Back in the day, after discovering Wolf3D and becoming obsessed with it, I finally moved on to the original Doom, and then the clones of both Wolf3D and Doom. Over the years, I think I’ve played at least part of pretty much every first person shooter made between 1992 and 2004. After that, I began to lose interest a bit.
I spent a lot of time trying to complete Corridor 7 by Capstone for instance. I even enjoyed the Witchaven games, as janky as they were.
I didn’t play any of these games as run-n-gunners though. The thing I loved about them was being able to enjoy them at my own speed. I played them all as primarily exploration games, moving cautiously. And yes, occasionally I’d get involved in intense shooting/fighting, which was great too, as long as the game wasn’t constantly frenetic.
And that’s why I kind of bounced off of Doom (2016). It pretty much pushed you into constant action. Which was fine in small bits, but I am not a fan of arena-fighting. So yes, I am also a Single-Player type. I love exploring virtual worlds and/or facilities on my own, clearing out AI, whether it be smart or dumb, doesn’t matter. And I hated when regenerating health snuck into the picture in later years. I loved managing my health and ammunition.
When the first FarCry game came out, I was in heaven. Finally, a game that got everything right. I even enjoyed the second half of the game quite a lot. As much as I loved it however, I have to admit that I never got past the Volcano level near the end, which still bothers me.
Modern retro shooters? I haven’t played that many, but I think Dusk may be the best one I’ve played thus far.
That’s it, tonight I’m going home and re-starting Dusk. I’ll try to get through the first level without using any ammo. Maybe then I won’t run out at the start of level 2.
Along the same lines I am replaying for the umpteenth time Unreal, which I still don’t think has been equaled in the FPS genre for atmosphere/exploration. But I never beat it, which nags at me (kinda like you with Far Cry, I guess).
Heh. I never beat Unreal either. It just got too goddamn long. I think I put more than 40 hours into it back in the day, and felt my interest waning. But IIRC the first say 20 hours were indeed very good, especially the first hour. :)
Speaking of Unreal, there’s a cool-looking overhaul mod that recently released that has piqued my interest. I definitely want to revisit it, but as Giles said it’s such a long campaign. So many shooters back then would’ve benefited from some substantial pruning.
Tempting, damn it! I am a sucker for nostalgia. But watching that, I think I remember one of my big troubles with Unreal: Too many indoor areas. After seeing what could be done with the engine in that immortal first area, it felt claustrophobic to be stuck inside so much after that. But this was decades ago, so I could be remembering wrong. And I loved some of the indoor stuff they did. Very nice work. But I longed to go back outside, and IIRC the next chance I got to go outside was a boss in an arena, and I don’t like arenas. Boss arenas worst of all. No exploration; just grinding away against that boss.
However, talking about FarCry again has almost got me worked up enough again for a reinstall.
And speaking of outdoor areas, I am also very fond of LucasArts’ “Outlaws.” A truly beautiful game.
I love Civvie. He’s brilliant. I’m curious though; the writing seems almost too good to be just one man’s work. I’ve often wondered if he has a writing team. He’s made frequent reference to a woman who I think edits the videos (the editing is perfect), but other than that I don’t know much.
If you only got as far as Dark Arena, there are a fair number of outdoor levels after that, although the bulk of the game is indoors. Outdoor levels were often used as short ‘in-between’ levels where you could relax a bit and stock up on ammo/health. The fact is even in 1998 outdoor areas couldn’t be rendered very well. Nyleve’s Falls has a great sky but the low poly count makes it look much worse now than the indoor sections.
Some of the interior level design/architecture is still really impressive, like the Sunspire, for instance.
Also, at certain strategically chosen moments, the game still looks damn good. This is a shot of Unreal Gold running at 1920x1080. Those textures seem awful sharp to me for such an old game.
I played over 40 hours IIRC, so I’m sure I played most of the game. But yeah, it was so long ago I’m probably just not remembering the outdoor areas as well as I should.
Oh, maybe by ‘boss arena’ you mean that weird warlord winged demon guy, who comes way later. That’s about where I bounced off the game too, although I think I did manage to beat him before getting lost soon afterward.
Maybe? I am notoriously slow with my shooters, exploring everywhere. I’ll clear an area, and then go back and admire the level design. And if there are any kinds of puzzles, environmental or otherwise, I can get hung up on it the better part of a day. For example, playing Doom back in 1994, I spent almost 2 days on a level (I think it was even E1M1) before I figured out that jumping across meant just running real fast. Back then, these things were not instinctive for me, and I had no internet yet.
