Oh yeah, I have not bookmarked the front page for years. You can find all Tom’s stuff posted around here or on Fidgit, obviously. I am not sure when the focus shifted to the forums and whether the focus on interesting, lengthy analysis or the lack of time caused the move away from Qt3 being a gaming “website”. I am not lamenting the change at all at this point. The forum points most of is in the right direction of the good stuff.
The thing that killed it for me was that the metagame was rubbish. You could make choices that would influence the story, but the story was randomly generated and your choices didn’t matter. You could choose who to bring on each mission, but the number of enemies you’d encounter varied with the size of your team so it didn’t really matter what kind of team you went with.
I actually got back into AOWSM recently. I bought myself a netbook a few months back and have been trying all the old games on it to see how well they work. It turns out that the original 1.3 patch for AOWSM removed the CD check. Then later releases of the patch re-instituted it. I never knew that. But, having dug up a copy, it makes it perfect for the netbook.
Well the campaign didn’t impress me that much - it wasn’t bad, better than AOW2’s, but nowhere near the epic quality of #1. Some of the scenarios you can find online are really fun and challenging though.
#1, I made a point of replaying at least once for every single combination of choices you could take through the storyline. Whoever they had writing it really knew their stuff.
I loved Age of Wonders so much. I only played it hotseat though. Has anyone played Age of Wonders in both single player and hotseat multiplayer? Am I setting myself up for disappointment if I get it again, just for the single player?
I just remember some epic battles in multiplayer. Despite 3 of us trying to defeat the AI on the hardest setting, all 3 of us eventually got wiped out in multiple games. One of my favorite features about Age of Wonders was that you could make your hero a wall-climbing fool who hopped over into the enemy castle and kicked ass in hand to hand combat. And you ran the risk of getting your hero killed, thereby ending your game. I never could get into Age of Wonders 2 because in that one, you could only be a wizard who stayed at home and cast spells. You couldn’t actually have a daredevil hero who could mix it up and do foolish things and get himself killed.
Incubation was awesome. I still have my copy (and expansion/sequel) on my shelf - wonder what it would take to get running. It was all glide-based, if I remember right.
