Category: video games

Blood

“Now that I’ve played Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior, there’s only one of the Big Three build engine games left to try.”

“Hmm… I’ve finished D3D and SW on hard, so I’d better put this on the ‘Well Done’ difficulty.”

TEN MINUTES LATER…

Blood is kicking my ass.

The difficulties were made with co-op in mind. If you’re an FPS veteran, play it on the middle skill. If you’re a little less sure, play it on one of the two skills at the top. No shame. Blood on medium and higher is brutally hard, but it’s also one of the greatest FPS games ever made.

Everything about it is masterfully done. There’s so many barely-noticeable bits of ‘game feel’ that make the combat fluid and satisfying. Highly recommended.

STRAFE: Millennium Edition

I knew how Strafe was going to turn out. I read the dev updates. I saw it coming. Strafe was more or less unplayable on my laptop but even then I knew I didn’t miss anything. What a waste.

The devs have since given it a massive much needed overhaul called ‘Millennium Edition’ and I gave it a go.

What is new? New room layouts (especially for the first zone, which is the blandest and worst designed environment in the game), loads of new monsters, new gun sounds, and performance optimization.

I had fun.

This might be because I’ve been cleaning black mold from a dank cellar all day.

There’s still balance issues. The AI still doesn’t feel quite right. The shotgun’s grenade upgrade is still a straight downgrade. Loot still feels too expensive. Armour is far too expensive for what you get. The jellyfish vents are still shit. It takes too long to get back into the game after dying.

I played it for half an hour, which is longer than I could stand to play the original. I enjoyed it and I’m going to play it again. I like the new layouts, monsters and weapon tweaks. If you’ve already bought Strafe you should try it.

I can’t recommend it to new players though. Maybe after the next overhaul.

Shadow Warrior (1997) Review

Who wants some Wang?
Over the summer I played through Shadow Warrior and all of its’ expansions using the Shadow Warrior Redux port available on Steam. It’s finally time to write about that experience.

Shadow Warrior was 3D Realms’ successor to Duke Nukem 3D. While Duke was a Hollywood badass, Shadow Warrior’s hero is an over-the-top Asian badass with callbacks to Hong Kong action films and Japanese ninja shows.

Shadow Warrior was less successful than Duke 3D, probably due to releasing so close to Quake which made it appear dated by comparison.

The Introduction
I first purchased Shadow Warrior Redux last year, but I struggled to get into it. Duke Nukem is eminently accessible. Hardcore, but accessible. I’m going to spoil things now and say that I ended up loving Shadow Warrior. It’s Duke Nukem dialed up. Less accessible, more hardcore, and in the end satisfying as hell.

My first attempt at Shadow Warrior left a mixed impression. The standard shuriken weapon felt under-powered, it was hard to melee the enemies. I stuck with it; learning to use the basic weapons, find new weapons, and how beat the elite ninja with the instant death attack. The game made me git gud and after that things started to get pretty damn enjoyable.

But after that I got stuck looking for a switch. So the first impression was a mixed bag. I stopped playing and took a long break from it.

As I wrote earlier, I finished Shadow Warrior and every expansion over the summer. After a few months hiatus I started a new game, stuck with it and had a blast. It takes longer to get into then Duke or Doom but it is great.

The Levels
Shadow Warrior has a lot of content to get through. Levels are themed around Asian city streets, rural valleys, mountain tops, temples, and isolated bases. Most levels are highly complex and key hunting is a major feature. Duke Nukem’s abstract realism is kicked up a notch, giving the sprawling levels a strange and almost dream-like quality to progression. The juxtaposition between urban realism, abstract countryside, ancient temples, high tech bases, and mystical weirdness works to create the feeling of a pleasantly bizarre adventure. It’s like stumbling through a shifting dreamworld. Sometimes levels appear to be linked with a strong connecting storyline, and other times you’ll find yourself catapulted into a bizarre new environment with no idea how you got there. Again, a strange but pleasant experience.

The levels are complex and lots of fun, but you need to keep your eyes open. There were perhaps three or four moments in the game where I felt completely lost and play ground to halt for five to ten minutes.

Gameplay
I mentioned the shuriken felt under-powered earlier. That’s because the shuriken is not Shadow Warrior’s iconic weapon. High level play depends on the rocket launcher and grenade launcher. Both are satisfying and dangerous. The grenade launcher has a massive blast radius that you’ll need to get used to, and is used for clearing out rooms. The rocket launcher is for dealing large amounts of damage to single enemies.

Perhaps appropriately, Shadow Warrior will put you into a kind of zen state where you end up leaping across the level blazing away with machine guns and bombs, clearing out unexplored chambers with high powered grenade launchers, blowing up tankier monsters with rockets, and finishing off the stragglers with shotguns and railgun blasts.

Generally the weapons are a lot of fun to use and when you’re in that zen state you’re in one of the best shooting experiences in FPS gaming.

Story and World
Shadow Warrior (1997) rides the early 80s to mid-90s wave of badly dubbed kung fu parodies and ninja shows, which were the only thing most westerners knew about China and Japan at the time. It was accused of racism when it came out and it can be hard to argue against that; but despite the puerile parodies Shadow Warriors’ approach to Asian culture at least seems to come from a place of love, even if not one of respect. The developers were clearly fans of anime and Asian action cinema, they just weren’t interested in making a serious or sensitive story line. Nor does Shadow Warrior need a serious storyline or a deep look into a new culture – it’s pure gameplay with a paper thin plot and a massive amount of penis jokes. Everyone’s mileage may vary, but I’d advise any shooter fan not to miss out on Shadow Warrior because they don’t like the faux Asian styling.

The plot is simple: you are Lo Wang, kung fu badass and former bodyguard to of the head of Zilla Corporation. Lo Wang is betrayed by Zilla. Lo Wang embarks on a quest for vengeance. Body parts fly and anime babes who don’t fit the art style respond to Lo Wang’s clumsy pick-up lines with automatic gunfire.

Sometimes Shadow Warrior slips from silliness into cringey childishness, but it’s mostly silly fun. Lo Wang is a dumb character but he’s also a really distinct character. It’s like the game as a whole.

There’s something oddly mischievous about him. He giggles with glee when the explosions start. He’s a complete wise-ass who’s having so much fun that in the end I found it hard not to get attached to him. As downright stupid as Shadow Warrior is sometimes, I couldn’t help crack a smile when using a phone caused Lo Wang to make a silly prank call.

Hello, is Big Bottom there? First name Iva. Iva Big Bottom? Heeeheeeheee!

Conclusion
Shadow Warrior is an ultra-violent, grossly offensive and ridiculous load of nonsense – and I loved it.

Shadow Warrior doesn’t give a damn what you think about it. It is what it is; a hardcore experience designed by a team of weirdos with a lot of experience making FPS games. It was made in 1997 for experienced first-person shooter fans, mixing late 90s architecture with early 90s design sensibilities.

I felt genuinely sad when I finished it and all the expansions. Someday I’ll return to Shadow Warrior and re-join Lo Wang the giggling idiot ninja.

I recommend Shadow Warrior.

EDIT: I did encounter a rare but recurring bug in Shadow Warrior Redux where the mouse stopped responding. The first expansion pack also has some glitchy sky textures near the end (although this might not be the port’s fault). Neither were deal breakers.

Doom: Halloween.wad

WIP of Halloween level. Ignore the default sky texture, something else is going there eventually. The valley and crypt is the beginning area before the player drops into a deep cavern that becomes a black and orange metallic hell.

I started to get the hang of decorative mid-textures after looking at how Skillsaw uses them. Study other authors’ levels to work out how they pull stuff off.

300 Minutes of /vr/ Map – Trench

I’m finishing up a second submission for the “300 minutes of /vr/” speedmapping challenge. This one has gone a lot smoother than Syndicate. It’s a Doom 2 techbase involving crossing a trench of slime.

The pictures show about 3 hours worth of work. All the tags, lighting and sector geometry is done. The only things left are some teleport traps, monsters placement and weapon pickups.

DUSK Preview

I’ve been playing DUSK

I’m 90 minutes in and I feel compelled to make a blog post about it. Here’s my thoughts on Dusk.

Dusk is a retro inspired first person shooter game that I’ve linked to previously. It doesn’t pretend to be a Quake-like 90s shooter while really being a procedurally generated rogue-lite. No. It really is a retro-inspired FPS. It has actual levels designed by an actual person, that offer variety, good map flow, carefully crafted challenge, and a sense of progression.

It’s good is what I’m getting at.

It’s amazing how much secrets they manage to cram into each level; I actually feel like I’ve learned something about level design from playing Dusk. Each level is full of secrets, some quite fiendish but virtually all of them signposted and dangled in front of you in some way.

The gameplay feels really smooth but took some getting used to. When I started I was surprised by the sheer speed at which everything moves. It took some getting used to; I initially thought it was too fast, with my character shooting across whole rooms and colliding with walls, but after taking a break and getting back to it, I didn’t have any issues with it at all. In fact the movement is responsive, precise, fluid, and just all around satisfying. Is it because I’d just come out of an extended map testing session using a keyboard only Chocolate Doom setup? Or has it really been too long since I last played Quake? Whatever the case, I jumped back in and had an absolute blast.

Did you know the best way to avoid a scarecrow’s shotgun blast is to sideways power slide while you blast him away with the double barrelled shotgun? Combat feels really awesome.

Levels feel Duke 3D influenced, semi-linear environments made with ‘abstract realism’. They all look like real places but not at the expense of gameplay. There are also some underground sections that feel very Quake-like.

Combat happens in encounters like in Doom or Duke, not in the arena style shooting of Painkiller, Serious Sam or Doom 4. While there are a few arena style challenges these are far from the norm. There are also some miniboss encounters which I found unusual for a Doom/Quake style game, but which are very welcome.

Difficulty and Accessibility

Let’s talk about challenge. I played the game on Ciro Miede (hard mode, basically) and following the Gggmanlives review I expected it to be similar to Doom’s ultra-violence. Well, it wasn’t – it offered up a hell of a lot of challenge, but there are other difficulties too.

Difficulty doesn’t seem to affect the numbers of monsters, it alters their AI and other variables. Lower difficulty enemies move slower and take a bit longer to react. You also start with more health and your armour (actually called morale) is a lot more effective. I really like this kind of difficulty. I intentionally played a lower difficulty setting in a ‘tanky’, non-exploratory style, and did very well. While experimenting with lower difficulties, I felt pleased with the range of abilities it could cater to.

Difficulty levels vary from Accessible (for people with reduced mobility) to Ciro Miede (true hard mode) and Duskmare (a one shot kills novelty hard mode). I really think that the different difficulty levels will accommodate any gamer, and Dusk is probably the most disability friendly FPS game I’ve seen.

I find that interesting that Dusk is so inclusionary since most faux-retro indie games try to market themselves as exclusionary – things for high skill people who remember the Good Old Times and not filthy casuals. Dusk though, seems to be made by people who really love 90s FPS games and who want everyone to try 90s FPS games because they’re great fun. It really says a lot about them and their game, which seems to be a true passion project.

There’s a wider lesson there I’m sure. When the big AAA games companies try to make games “accessible” they alter gameplay according to narrow focus groups and strip out or water down core features for a (possibly imaginary) ‘casual’ audience. With Dusk, New Blood have made a game able to challenge ‘hardcore’ FPS veterans while also accommodating ‘casual’ newbies without sacrificing the complexity of their design.

Story

You wake up hanging on a meat hook underground. A disembodied voice calls out “Kill the intruder” and three huge guys step out of the darkness with chainsaws. You pull yourself off the hook and grab two sickles. It seems the whole town of Dusk has been overrun by a mysterious cult, so you’d better kill everything.

That is quite literally the entire plot, but I look forward to over-examining the level visuals and announcing that Dusk has the ‘deepest lore’.

The atmosphere really is something special. It’s horrifying. Despite being a game about over the top running and gunning, Dusk exudes a bleak, oppressive horror atmosphere. It’s scary.

Dusk is separated into three story episodes. Only episode 1 is available at the time of writing, but buying Dusk gives you access to all three just like the Dooms and Dukes of old. Episode 1 (“The Foothills”) is the protagonist escaping the farms and entering the town of Dusk. It shows influence from Redneck Rampage, Blood, and every kind of hillbilly-themed horror film. Episodes 2 will supposedly have more of a military base or Half-Life theme, while episode 3 will be heavily Lovecraftian and probably Quake-inspired.

The protagonist is mute, but communicates via text pop-ups. Everything about them is up to you to decide, but do note that there is a dedicated button for doing tricks with you gun and a secret ‘smoke cigar’ option. The disembodied voice talks to you a few times in episode 1, sounding exactly like I imagine all 90s heavy metal band members to sound like, and he may or may not be the mind-destroying Great Old One waiting for you at the end of episode 3.

Conclusion

To summarize, I’m really pumped about Dusk. The devs have made all the right noises and, even better, they’ve actually followed up on that with decent gameplay and strong map design. It’s clear there’s a lot of love gone into development.

Dusk really is a return to form for the FPS genre.