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Warhammer 40k finally gets the [BOOMER SHOOTERS] treatment

135

Posts

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Made it through the first four levels of Dimensions of the Past before I realized I missed the first secret level, so now I gotta start over. :razz:

    Or you could just pick the level from the mission select menu?

    I don't get the achievement if I do that, I would think. :biggrin:

  • heenatoheenato Alice Leywind Registered User regular
    shdwcaster wrote: »
    Yeah I guess you could say that. Maybe the transitional era would be Nov 1998 -2006. I feel like quake 4 and prey at least still have a lot of boomer shooter DNA but after 2006 even stuff from Raven like singularity and Wolfenstein started feeling a lot like call of duty.

    There’s also Duke Nukem Forever as a weird outlier from 2012. Given its… protracted development life, there’s a lot of elements in it that are classic Boomer Shooter moments, but with a lot of the evolutionary gameplay changes of the 2000s grafted on.

    It ended up being this weird shooter missing link that really needed to either come out 5 years sooner to be relevant, or five years later to ride the start of the nostalgia wave.
    I can guarantee you it would have been even more maligned if it came out anywhere near the release of newer games like dusk or anything.

    M A G I K A Z A M
  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Yeah I guess you could say that. Maybe the transitional era would be Nov 1998 -2006. I feel like quake 4 and prey at least still have a lot of boomer shooter DNA but after 2006 even stuff from Raven like singularity and Wolfenstein started feeling a lot like call of duty.

    Half-Life in ‘98
    Medal of Honor in ‘99
    Halo in ‘01

    I’d say somewhere in there. With some outliers brining up the tail end.

    Those three games, in my most humblest opinion, have shaped the FPS genre for decades now.

    Edit- Hell, the term “FPS” didn’t really exist in the minds of most people until Half-Life (somewhere around there). They were all “Doom Clones”.until someone made a game that just wasn’t.

    Axen on
    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Yeah I guess you could say that. Maybe the transitional era would be Nov 1998 -2006. I feel like quake 4 and prey at least still have a lot of boomer shooter DNA but after 2006 even stuff from Raven like singularity and Wolfenstein started feeling a lot like call of duty.

    Half-Life in ‘98
    Medal of Honor in ‘99
    Halo in ‘01

    I’d say somewhere in there. With some outliers brining up the tail end.

    Those three games, in my most humblest opinion, have shaped the FPS genre for decades now.

    Half life definitely was exemplary but I feel like a lot of the things it did were just really well done versions of things that were already trends in the genre anyway. You can definitely tell a lot of later games used it as a blueprint though. Half life is also for what its worth a lot more boomery than a lot of later games (it’s very fast, there’s still a lot of environmental exploration and platformy stuff, etc).

    Edit: Not trying to downplay half-life, just saying that when you look at contemporary games like Unreal, Shogo, and Sin, Half-life wasn’t doing things those games weren’t trying to do, it was just doing those things better.

    Jealous Deva on
  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    Looking at Into The Pit immediately left me with the impression of "crunchy, retro aesthetic gone wrong," but I'm glad I gave the demo a shot because I had a lot of fun with it. It's very easy to set up a Devil-Daggers-like loadout, which is deeply satisfying even if you don't have the same movement capability as in that game.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Axen wrote: »
    Edit- Hell, the term “FPS” didn’t really exist in the minds of most people until Half-Life (somewhere around there). They were all “Doom Clones”.until someone made a game that just wasn’t.

    I could be mistaken, but I feel like a major impetuous for adopting "first-person shooter" was to also have a uniform categorization of "Shooting games that no one would possibly mis-characterize as Doom-clones," i.e. what would eventually become the "third-person shooter." Apparently there are earlier examples (never mind games where the only functional difference between first and third person perspectives is the presence of a 2D sprite representing the player on screen), but Tomb Raider came out in 1996, and was widely described as "a shooting adventure game"--the shooting being a pretty heavy part of it, as exploration was more limited back then--in a fully-realized 3D environment (excluding periodic 2D sprites, less prevalent than those in Doom 3 years earlier).

    No one wanted to described Tomb Raider as a Doom clone (as oppose to Rise of the Triad--Wolfenstein-ish Doom clone, Dark Forces, Doom-clone for Star Wars, etc.), but it obviously had a "move around and shoot and find keys and go though levels" component that was reminiscent of it, as would other titles. Once we started calling a genre FPS, it was more comfortable to call Tomb Raider-clones (which were a thing for a much shorter time), "TPS" accordingly.

    But that's only how I remember it from mid-1990s PC Gamer. I'd barely become fluent in English at the time.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Axen wrote: »
    Yeah I guess you could say that. Maybe the transitional era would be Nov 1998 -2006. I feel like quake 4 and prey at least still have a lot of boomer shooter DNA but after 2006 even stuff from Raven like singularity and Wolfenstein started feeling a lot like call of duty.

    Half-Life in ‘98
    Medal of Honor in ‘99
    Halo in ‘01

    I’d say somewhere in there. With some outliers brining up the tail end.

    Those three games, in my most humblest opinion, have shaped the FPS genre for decades now.

    Edit- Hell, the term “FPS” didn’t really exist in the minds of most people until Half-Life (somewhere around there). They were all “Doom Clones”.until someone made a game that just wasn’t.

    IIRC, Quake is what killed the 'Doom clone' Wasn't much use for that term when Doom wasn't even id Software's hottest game anymore. After that they were "Quake killers"

  • MonwynMonwyn Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Axen wrote: »
    Yeah I guess you could say that. Maybe the transitional era would be Nov 1998 -2006. I feel like quake 4 and prey at least still have a lot of boomer shooter DNA but after 2006 even stuff from Raven like singularity and Wolfenstein started feeling a lot like call of duty.

    Half-Life in ‘98
    Medal of Honor in ‘99
    Halo in ‘01

    I’d say somewhere in there. With some outliers brining up the tail end.

    Those three games, in my most humblest opinion, have shaped the FPS genre for decades now.

    Edit- Hell, the term “FPS” didn’t really exist in the minds of most people until Half-Life (somewhere around there). They were all “Doom Clones”.until someone made a game that just wasn’t.

    I feel pretty confident claiming Halo as the transition. It's the popular origin of recharging health, limits to the number of guns you could carry, and a significantly diminished focus on movement tech.

    Other games had aspects of this (Counterstrike had the limited weapons, as an example) but Halo is where it really crystallized.

    Edit: also checkpoints instead of spamming quicksaves in campaign.

    Monwyn on
    uH3IcEi.png
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Recharging health didn't happen until Halo 2 in 2004, IIRC. Halo 1 still had health packs.

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Unreal and Half-Life came out only a few months apart, in ‘98. For some reason in my head I always imagined Unreal having been out much earlier.

    If I was forced to put a hard date to the end of Boomer Shooters I’d say 2000. There were a few hold overs, but at the point you start seeing a very clear distinction among most FPS releases.

    Axen on
    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Dimensions of the Past is an interesting campaign; unlike the previous three (especially Dissolution, which basically triples your potential firepower by being abel to carry all that overpowered ammo in addition to your regular complement, making the 100+ enemies per level trivial to mow through) you are extremely ammo starved in this game. Like, I had to redo the last level and make every shot count so I would have enough ammo to finish off the enemies at the end. First time nightmare seemed like an actual nightmare.

    Dimensions of the Machine is such a ridiculous level of "this is way beyond anything they could have gotten away with in 1996." I only played a level of it, but I'm really interested in seeing how the campaign structure plays out.

    If you haven't already, this Quake remaster is REAL good. If you have any love of Quake, I totally recommend checking it out.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • TelMarineTelMarine Registered User regular
    Axen wrote: »
    Unreal and Half-Life came out only a few months apart, in ‘98. For some reason in my head I always imagined Unreal having been out much earlier.

    I chalk it up to age and perception of time relative to your young age. When you're a lot younger, a year seems like forever.

    3ds: 4983-4935-4575
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Half life does seem like a lot newer game in retrospect. Like if I didn’t know better and I played them I would have probably thought SiN and Unreal came out in 1998 after having a couple of years to build on Quake 2, but I’d have probably pegged Half-Life at 2002 or 2003 around games like Jedi Outcast, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or Star Trek Elite Force 2. It really did seem like a game that skipped a generation.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Quake 2 came out in December 1997, so games like Unreal, Half-Life and SiN were all released within a year of it. (Impressive for SiN given it was a Q2 engine game while Unreal was, uh, Unreal and Half-Life was based on Quakeworld)

    But think of that, within a span of twelve months, those four games were released. Truly a golden age.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Oh wow, I guess for some reason I was thinking Quake 2 was December 1996.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Oh wow, I guess for some reason I was thinking Quake 2 was December 1996.

    1992
    Wolfenstein 3D: May 5th
    Spear of Destiny: September 18th

    1993
    Doom: December 10th

    1994
    Doom 2: October 10th
    Heretic: December 23rd

    1995
    Dark Forces: February 28th
    Hexen: October 30th

    1996
    Duke Nukem 3D: January 29th
    Strife: May 15th
    Quake: June 22nd

    1997
    Blood: May 21st
    Hexen II: September 11th
    Shadow Warrior: September 12th
    Jedi Knight: October 10th
    Quake II: December 9th

    1998
    Unreal: May 22nd
    SiN: November 9th
    Half-Life: November 19th

    1999 brought us Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena, so '92 to '98 was the golden age of Boomer Shooters, I'd say.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    I’d say so, with the caveat that there were quite a few good single player shooters with the idtech engines from 2000-2006 that if not boomer were boomer adjacent at least.

    Jealous Deva on
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Also it's kind of impressive that in the span of a year and a half, true 3D went from being new in shooters to being the default.

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Yeah, and just in general, the equivalent of time from doom to half life was the same as the time from doom 2016 to today. (And let’s face it, any random AAA fps coming out today is probably going to be largely indistinguishable from a tech standpoint from Doom 2016).

    Jealous Deva on
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Despite calling it Doom 2016, I wasn't ready for the fact that game is five years old already. Time flies.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Oof, Quake: Dimension of the Machine spoilers
    The campaign is split into five mini-episodes, which means you have to start over with the just the axe and shotgun FIVE times. Repeating the weapon buildup is probably my least favorite part of these old episodic shooters, but at least it's usually 3-4 times spread out among like 25-30 levels instead of five times among ten. Also one of these levels had 171 enemies in it, good grief!

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    Despite calling it Doom 2016, I wasn't ready for the fact that game is five years old already. Time flies.

    Jesus!

    When I read "Doom 2016" my brain read it as "Doom 3". Then I was like, "Man, when did the new Doom come out- 2016? Oooh nooooo."

    Honestly, anything that happened before 2020 feels like two lifetimes ago now.

    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    So I decided to pick up hexen 2.

    I guess I’ve played plenty of heretic and heretic 2 so was sort of expecting something similar, but man this game is weird. And not weird in a good way, like “This is the game David Llynch makes people play when they get trapped in the Black Lodge” weird.

    I think it may just not be for me.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Finished up dimension of the machine. I do feel the structure takes away from a little bit of the enjoyment of this campaign. (It's five short episodes, so you're constantly scrambling to rebuild your arsenals), but I can see why they did it. This is basically Quake Challenge Mode. You can never be sure of what weapons you'll have until you find them, and even then you're going to lose them pretty soon. This level pack is HARD. Not as "i need to restart" hard as the end of dimension of the past was, but pretty dang hard. Especially since I'm pretty sure I missed a couple of secrets that had early gun unlocks. When you've passed your sixth battery you begin to wonder if you could have picked up the thunderbolt by this point.

    Anywho, taht's Quake remastered done, on Nightmare. Teh half health thing they added definitely made this more of a challenge, but a reasonable one (for the most part.) I can't imagine how easy this would have been if I could have been rocking 100 health instead of 50.

    But I wasn't quite done yet. No, there's one last addon I have access to. Truly the dregs of quake expansions: Q!Zone

    I2Sl8Fj.jpg

    Q!Zone was an "authorized" expansion (meaning they got permission from id to make it, but id software didn't have them make it.) and oh man, this thing is ADORABLY inept. The new artwork clashes with the standard Quake stuff, the new weapon (the ninja star thrower) looks weak as the ninja stars bounce off enemies, (though it's actually pretty ammo efficient for the damage it outputs), the level design is incredibly boxy and feels like babby's first crack at a level editor, and the audio, oh my god the audio for the new enemies and weapon is incredibly annoying. This thing is precious. If you had told me it was made by one person, I'd believe you. It was published by Wizardworks, which was owned by GT Interactive, but I can't find any information on who developed it and I don't know where the manual is.

    Sadly, I had to cut my playthrough short. Firstly the half health thing didn't carry over from the remaster, and secondly, the fourth level just would not load! It just hung on the stats screen no matter what I did! Damn shame, as at the rate I was going, I could have probably finished the thing in less than two hours.

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Go through and play quake 2 and quake 4 now. So much good there in that whole series.

  • heenatoheenato Alice Leywind Registered User regular
    I can't imagine how easy this would have been if I could have been rocking 100 health instead of 50.
    You can, actually! From what I understand the remaster's nightmare mode is almost entirely unchanged from hard except for the health thing.

    M A G I K A Z A M
  • JazzJazz Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Go through and play quake 2 and quake 4 now. So much good there in that whole series.

    That bit about halfway through Quake 4 is utter nightmare fuel. You know the bit I mean.

    Jazz on
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Jazz wrote: »
    Go through and play quake 2 and quake 4 now. So much good there in that whole series.

    That bit about halfway through Quake 4 is utter nightmare fuel. You know the bit I mean.

    Quake 4 was really underrated, it got swept up in the Doom 3 disappointment (which doom 3 was great for what it was, just not very doom) and the general trends in the genre, but was a really solid game.

    The sad thing is there was an expansion being done by Ritual that got cancelled. Ritual had the worst luck, They did SiN which was good but Half-Life was released in the same month and it could never find much of a space for itself, they did Star Trek Elite Force 2 which was a no-shit awesome game (I just replayed it, it is really just a solid shooter and banging around on the Enterprise solving star trek alien civilization problems with Picard and Tuvok is awesome in and of itself), but it was released right when everyone was pissed about Enterprise so there was very little interest in Star Trek content, then they signed up to do an expansion for Quake 4 of all things. Then after all that they got bought by a mobile app developer.

    Jealous Deva on
  • TelMarineTelMarine Registered User regular
    Finished up dimension of the machine. I do feel the structure takes away from a little bit of the enjoyment of this campaign. (It's five short episodes, so you're constantly scrambling to rebuild your arsenals), but I can see why they did it. This is basically Quake Challenge Mode. You can never be sure of what weapons you'll have until you find them, and even then you're going to lose them pretty soon. This level pack is HARD. Not as "i need to restart" hard as the end of dimension of the past was, but pretty dang hard. Especially since I'm pretty sure I missed a couple of secrets that had early gun unlocks. When you've passed your sixth battery you begin to wonder if you could have picked up the thunderbolt by this point.

    Anywho, taht's Quake remastered done, on Nightmare. Teh half health thing they added definitely made this more of a challenge, but a reasonable one (for the most part.) I can't imagine how easy this would have been if I could have been rocking 100 health instead of 50.

    But I wasn't quite done yet. No, there's one last addon I have access to. Truly the dregs of quake expansions: Q!Zone

    I2Sl8Fj.jpg

    Q!Zone was an "authorized" expansion (meaning they got permission from id to make it, but id software didn't have them make it.) and oh man, this thing is ADORABLY inept. The new artwork clashes with the standard Quake stuff, the new weapon (the ninja star thrower) looks weak as the ninja stars bounce off enemies, (though it's actually pretty ammo efficient for the damage it outputs), the level design is incredibly boxy and feels like babby's first crack at a level editor, and the audio, oh my god the audio for the new enemies and weapon is incredibly annoying. This thing is precious. If you had told me it was made by one person, I'd believe you. It was published by Wizardworks, which was owned by GT Interactive, but I can't find any information on who developed it and I don't know where the manual is.

    Sadly, I had to cut my playthrough short. Firstly the half health thing didn't carry over from the remaster, and secondly, the fourth level just would not load! It just hung on the stats screen no matter what I did! Damn shame, as at the rate I was going, I could have probably finished the thing in less than two hours.

    That's interesting, I had never heard of this. Reminds me of those Starcraft1 "expansions" made by 3rd parties which were just map collections essentially.

    3ds: 4983-4935-4575
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Where's my Amid Evil DLC, New Blood?!?!

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    So something I stumbled on and wanted to share:

    I've never been the biggest fan of Unreal (the original 1998 game) single player. But I happened to see a recommendation for Unreal Evolution, by the same guy that did GMDX for Deus Ex. So I figured what the hell...

    https://www.moddb.com/mods/unreal-evolution

    This mod is freaking awesome. Playing on hard because that was recommended for new players with shooter experience. Its hard to describe other than saying it pretty much fixes all my complaints with Unreal and I feel like it puts it on a level with Quake and Quake 2 if not better.

  • heenatoheenato Alice Leywind Registered User regular
    Where's my Amid Evil DLC, New Blood?!?!
    Sorry. Dave Oshry spent all the DLC budget on meme domains.

    M A G I K A Z A M
  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    20 years late hot take: Quake 2 is severely underrated as a single player game and is actually quite good.

    There are dozens of us !!!

    I am in the business of saving lives.
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    MegaMan001 wrote: »
    20 years late hot take: Quake 2 is severely underrated as a single player game and is actually quite good.

    There are dozens of us !!!

    I just finished a run through of it and the mission packs and I think there’s a lot to be said for it. Quake 1 does have a more melee focus (as in you are most of the time trying to prevent enemies like fiends and hell knights from getting into melee range) while quake 2 doesn’t really have that (berzerkers being not a real threat to an experienced player for the most part). But quake 2 has a lot more that can fuck you up from range, which does bring cover and aim to the forefront a bit more.

    One thing I feel like with quake and quake 2 is that encounter design is so good. I rarely feel in either game like I get “here’s some machine gun guys because we needed something here for the ” syndrome. Which is another reason I like the Unreal Evolution mod. Encounters should make you think about prioritization and resource management rather than just being busywork, and so many later shooters get that wrong.

  • heenatoheenato Alice Leywind Registered User regular
    I wish quake 2 had a remaster. I'd play it. I'm not the kind of person that goes around looking for sourceports because I find it kinda a pain in the ass. so just having a natively working at 1080 version of quake 2 would be nice.

    M A G I K A Z A M
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Honestly its not that much of a pain in the ass at this point. If you aren’t planning to do mods or bots or anything its pretty much a matter of downloading yagami quake 2 (precompiled for windows) and unzipping it into your quake 2 directory.

    https://www.yamagi.org/quake2/

    If you want music just search for “quake 2 soundtrack in .ogg”.

    Jealous Deva on
  • TelMarineTelMarine Registered User regular
    Honestly its not that much of a pain in the ass at this point. If you aren’t planning to do mods or bots or anything its pretty much a matter of downloading yagami quake 2 (precompiled for windows) and unzipping it into your quake 2 directory.

    https://www.yamagi.org/quake2/

    If you want music just search for “quake 2 soundtrack in .ogg”.

    if you care about multiplayer, Q2Pro seems to be the one used now (it used to be R1Q2): http://q2s.tastyspleen.net/

    Tastyspleen is basically THE de-facto Quake2 community.

    3ds: 4983-4935-4575
  • TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    When you quit the demo for Arthurian Legend you get a splash screen just like you would on old shareware titles and I fucking adore it.

    Also the demo for Fallen Aces is FANTASTIC and I highly recommend giving it a go. Also be sure to stop by the men's room in the main club area cause that's five minutes of your life well spent.

    wWuzwvJ.png
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