Release date: 2001 Genre: Arcade Publisher: None (Open Source) Developer: Dave Fancella ("Lucifer"), "epsy", Fred ("Tank Program"), Jochen Darley
("joda.bot"), Luke Dashjr, Daniel Harple ("dlh"), Mathias Plichta
("wrtlprnft"), Manuel Moos ("Z-Man") Platforms:Linux, OS X, Microsoft
Windows Players: 1 and Online
They say that games based on movies are never good, though
there are exceptions the obvious being Goldeneye
007 on the N64 of course. The tagline of Armagetron quite simply is "A Tron
clone in 3D." though it was never meant to be a full story-driven gaming
representation of the famous movie Tron.
It was actually based on section of the 1982 arcade game of the
same name by Disney Interactive Studios, which
consisted of 4 subgames one of which being a representation of the ‘Light
Cycle’ sequence from
the film albeit in a format akin to the snake concept which the original Armagetron game
was based back in 2001. The game has now evolved into Armagetron Advanced or
simply Armagetronad which now
features 16 player mayhem, with highly advanced AI, network game play, and of
course all in a 3D environment and is available on a multitude of platforms
including Linux, OS X, Microsoft
Windows, AmigaOS
4[2]
and OpenBSD
as free and open-source software. The
game also has a decent online community with a Wiki Site and
Forum.
A classic game with bots
Armagetron works in a similar way to the original Tron Light
Cycle match that was in the original movie, let me point out right now that
this has no relation to the recent sequel whatsoever as there is definitely only
one flat surface with walls, no lower levels no inclines, no spiral no jumps or
anything like that. You basically just use a and d to turn left and right and
use v for braking (which makes you slower but you cannot stop completely) you
can also use the numerical keys for looking to the left and right and behind
you. Jumping in for a quick match against computer controlled opponents is
fairly daunting as you start facing each other on opposite sides of the map and
after a brief 5 second timer you’re off and hurtling toward each other at
speed. If you’ve seen the film you’ll know the only way to eliminate an
opponent is to somehow get them to crash into your, theirs or anyone elses
‘energy wall’ or simply just ‘wall’ that is generated by your light cycle
eliminating them from the game, this is most often accomplished by just staying
alive but there are many tricks including ‘boxing’ an opponent in with your
walls or just dueling by traveling next to each other and trying to overtake.
A basic way of "boxing" or "speed killing" an opponent
The basics of
the game are this: in classic mode the ‘arena’ is a square box The ‘Light
Cycles’ generate a ‘wall’ behind you that anyone can crash into including
yourself, the cycle speed is fixed at first but works on a unique concept that
a cycle can only accelerate by riding on another player's wall. The closer you
are to a player's wall, the faster your cycle will accelerate. Brakes are
provided, but they are disabled on many servers. Your cycle turns in right
angles, typically, and leaves a long wall behind it wherever it goes. By
default, movement keys are z and x, where z turns left and x turns right. v is
your brake control. This stuff is fairly self-explanatory, but there are a few
things to keep in mind. Turning slows your cycle down. This is a useful fact on
servers that disable braking because you can use a series of rapid turns to
slow your cycle down if needed. As already mentioned, you make your cycle go
faster by getting close to another player's wall, or your own wall. The closer
you can grind the wall, the more speed you will gain.There are of course more Advanced Tactics but I won’t go into those, you’ll
find yourself creating your own tactics whether it be ways of avoiding players
or taking them out.
I accidentally crash into myself :(
I’ll talk now about customization, almost anything in the
game can be customized
though I usually just stick with customizing the area and my cycle. There is a
few things abound the arena that can be changed, you can add effects
such as digital clouds and mirror effects which are a nice touch or you can
make the game look as basic as possible to reduce your fps. The only thing you can change about your
cycle is it’s colour which includes the colour of the wall you generate and of
the cycle itself, I liked to choose a colour that is not currently being used
by anyone else to make the match nice and colourful hah. The graphics in the
game are fairly simple as you can see, you can run the game in your desktop
resolution which is good, there is no music only the humming of the Light
cycles and sound effects for turning, grinding and crashing. I had some fun
with changing the size of the area and the speed of the game, it seems that the
faster you go the more the game zooms out I guess so you can see where you are going.
A tiny arena
A very large arena :D
Historically I’ve only really played Armagetronad at LAN
parties and only recently got into some multiplayer purely to grab some footage
as I always forget to get any footage while at the lan. It’s a hit at parties
as it’s easy to pick up, simple to play but challenging to master, and requires
almost no hard drive space and graphical and processing power. We usually play
just the basic Free-for-all classic
mode where you try to speed kill other players and box them in with the only
modifier being the “win” and “death” that appear late in the game in order to
speed up the end of the match if it has become a stalemate. When a player
drives into the ‘win’ they instantly win the match and the ‘death’ zone kills
any player that enters it, these zones grow bigger until there is a decisive
winner of the match though they are not often used at the same time.
I had no idea what I was doing in this multiplayer match XD
There are now many more modes of play or ‘gametypes’
including ‘Sumo’ where you have to stay in a circle and force your opponents
out and Fortress: a complicated new game where you need to capture
the enemy base. There is also some non-combat types I really want to try
including racing, Labyrinth:
where you navigate through a maze to get to the middle and Roulette:
where multiple players create a "maze" Then try to navigate out.
This is supposedly a Labyrinth server but it was bloody impossible
There are of course many things I have not tried in
Armagetronad Advanced but nonetheless it is a great game to play at Lan parties
or even when you just want a bit of simple fun. The sheer level of
customization, complexity for the experienced players and reasonably strong
online community add to the longevity making this game well worth putting some
time into.
JD
Some footage of me playing multiplayer and singleplayer Armagetronad including what I think is Fortress mode.
Release date: November 10, 2000 Genre: Platformer Publisher: Universal Interactive Developer: Insomniac Games Platforms: PS3, XBOX 360 Players: 1 to 24
And so we have it, Spyro: Year of the
Dragon, the third game in the series and the last one created by the famed Insomniac Games who have gone on to
make the Ratchet and
Clank series. And what a game it is, the main feature being the ability to
play as characters other than Spyro more heavily this time as before it was only
during the secret speedway challenges that you played as Hunter.
Spyro really releases himself from his Dragon roots here by skateboarding and driving motorboats and hovertanks equipped with
cannons, also driving submarines
and frying enemies using Sun lamps. The story
this time involves a celebration in the Dragon
Realms where they are celebrating the Year of the Dragon which funnily enough the game
was released in 2000 which was the actual Year of the Dragon. This event
apparently happens every twelve years where Dragon Eggsare brought to the realm. In the
opening movie the eggs just seem to be scattered on the ground and the Dragons
including Spyro and Hunter are all asleep when Bianca and the Rhynocs pop out of holes in the
ground and come to steal the Dragon eggs, she fortunately trods on Hunter’s
tail waking them all up but they can’t stop her in time and hunter and another
dragon get stuck in a hole. It appears that Spyro still really hasn’t got any
larger and his small size benefits him again as he and hunter are sent down the
holes to retrieve the dragon eggs. They soon find that they lead to the Forgotten
Realms ruled by the Sorceress who needs dragons to bring the magic back to the
realm and so the quest to take back the eggs begins.
Bianca and the Sorceress
As you can probably guess the dragon eggs are the equivalent
of orbs in this iteration though
there is no longer any Talismans
in the game, and every time you receive an egg there is a comically different
explanation for finding it as Bianca and the Rhynocs had spread them all over
the different worlds. You still pick up gems but they haven’t bothered
giving an explanation as to why you are this time they are just there strewn
all over the place and in possession of Rhynocs and other enemies. The
homeworlds this time around are based on times of the day hence the first one
being Sunrise Spring, I also quickly noticed that this
time around almost all of the denizens of the worlds had foreign accents. I
especially liked the fireflies in Spooky
Swamp as they had French accents and only spoke in Haiku and the ducks in Frozen
Altars who have the weirdest tone of voice I’ve ever heard in a Spyro game,
they also now react when you charge or flame then accidentally which is a nice
touch. As before the worlds are based on a variety of themed locations and
natives, some favourites of mine being Crystal
Islands, Fireworks Factory and Haunted
Tomb.
Spooky Swamp, one of my favourite levels
The enemies in each level are a mixture of native wildlife including
scorpions and mosquitos and the Sorceress’ Rhynoc armies which are humanoid
rhinos but change dress/weapons according to the level for example in the
Chinese themed Bamboo Terrace they wear Chinese dress and use
fireworks against Spyro and in Lost Fleet they dress up as ghosts. A couple of
characters make a return from the previous game including your now
partner-in-crime Hunter who both assists you and gives you
challenges with dragon eggs as a reward and Moneybags who is forever charging you for
things, and of course a host of other cameos. As I mentioned before this
version of the series contains a host of new (and one old) characters to play
as which I will detail below.
Some Rhynocs dressed in flameproof armor
Sheila
– A “mountain” kangaroo with an Australian accent, not sure why she lives on a
mountain in Switzerland with some Swiss goats? Her level should have been in
the outback. She can jump much higher and longer then Spyro
Sgt. James Byrd – A military penguin that can fly
and equips dual rocket launchers.
Agent
9 – A Sci-Fi Space Monkey equipped with a lasergun from the Professor’s
island lab.
Sparx
– Yes you can now play as Spyro’s trusty sidekick Sparx who has his own “realms” which are basically
levels where you play as Spark from a top-down perspective.
Sheila the Kangaroo
These other characters were imprisoned for rebelling against
the sorceress and you have to pay moneybags to set them free. They are lots of
fun to play and gave you a break from playing Spyro all the time, I especially
liked the old-school style Sparx shooters which reminded me of games like Raiden and 1943:
The Battle of Midway. Completing the Sparx level also give an added bonus of
special powers including being able to take one more hit for Spyro, collecting
gems from further away and being able to indicate where missing gems were which
you could actually already do all the time in the last game but meh. The Speedways also make a return
though they have taken a major change, Sparx now talks to you and introduces
you to the level, you can also now choose between taking the speedrun flaming
and charging things within the time limit as usual but now there is a race
option where you are in a race against the local racers of that world, for
example in Country Speedway you are racing against the local
biplane pilots.
The races are pretty straightforward but can be challenging at
times as there is various speed boosts and collectible missiles that you can
shoot at other racers and you have to remember to find and use these as much as
you can as you actually start dead last with the first racer having a major
head start and you need to work your way up the field but was great fun
nonetheless. There are various cutscenes in the game showing Spyro and Hunter
as they adventure through the Forgotten Realms helping people along the way and
occasionally running into Bianca who is an apprentice to the Sorceress and her Rhynoc
army who arrives to harass you at the start of each world. The other characters
also have introduction cutscenes as you have to pay moneybags to set them free
before being able to complete their homeworld.
A fun speedpad racetrack where you chase and egg Thief in Molten Crater, you also see the second run-in between Spyro, Hunter and Bianca
As far as controlling Spyro is concerned everything is
basically the same you still have all of your abilities from the end of the
last game and there is really nothing else you can learn, you have the same
tutorial with hunter showing you how to jump and glide and occasional prompting
but the new abilities come in the form of the new characters, I especially liked
Bentley whose club packed a hell of a punch and could also deflect projectiles
and Agent 9 who in most levels where he features you could find a hidden “laser
upgrade” which made him able to shoot faster. Different areas in the levels
were separated by portals this time around instead of being in the levels
themselves, these often led to minigames involving egg challenges, these were
again probably the hardest parts of the game as some were quite difficult (Damn
Yeti boxing!) though I always enjoyed a speedpad challenge. Skateboarding with
Spyro was an interesting new addition, even though there were only two areas
where you could do it I found it lots of fun jumping around doing spins and
flips and it worked pretty well for a mechanic that was kind of alien to the
series. The bosses this time around were all pretty easy apart from the second
one which was freakin hard as probably even more then the final boss. Speaking
of which I actually managed to %100 the game this time which was probably my 4th
try though there was complications.
Skateboarding in the Enchanted Towers level, this is the second area you get to skate and it's the biggest and most fun i reckon.
The complications were that I actually got about 45% through
the game playing on emulator, specifically the epsxe
emulator which I often like to use for the much better openGL graphics and
faster load times though unfortunately I found that I was missing one gem from
the Midday Gardens
homeworld, I looked and looked but just couldn’t find it, and neither could
sparks even when he had the point-to-nearest-gem ability, I eventually decided
to just start again on the Playstation as I thought it was a glitch with the
actual ROM as I’d never experienced it before with the PS disc. So I did and
completed the game with no trouble. After doing some research I found that it
might be the Lost Gem
Glitch but that only says it was for Spooky Swamp though I guess it may
happen to other levels. In any case what that means is I only have screenshots/videos
up to that point as I cannot take them on the PS1, the others I needed to find
online, such is the case with these console game reviews which is unfortunate
but I really don’t have another choice.
Those gems still difficult to find, I had to go through some levels two or three times to find them all.
The difference between PC openGL powered
and PS1 graphics is pretty major but the graphics looked fine in the game
regardless not much had been changed from last time apart from more animations
for some characters and a bit more polish overall. I found that over time the
game had gotten much more content in it (as it obviously should) this was most
present in Spyro
2 but I feel that in Spyro 3 you really did things out of the ordinary. The
sound and music were good as usual that awesome soundtrack by Stewart Copeland
from the Police always has that magic to it, and even if the music from the
latter games doesn’t quite have the same raw flair it is still memorable, I do
like the way that characters you meet are still very talkative and as I
mentioned before even have international accents now.
Alex the Duck from the Frozen Altars level, these guys had quite the weird accents
The final Spyro in the series was probably the most involved
of the three, I liked the story of the previous one better but this one was ok,
the original Spyro trilogy is definitely one of my favourites, possibly only
being surpassed by Super Mario but this one feels more special as it was on
Playstation so it’s not as well known as the Mario bros. series. As far as 3D
platforming goes though this was the best there was, sure I had tried Super
Mario 64 for a time but it just didn’t have the same feel, I still need to
try The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of
Time which is also considered by many as the greatest game of all time. In
any case this one was the best for the Playstation and yes even more then Crash
Bandicoot I think as his levels were way too linear though I have yet to play
the original series so I can’t talk really. Basically apart from the new
characters and mechanics and mini-games the premise of Spyro is the same, the
same controls, the same charge/flame combo, the same challenge of collecting
all the gems, the same albeit slightly more polished graphics, but all in all
it’s a great a great character, a great game and a great trilogy and again I
would mark the whole series as one of the best I have ever played. Next I move
onto the dark times of Playstation 2 versions of Spyro but don’t worry they
were not all bad.
JD
The trailer for Spyro 3, Year of the Dragon, unfortunately it's a bit low res.
Spyro is like Jet Li
in the movie Hero, he isn’t concerned with romance, he’s just badass.
Release date: June 26, 2008 Genre: First-Person Shooter (FPS) Publisher:Electronic Arts Developer: DICE Platforms: PS3, XBOX 360 Players: 1 to 24
For a long time I was only slightly aware of this game, I
mean, I knew there was a bunch of games between Battlefield 2 andBattlefield: Bad Company 2 but I didn’t
really care that much, I of course knew about Battlefield 2142 but I think around this time I
was more occupied with World of Warcraft than anything else and the period
between those two battlefield games just slipped away. Of course, there were
more - Battlefield Heroes with it's cartoony graphics
and third-person perspective, Battlefield 1943 which was a sort of console-lite version of BF1942, and Battlefield Play4Free which was a PC-lite version of Battlefield 2. When my
housemate first mentioned Battlefield: Bad Company to me I was confused, why had I not seen or
heard this before? Then I remembered why I had gone straight to Bad Company 2
before playing 1, it was on console. Now normally I would not play any FPS
(With the possible exception of Timesplitters
and Goldeneye)
on a console, but when the PlayStation 3 version of the game was given to me as
a birthday present from my housemate I had to (or was forced rather) to do the
right thing and sally forth into awkward thumbstick aiming yet again which I
thought I had finally gotten out of after finishing Mercenaries.
I had previously played Bad Company 2 both the singleplayer and multiplayer and
had found the singleplayer enjoyable enough though I was told that the story,
humour and squad interaction in the first Bad Company was much better.
Now this looks interesting
The story begins
when you are brought from a helicopter to the front lines, you play as Preston Marlowe
who is a recent transfer and you soon find that Bad Company is much less formal
then other military units being made up of troublemakers loose cannons from the
rest of the army. Your squad consists of four soldiers Segeant Samuel
Redford a battle hardened straight talking veteran who is about to retire, George
Haggard a crazy demolitions expert who is the mad dog of the squad and Terrence Sweetwater, the snivelling nerdy one
of the bunch who has a crush on the female dispatch officer Mike-One-Juliet
who gives the orders to Redford. The action is located mostly in the fictional
country of Serdaristan somewhere in eastern Europe though it is near
Russia as you sometimes cross the border. Your enemies are at different times
the Russian Army, the Middle Eastern Coalition and the Legionnaire Mercenaries. You start off all
law-abiding and accepting of the military command’s instructions but after a
while of playing the squad gets more and more rebellious eventually going AWOL
to seek out the Legionnaire’s gold.
The Bad Company Bros
Searching for gold becomes a feature of the
game as you can find gold
crates spread around the levels which act as a minor objective, another
minor objective I found is that whenever you find a new weapon, it gets added
to your ‘weapon library’ so you can collect them all. The story has a rather
lighthearted feel despite the fact that you are killing people and blowing
things up throughout most of the missions with Sweetwater and Haggard bantering
and arguing with each other and playing rock-paper-scissors while Redford
speaks on the radio, my housemate was certainly right in the fact that this was
almost the opposite of Bad Company 2 where there was the same characters but
they were much less juvenile in that iteration. I almost found the story a bit
too comical as not only was your squad mostly a bunch of jokers and one of the
only other characters you meet the President ofSedaristan had a humerous and nonchalant way about him and the whole story arc
when you invade the country and romp across his golf course with the whole
squad in a golf buggy eventually kidnapping him with his own chopper is pretty
ridiculous. The only other character you see is the Legionnaire leader so
apart from your squad that’s not much. But then again it was also fun and I
guess this is what the game is meant to be, a military shooter with a humerous
undertone and I’ll admit it was a lot funnier than the relative seriousness of
Bad Company 2.
The Legionnaire and Zavimir Serdar
So now we get onto the gameplay and of course yes I’m always
going to moan about playing an FPS on a console but it wasn’t bad I must admit,
felt even better then Mercenaries though that was 3rd person of
course. You could move around look, duck, jump etc as usual (but not prone) but
if was the raw ferocity of the weapons that caught me the most off guard, they
just looked so big on the screen and seemed really powerful and sounded great
and you really felt it when you shot someone. Another big thing that was
present in the game compared to Bad Company 2 was the freedom. Even when you were with your squad they just followed you most of the time. Some objectives
were basically ”go to this point on the map” but to get there you could use any
means possible, huff it on foot then find a town and steal a truck, drive to
the water’s edge then commandeer a boat, stop the boat to infiltrate a random
enemy base and steal a chopper then crash it into the objective. It was all
doable, you could traverse the mission in almost any way you wanted to unlike
the singleplayer campaigns in the latter games which felt very linear indeed.
You were given an objective and had the choice of how to get there
I
enjoyed using different secondary weapons like the Bad Company iteration of the
repair tool which I
always liked compared to the blowtorch of Battlefield 4 and the rocket
launchers which were also very satisfying to use. I even tried sniping at
certain points which worked ok though it’s obviously hard to fine aim with it.
The game had an interesting way of healing, instead of regenerating health,
being healed by the medic or finding medkits you healed yourself with an autoinjector which
led to a lot of running around shooting then stabbing yourself, then shooting
then stabbing yourself again. I didn’t have too much trouble playing the game
and using the controller it was pretty simple though I did play it on easy with
the reason being that I was playing it on console, I enjoyed collecting the
weapons and finding the gold and there’s just something fulfilling about
completing an FPS storyline, I think it’s because unlike multiplayer you’re
constantly getting kills and winning. Driving vehicles was fun though a bit
different from what I am used to as you are using a controller and when you
enter your vehicle your entire squad gets in and man any weapons available
which is pretty cool, I found the tanks and helicopters ok to fly too though a
bit awkward to aim.
It's either this guy or the barrel, probbaly both
The graphics for Bad Company were ok, they have a real rough
gritty console look to them which could just be my TV but I must remember the
was the first battlefield game on that particular generation of consoles but it
looked fine, I especially liked the mission where you had crashed your chopper
and woke up alone and had to sneak around in the dank moonlight to try and find
your squadmates. The sun and sunset effects were good as well and of course the environment destruction although something we take for granted now it was certainly the thing back in this game it was just an
adequately detailed military shooter for the time. I enjoyed the music which
had a upbeat feel to it rather than serious all the damn time like the other
single player BF games, the voice acting was great with the playful banter and
all the arguing and the gunshots and explosions were all up to scratch.
Hooray for Destructive environments! now they have nowhere to hide.
I’ll admit I had fun playing the game though in the end I
was glad to get it over with, it was a nice little story that is a
demonstration that not every game has to be so linear in its level design or
objectives or battle sequence and it doesn’t always have to be so damn serious
too. It’s good when a game can laugh at itself just like you do. This was
probably one of the best console shooters I have played though that’s not
saying much cause I haven’t played many, ah well. As a side note I wasn’t able
to experience the multiplayer as the game came out in 2008 so I wasn’t really
able to find anyone to play with, would have been fun but meh I had really
missed the time that this game was active with players, and I think that was the
time I had stopped playing Battlefield 2 shortly after discovering WoW, when
the dark ages started hah not really though it wasn’t until Bad Company 2 that
I got onto the Battlefield again.
JD
Oh no you don't!
7/10
Things I liked:
Powerful and
invigorating weapons
Easy to play
despite using controller
Great Story and
character banter
Weapon collecting
and gold chest hunting are good side activities
Things I didn’t like:
Game is only on
Console
Fairly short, not
much replay ability apart from multiplayer
Characters are
funny but can get annoying.
I think this is a good introduction to the game :D Thanks to TheRussionBadger for this compilation, and thanks DasUberpoop for his excellent Campaign gameplay.
It might seem a bit strange that I’m reviewing old-school
Doom in wake of the new Doom
(formerly Doom 4) released this year which I have yet to play, though I thought
it could be a little celebration of sorts as I never bothered playing Doom 3,
so it would be my first ever delve into another Doom game since the beloved
Doom II. But enough about the new Doom, this is the old Doom but it’s not Doom
or Doom II, confused yet? Let me explain….
A lovely doom landscape, you don't see that too often.
Originally back in 1993 ID software created Doom, Doom 1, the
original Doom, whatever you want to call it, and the world rejoiced etc etc.
The game itself was split into three chapters Knee-Deep in the Dead, The
Shores of Hell and Inferno where the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) who
remind me a lot of the Aliens
series’ Weyland-Yutani
corporation, are conducting experiments on interdimensional travel accidentally
open a portal to Hell and the protagonist (I will call him Doomguy) Fights
across the zombie and demon infested UAC bases on the moons of Phobos and Deimos orbiting the
planet Mars, then
eventually travelling to Hell
itself. Then in 1994 Doom II: Hell on Earth was released, this was the first
Doom that I played though this was the Doom 95 version released a year
later and as the game says, The Legions of Hell have invaded earth, so this
time you are fighting on your home planet.
After that came The
Ultimate Doom in 1995 which contained the original 3 chapters and a new one
Thy Flesh Consumed which acted as both a sequel
to Doom and a prequel to Doom II. And then we go onto the last or final
official instalments of the original Doom series, Final Doom
was released in 1996 and included the standalone Doom II IWADs (Doom Game files): TNT:
Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment which were created
semi-independently and were each regarded as a separate sequels to Doom II so
had no chronological order from one over the other.
TNT Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment were part of Final Doom
I have now played through every single one with TNT
Evilution being the last. You may be wondering why I chose this one as the
first one to review on my blog, well it’s for several reasons: The first being
that this was the latest one I have played so it will be fresh in my mind, the
second reason is that it’s almost a standalone story so it doesn’t really matter
if you haven’t experienced the original two, thirdly, It’s the only one I had
recorded screenshots and videos of :D and fourthly, I’m going to use this to
introduce the Skulltag Mod which is what
I used to play them all through, though I may not use again when I re-play all
of the games through once more. This won’t be the longest review as we all know
about Doom and how it works, I just wanted to explain the mod I have been using
and show off the changes to the game when using it, and the only screenshots
and videos I have are from TNT Evilution so I will use it as the game that is
in review.
Wow this looks different
So before I begin I will first introduce the Skulltag Mod. The Skulltag mod
was created by Matthew 'Agent Spork'
McGee and is one of many “conversion” or perhaps “light conversion” source
ports for the original Doom series games and was based on the ZDoom source port which included
the new graphics and control/gameplay abilities. As the site says it “Brings
Doom into the 21st century” and it does this by adding many new
options and game features including graphics overhaul, with the ability to pick
any modern resolution with much more refined textures and dynamic lighting.
Detailed display options and openGL in DOOM? what trickery is this?
It
introduced new weapons such as the Minigun which is a faster version of the Chaingun and the Railgun which
we all know from Quake 2,
I really enjoyed these new weapons and used them often, they reminded me of
that forgotten “Q2 Xtreme” mod I used to use to play Quake 2, I really need to
work out where that went. But anyway probably the most important changes are to
the gameplay, the mod allows for free mouselook and includes several custom
crosshairs and also include the ability to jump and duck. These kinds of things
change the original game around completely as you know in the original Doom
games you could not jump, crouch or look up or down relying on auto-aiming to
hit enemies above or below you. Now with modern FPS controls it’s pretty nuts
and playing the game this way borders on cheating, using the sprint ability
then jumping allows you to leap great distances and because all of the original
WAD’s were not built for these features you have no idea whether you are
supposed to be able to get to certain places or not.
Well I could, make it up to that ledge to get to the yellow door but I know I'm not supposed to be able to.
Nevertheless I could not imagine going back to play the
original way, the first time I experienced Doom using the mod I couldn’t
believe how good it was, it looked amazing, the mod actually has many features
for online play including Team DM, Duel, CTF and the namesake game mode
’Skulltag’ where players aim to capture each others skulls and take them to an
altar. The first I played I tried out a Deathmatch mode with bots and wow it
was fun, I haven’t tried since I’ve just been having fun with the usual
singleplayer but man playing that with 5 bots and watching rockets fly past
with new lighting effects was crazy. Currently my Doom folder contains all
kinds of mods and it’s hard to discern what each of them do, so to explain I
have included a description.
A short video of the Skulltag game mode with bots on the Ring of Fire map
With the exception of Doomseeker, all of these are Source Ports of the original
Doom most often made by fans, they often contain slight-to-heavy tweaking of
the game engine including new features inc graphics, gameplay, game modes,
weapons and levels.
ZDoom – A
source port which modernizes Doom with a range of features including new
graphics and control/gameplay abilities
GZDoom – A
port of ZDoom itself which uses the same features except adds OpenGL
support for higher resolution graphics and particles
Skulltag –
The mod I currently use, also uses features from ZDoom and GZDoom and adds
online/multiplayer features.
ZDaemon – A
mod purposely-built for playing multiplayer Doom over the Internet, based on ZDoom
The menu for the skulltag mod allows you to choose which game (or WAD file rather) that you would like to play.
There are many, many, other Source Ports available for
Doom as this is just a few that I use, you may have also heard of Brutal Doom, I hadn’t paid
much heed to it but after doing some research for my current review I came
across some videos
which featured Brutal Doom being played with OpenGL graphics and it looked
goddamn amazing, of course there does seem to be a bit too much bloom with fire
and explosions (Battlefield
1 seems to have this issue as well) and also man that bloom on the toxic
barrels is too much, I realised just recently that the Skulltag mod has the
option to run the game in the software graphics (Doom Engine) or hardware
graphics (OpenGL) I didn’t really pay too much attention to this as I didn’t
have much idea what it was for and playing Doom with 1920x1080 resolution was
good enough for me. Brutal Doom has many new features including a few new
weapons and revamped old weapons with new graphics and sound, new enemy
abilities and death animations inc ‘fatalities’, revamped HUD and as the name
adheres to, lots and lots of gore. The mod is supposed to be much harder than
the original Doom but I’m still thinking of using it to play through the Doom
series again as I could possibly lower the difficulty and gore to acceptable
levels.
Brutal Doom - A Mod I plan to use in the future.
Speaking of level of difficulty I remember in my younger
days I cheated a lot, in singleplayer of course, there will never be a time
where I cheat in multiplayer. Yes I found cheats for almost every game I played
and in my defense I said it made the game more enjoyable because it wasn’t as
hard or frustrating, well obviously. Though little did I know that all you had
to do was lower the difficulty (to say ‘easy’) then all will be fine, well
mostly, I’m playing Star Wars: Tie
Fighter at the moment and it’s getting damn hard even on easy, but that’s
what I have been doing recently with my gaming and I have found it’s been
ultimately more enjoyable than just being an unstoppable demigod. With older
games such as Doom and Quake I went from playing with invincibility and
unlimited ammo to just invincibility then finally only recently to no cheating
albeit on easy mode and I’m quite satisfied with that, I used the second lowest
skill level setting “Hey
not too rough” which is the least amount of enemies but you take the normal amount
of damage as opposed to “I’m too young to die” in which you take half damage. I
only switched to this possibly 1/3rd of the way through TNT
Eviliution so the majority of the series I played like a goddamn Saint Diviner
of Justice coming to wreak explosive death upon the denizens of Hell with blah
blah blah let’s get on with the review…..
I warp to one of my favorite levels, Mount Pain and start in god mode then realize I'm in god mode then switch it off hah.
So now you know the story behind the original Doom series
and the mods I used to play the game and the settings we can talk about the
actual game itself.
TNT
Evilution released on June 17, 1996, forms one half of Final Doom,
a commercial product which consists of two 32-level IWADs (the other being The Plutonia Experiment), similar to Doom II. The
"TNT" in the title stands for "The New Technology" and is
also the name of the mapping team who created TNT: Evilution. The game was
originally going to be free of charge but was packaged with The Plutonia
Experiment in Final Doom as a publishing deal brokered by the infamous John Romero
and thus being released by id Software. The story behind TNT Evilution is nothing
too special, just an excuse to shoot the crap out of the denizens of hell
(though who needs an excuse really) The ill fated UAC has again been
experimenting with portal technology to try and annihilate the forces of hell,
they seem to succeed but then a vast demonic spaceship from Hell appears and
destroys the base zombifying everyone. Now this is the part I love, the Doomguy apparently
escaped death or zombification by being “away on a walk at the time”, yes, a walk, and then vows to destroy all of
the legions of hell defeating another Demon-Spitter
yadda yadda yadda.
Yes it's another Demon-Spitter, not again!
TNT Evilution has a very techbase feel to it, similar to the
first episode of the original Doom, whereas
The Plutonia experiment has a more natural earth feel to it. TNT’s levels go
from experimental labs, to military bases, to interesting looking levels at
night and back to hell again. I must admit it did take me awhile to complete
with 32 levels (including secrets levels) this and the Plutonia experiment took
me quite a lot of breaks, mainly because I had not played the levels before and
it took me awhile to work out what to do and where to go. The levels in this
series I noticed differed in quite a few ways from the norm of Doom and Doom 2,
there were many tricks and unconventional ways of completing the levels, for
example the end room and switch wasn’t always through the same style of door
and what you thought was the end of the level wasn’t always the case.
The shipping/respawning level which has quite a few new textures and objects and I don't do much here except get lost, I eventually worked out the key was inside a box under a desk, very unusal for Doom I can tell you that.
It was
obvious that the designers were creating these levels as a challenge expansion
not holding your hand like in the previous games. I saw quite a few objects and
textures that were definitely not from the original Doom series especially
modern technology and furniture, fences, gatehouses and other things that
weren’t in the original, the levels also had more of a sporadic design and used
unconventional architecture which sometimes include wide open spaces like in Level 27: Mount Pain. Playing
the mod also made things very different being able to look all around obviously
had some interesting effects on gameplay, I’ve already mentioned the ability to
jump created “I can just jump there but I don’t think I’m supposed to” moments
and there was also the fact that Doom was never actually 3D.
So you can basically look straight up and down with the mouse and watch the
monsters turn into a single vertical line, this made me laugh a few times but
it’s expected and a reminder of what the Doom Engine
actually was.
The Storage Facility level where I do a heap of looking and jumping with the new controls.
The new weapons made things much more interesting, the
Minigun made wasting zombies and imps much quicker and even some demons didn’t
take too long to kill, the new Grenade Launcher put a more tactical spin on
rockets allowing them to bounce so you could hit targets around corners, the
Railgun was probably my favourite addition as it was very powerful with one
shot killing those pesky Lost Souls and with the crosshair you could shoot them
from miles away. There was also this pretty cool looking rapid-fire version of
the BFG but I preferred to use
the old one, I guess this one with its faster firing would be more useful for
clearing tons of monsters. Playing with these new weapons and gameplay changes
put a great spin on the game and it was very refreshing and felt good to go
through, like a breath of fresh air, hopefully more games can do this *cough* Mercenaries
*cough* TNT Evilution wasn’t the best Doom experience I’ve had it was the most
rewarding being the first time I have played Doom for an extended period
without invincibility, and I actually enjoyed it ;).
I let loose a bouncy grenade.
I will still go through all the previous games again though
it’s questionable whether I do it with Skulltag or Brutal Doom, though Brutal
Doom actually has its own Story mode which looks freakin insane in its
own right and since it was made to be played with the Brutal doom mod then I
think that would be the best way to experience Brutal doom first hand and if
after that I can’t go back to the normal way then I’ll brutally blast though
the originals too. Though there’s something to be said about the comfort of the
original style, so you may not have seen the last of Skulltag yet.
Release Date: March 26th 2002 Genre: First/Third person Shooter Developer: Raven Software Publisher: LucasArts Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox, Gamecube, Mac OSX Players: 1 and Multiplayer Classification: T (Teen)
I have a bit of confession to make, as you may know from my
review of Dark
Forces I had obtained a number of Star Wars titles from the site ww.gog.com (Good old Games) and had intended to
play through the Jedi
Knight series of games that I have only played one of so far that being Jedi
Academy and so after Dark Forces the next one on the list should have been Dark
Forces II though in my brief attempt to play this I found that it was very
awkward and I unfortunately couldn’t get my mouse to work right and even when I
got it going the graphics and jerky controls of the game didn’t cut it for me and
unfortunately I couldn’t keep going. It reminded me of that awful Fifth
Element game on Playstation which was made around the same time, I think
that games around that era had that kind of awkward look and feel to them with
the transition to full 3D, where I felt that I would rather play games like Super Mario World on the
SNES with their crisp and clean pixels to something like Driver 2 whereas although I’d
hate to say it the gameplay was good but the graphics were a bunch of mush. In
fact I think that during this era games that were of cartoony characters like
the Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot
series’ looked the best as the games that were trying to be realistic just
didn’t look very good at all, though I spose back then you couldn’t expect much
could you.
Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2, oh my eyes
In any case I
wimped out yes I admit, I’ve got this fascination with playing updated and
graphically overhauled versions of old games, I love it, or even just playing
games on max settings and seeing how much better they look to when I played
them back then. Though, fortunately all of the game’s cutscenes have been uploaded
to youtube so you can basically watch what happens and interestingly they were
made using a mixture of FMV and 3D animation. To sum things up Kyle Katarn still a
mercenary along with his companion Jan Ors
investigates the death of his father and finds and defeats the evil Dark Jedi Jerec and stops him
from corrupting the Valley of the Jedi. The expansion pack to that Mysteries
of the Sith is where you play as Mara Jade as a companion to Kyle Katarn who is
now a Jedi, Mara goes on a series of Missions while Kyle goes to Dromund
Kaas and Mara finds him in the Dark Force Temple or “Sith” Temple rather and
finds him insane with the dark side, but he recovers and swears off the force
reuniting with Jan Ors. Having watched the whole thing now I have come to two
conclusions FMV
acting in games is as terrible then as it is
now, and damn is Jan Ors hot in those videos. One last thing because I
played Jedi Academy a lot first I’m going to try not to refer back to it so
much since chronologically it’s set after this one.
Kyle and Jan in the Dark Forces 2 Cutscenes, this was one of the few where it wasn't so goddamn dark
So then we come to Jedi
Knight II: Jedi Outcast, made in 2002, the first in the series to be made
by Raven Software and was powered by the Quake
III Arena engine. As you would probably know this one was the precursor
to Jedi
Knight : Jedi Academywhich was
unofficially called Jedi Knight 3 but was actually the 4th in the
series and as you know from my review,
the first one I had played. When I got the rest from GOG.com I had intended to go all of the way
through them including the X-wing
space combat simulation series and the Knights
of the Old Republic (KOTOR) series, both of which I have yet to finish, but
with X-wing series as well I have skipped some too. Jedi Outcast was (and
sometimes still is) hailed as one of the best lightsaber combat simulations
ever. Having played it now both in singleplayer and multiplayer at a LAN, I
could almost agree but not quite due to the lack of dual sabres and
saber-staffs, I did find the Lightsaber combat very similar though as both
games were made by the same developer. The gameplay wasn't always just shooting and Lightsabering of course, there was a great section involving an AT-ST which was heaps of fun and much longer then the Jedi Academy one.
The name says it all, kicking ass with an AT-ST
The story begins with Kyle still in his bounty hunter ways
with Jan accepting a mission from Mon Mothma to investigate an imperial Remanent
base on Kejim
though Kyle is taken aback slightly when shown some cortosis crystals which are
used to make lightsabers as he no longer wants anything to do with being a
Jedi.
Kyle, Jan and Mon Mothma, this time all of the cutscenes are done in the game engine.
Through investigations on Kejim and Artus
Prime where the crystals are being mined Kyle and Jan find that they are
being studied and also used in experiments on living beings, I had fun doing
these sections with just weapons as you obviously don’t have your Lightsaber at
this point so I played in first person mode. Though you soon meet Desann, a Chistori Dark
Jedi who used to be under the tutelage of Luke Skywalker (who Kyle mentioned
once in Jedi Academy as I remember) and his apprentice Tavion
Axmis who you all know as the main antagonist from Jedi Academy as well,
though this time she is second fiddle to her master.
Tavion and Desann
In your first fight with
Desann you are basically set up to lose as you have no force powers so you have
no chance against him, it’s only afterwards that when Jan is captured and
apparently killed, Kyle goes to the Valley of the Jedi to regain his Force powers and then to Yavin
4 to retrieve his lightsaber from Luke Skywalker. The trials that Kyle re-does
and a lot like the ones in Jedi Academy though slightly different, you
eventually get your Lightsaber and swing it up in Nar Shaddaa when you have a run-in with Lando Calrissian and then head to Cloud City on Bespin.
Well there's another familiar face
On Bespin Kyle battles the Reborn for the first time, these reborn were actually seen in
Jedi Academy as the New
Reborn along with the Disciples of Ragnos and are basically the same
kind of fight as that game, all dodging and lightsaber swinging and force using
fun combat. After battling and defeating Tavion on Bespin, Kyle learns that Jan
is indeed alive and Desann and Tavion had tricked him into revealing the
location of the Valley of the Jedi. He also soon learns that Desann, with the
help of Admiral Galak Fyyar planned to use the Reborn to rebuild the Galactic Empire though I noticed only when
reading the wiki was that this was part of a larger plan involving another
character called LordHethrir and his Empire
Reborn which itself is a faction of the Imperial
Remnant whew we’re going real meta now. Though eventually through a very
lengthy level Kyle defeats Fyarr in his cortosis-based
armor (I actually just read something about that which would have made it much
easier to beat him XD) and we get a brief cameo from Rogue Squadron who blow up his ship.
Admiral Galak Fyarr in his Cortosis Armor, and Kyle throwing his lightsaber apparently.
Kyle
then goes to the Jedi Temple on Yavin, fights off the troops there eventually
teaming up with the other Jedi to defeat the reborn and Desann himself who was
kind of a pushover really despite his huge size and lightsaber reach, I noted
that Kyle say that the Reborn are no match for the Jedi as they have been
artificially infused with force power and have not had any training in adapting
and understanding the force. Kyle decided to be a Jedi again then he and Jan
then go to the beaches of Spira and got it on, well I hope.
Kyle defends the Temple with his fellow Jedi buddies
So with both Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight being made by
Raven software they were obviously very similar in most things the most obvious
being graphics and gameplay. The shooting and lightsaber fighting was pretty
much exactly the same with the same controls, I used guns at the start
obviously but didn’t use them much after that except to snipe on several
occasions, the force powers were the same as usual getting better and more
powerful as you go along. I can’t think of much that was different from
Academy, it would have obviously been massively different and improved from
Dark Forces II but I’m not gonna go there.
Ahh the good old Stormtrooper blaster rifle
One thing I did find is that I
regretted playing it on the “Jedi” difficulty because man there were so many
goddamn enemies with lots of hits points, I mean seriously when I shoot someone
in the face with a gun or slice them with a lightsaber I want them to die, not just shrug it off but of course
you could say the same for me. I eventually had to turn off the 360 degree
slow-mo rotation that I loved so much as there were simply too many enemies and
it got tedious, next time I will definitely go for the Padawan difficulty.
Another thing I found difficult was the objectives and level design, sometimes
I had no idea where to go and what to do, though that’s often the case in games
I haven’t played before especially Dark
Forces and I had to refer to online guides which wouldn’t have been so bad
if the game didn’t brighten up with desktop so much that text was almost
unreadable when you alt-tabbed. And before you ask yes I did use a trainer with
this game as well which worked though I had to keep re-enabling it after every
loading screen which got a tad annoying.
Kyle blasts and cuts through a crapload of droids and troopers and eventually confronts Tavion. Notice how I get frustrated and switch to guns halfway through.
Other than that the game was good and I thoroughly enjoyed
the story as I finally knew what happened before Jedi Academy. The game worked
well through the GOG system, the graphics were good as usual as the Quake
III Arena engine doesn’t disappoint and the sound and music was good too.
One of the things I found both awesome and funny was the way the game has
non-scripted fighting, so for example in scenes where enemies are fighting it’s
basically like two bots fighting each other in multiplayer and looks absolutely
ridiculous but it’s great to see that you can be helped by non-playable
characters in the story mode.
Luke and Desann have a non-scripted duel with Luke getting killed at least twice, while Kyle boards the Doomgiver.
I didn’t delve much into the multiplayer, to be
honest I didn’t much in Jedi Academy either though we did have a few random
free-for-all battles at a LAN which was a lot of fun and absolutely ridiculous
as people were playing as all kinds of characters. Some appropriate such as
Kyle Katarn’s model but others looked ridiculous playing as imperial officers
and Stormtroopers, I didn’t know it then but the Shadow Trooper Model I
played as actually did use Lightsabers in the game.
The Ridiculous looking lightsaber battles at Bluewire Lan, footage from me and Ramrod.
I would still say
Jedi Academy is the better of the two as being able to create your own Jedi and
be a student in the Academy is much more rewarding not to mention the ability
to wield dual sabers or saber staffs, nevertheless Jedi Outcast had a great
story I was glad to finally get through it. So it looks like I’ve come to the
end of the Jedi Knight series having skipped two games now XD, Hopefully I’ll
like Knights
of the Old Republic since it was made around the same time which will be
next on the list of the Jedi Lightsaberin’ series just as X-wing vs Tie Fighter
will be next on the Starfightering series if I ever finish Tie Fighter that is.
JD
9/10
Things I liked:
Great gameplay,
lightsaber combat especially
Great, engaging
story
Use of non-scripted
NPC fighting both innovative and laughable.
Multiplayer is awesome fun
Things I didn’t like:
Levels dragged on a bit “oh gawd not another huge room of
Stormtroopers”
Release date: 2001
