Ben X

The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

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I mean, I should say, it's still mechanically a 1994 shooter in terms of graphics and basic shootiness, I don't want to oversell it here :). But I think you'll find it interestingly different to DooM/Wolf3d in focus and intent.

 

To acquire: Go here http://source.bungie.org/ . On a Windows PC, the download is a zip file that you just need to decompress and run Marathon.exe from.

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Ok, so it turns out I'm still a little addicted to The Swindle, but thankfully I'm getting more DooMTM in. I defeated the Cyber Demon Lord and am onto the third episode, Inferno, which is set in Hell. It's really cool how the level design suddenly feels less orderly, bridges collapsing behind you, loads more demons. I feel like they actually could have pushed this a bit harder - held back on the demonic textures and potions etc until now, using more sci-fi stuff (except for the enemies) then switching to that stuff for Hell and leaving the possessed soldiers and med packs behind. Although I do like the row of cells with soldiers that you come across early on which suggests they're doomed souls rather than zombie dudes.

 

I do have to take relatively long breaks between play sessions because while I'm loving it, it is quite samey outside of new textures.

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Done! I killed the Spider Demon and completed Inferno. (I'm not going to bother with Ultimate DooMTM or whatever.)

 

It's a great game, but I did feel like I could have handled it either being a bit shorter or continuing to introduce new stuff after E2M1. This is probably due to me knowing it pretty well indirectly, it being a backlog game, and my modern narrative-driven-FPS sensibilities; I likely wouldn't be thinking that if I had just bought and completed this back in '93...

 

Next: Marathon

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Okay, I played through a bit of Marathon. While it is cool to see a bit of narrative coming in (reading weird AI burblings on the terminals and at least a token effort of dressing door keys as level-specific items like teleport network cards or whatever), and stuff like friendly robot NPCs, the controls are a lot more fiddly than DooMTM - I felt like I'd gone back to Wolfenstein 3D in a lot of ways - and it's ugly in comparison. These points might be affected by the porting of it, not sure. I wonder whether it was designed with mouse-look in mind, for one.

 

Also, it has save points which are really annoying (especially due to their placement), which combined with a high difficulty level (I had to put it down to "kindergarten" to get past the first level!) make this quite frustrating. I would have pushed on, but I've come up against a door puzzle which seems to be a progress bottleneck. There are 4 switches which all have various open/close effects on the vertical pillars which make up the door. I guess I've got to press them in the right order, but I can't figure it out, so fuck it.

 

So, that's it for Marathon.

 

Next: DooMTM II (which I might stick on easy and speed through until I get bored, depending on how different to the first one it is)

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Doom 2 is a blast (quite literally when the super shotgun is involved) but when the levels start getting really big and labyrinthine, I always get bored. Sometimes you'll whack a switch (which doesn't remotely resemble a switch) on this side of the level, and then have to backtrack to that side of the level to a door which you didn't know was even a door which is now open! My mind can't cope with that.

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I'm having problems getting this working properly. I'm playing from the Ultimate Doom CD, but that has some problem with the graphics going all pink/white/green. I tried Chocolate Doom but that has a horrible filtering thing going on that I can't get rid of. Unfortunately, I tried loading up Doom 1 (from my CD install) and now that's got the same graphical problems despite me having played it through only recently. No idea what's going on...

 

EDIT: okay, a quick reset fixed it all. Not much different to Doom 1 yet - the super shotgun is nice and satisfying, and the enemies all seem to take friendly fire now, which I only saw on the Spider Demon fight with the cacodemons previously. If I get bored, I might skip forward to episode 3 so I can just see all the new enemy types straight away...

 

EDIT 2: oh, one difference I have noticed is that the music is less speed metal now and more 70s sci-fi/horror. It's not as immediate, but it's pretty cool.

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I've added a STALKER game and gained some likelier-to-work versions of a couple of the games thanks to Laco's generosity.

 

I played DooMTM II for a bit, but got pissed off by a pit I kept falling into and decided to try out some of the later levels using the Ultimate launcher menu. It's cool to see new enemies (even though they're recycled, I especially like the mini-spiderdemons) and the apocalyptic city setting (with imps in office windows and stuff), but I'm pretty DooMTMed out now. So it's onto:

 

Dark Forces

 

I've never played this and am looking forward to it. I need to remember to look into whether there are options to play a game more accurately to the way it was on release though - I'm aware that games can lose their soundtracks/scores, get updated graphics etc without it being obvious and it'd be nice to avoid those changes if possible. I'm also still at the point where I need to decide whether to use mouselook. I'm pretty confident that all pre-Quake FPSes should be played without it, at least.

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From being an avid FPS player of the period, I believe that you're correct (and even Quake had it as a special menu option, not the default - but everyone I know turned it on, so playing Quake with mlook is acceptable for historical accuracy).

 

Also, sorry you didn't enjoy Marathon as much as I hoped - at least it was a diversion between DooM games! (I actually find all FPSes a bit hard, so I guess I didn't notice that Marathon was particularly so).

Edited by aoanla

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Excellent, thanks!

 

No problem about Marathon - I'm not expecting to enjoy all of these games, and it was definitely interesting!

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Dark Forces

 

I've never played this and am looking forward to it. I need to remember to look into whether there are options to play a game more accurately to the way it was on release though - I'm aware that games can lose their soundtracks/scores, get updated graphics etc without it being obvious and it'd be nice to avoid those changes if possible. I'm also still at the point where I need to decide whether to use mouselook. I'm pretty confident that all pre-Quake FPSes should be played without it, at least.

 

If you are using the Steam version, check all the options before you start. I was breezing through Dark Forces first time I played until I realized that a "Super Shield" option that made me impervious to laser damage was on by default. 

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For me, mouselook makes the games more fun because it feels more natural and it doesn't significantly change the game in any way besides making it more pleasant to play.

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Thanks Patrick. I checked through the options and that was off already. I decided to keep this on Easy however, which turned out to be a good idea because there'a a lot of trekking around and I think I'd get a bit too pissed off if I was dying constantly.

 

eot: I'm not using mouse, although it only seems to work horizontally anyway which isn't that much help. The one tech issue I'm having at the moment is Windows keeps tabbing me out to ask if I want to turn sticky keys on. Grrr. (Also, I had to go directly through dosbox and mount some folders to change my keys.) Are you playing through any of these after all?

 

So far I am really enjoying this. I expected it to simply be DooMTM with a Star Wars graphics and sound pack, which it is in a lot of ways but the amount of detail and accuracy to the franchise (OT of course) really gives it a different feel, extending to level design and enemy placement. Opening a little room, shooting wildly at a couple of Imperial officers then the door wooshing shut again and your lasers fizzing up against it really makes you feel like Han Solo. It also has very impressive production values, with loads of great cutscenes, character animations, 3D ships landing in-level, etc.

 

This is especially notable after the end boss of Doom 2 being a stationary wall texture that launches standard enemies at you until you shoot a few rockets at it. (I found this out by watching a video - my plan to skip ahead to the final episode was scuppered by the fact that Doom 2 doesn't have episodes.)

 

I'm finding the levels a little harder to keep my bearings within, and there are more puzzley aspects which generally revolve around switches and are a bit confusing without adding much, but it still has the map function so I'm coping.

 

I like the fact that it keeps the grit of the first films - you're a mercenary who used to work for the Empire, everything has that scruffy sci-fi aesthetic, and you occasionally see charred skeletons and burn-marks where the Dark Troopers have obviously been gunning down citizens.

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Gahhh, no save function at all - only autosaves and limited lives. Very annoying when you've just spent 5 minutes pressing switches then you die and you have no idea whether the presses have been saved. Also, the levels are getting ever more huge and multi-tiered, so now the map isn't helping me much.

 

I've got it on easy mode so I think I need to be less frugal with my ammo and make sure to take out enemies as quickly as possible.

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Thanks for pointing this thread out Ben X, I enjoyed reading through it. I had seen when you first posted that you were going to go through a huge backlog and I'm not really interested in that type of thing so I stopped reading quickly. But back in July, I had zero interest in Doom or Marathon. What happened was that I came across a game called Electric Highways and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it and how difficult it was for me to explain why.

I intiated a discussion about it and Josh Trevett immediately made some connections to Marathon and Doom.

http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/9583

I downloaded Marathon and saw the similarities. I started wondering if I just had a nostalgic need for these blocky mazes with hidden doorways and switches so I bought Doom. Holy shit Doom is so much fun. You probably read in the other thread about my confusion with the controls, but once I settled on the newer ones provided in Ultimate Doom I was fine with them.

Coming from Electric Highways, the enemy-encounters were a satisfying addition to the 3d environments, music, mood, and switch/door, navigation puzzles. I really enjoy the shooting in Doom, but what I noticed most was the haunted-mansion/secret-door level-design in Knee-Deep in the Dead. I saw in an interview that Romero designed these levels iteratively through frequent play and I think that is a big part of what I enjoy about it. the first levels of Doom feel like they are made to be capable of a certain type of intimacy with the space that could only happen from tens or hundreds of hours being spent in a few small rooms. I think that quality is one of the most interesting things about it, the knowledge of all the secret-spaces (which I am just now developing). I don't think you can get that from just running through it once though. Right now I'm enjoying playing through Knee-Deep in th Dead over and over so that I can discover all the secrets and get familiar with that space. Those first levels are these elegant relics of pop-game that I'm enjoying adding to my sensibilities.

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Interesting, thank you for posting!

 

I used arrow keys for movement with . and / for strafing plus a couple of nearby keys for fire and door opening, and I found that worked fine. I think WASD came in once people were using the mouse with their right hand?

 

For posterity, here is the other thread Clyde mentions (including quotes from the Random Thoughts thread!).

 

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play any more Dark Forces. RPS did a short Have You Played? on it and the consensus seems to be that no quick-save was a good design choice as it adds peril *grumble grumble* One thing I need to look into is the music - it regularly reminds me of Sam And Max Hit The Road (was that Clint Bajaakian or something?) and feels like there's some iMuse cleverness going on.

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Thresh helped popularize WASD (though he certainly wasn't the first to use it) back during the later DOOM days...he described it more or less in his DOOM Deathmatcher's Bible and it caught with people who played DOOM2 DM competitively along with kb/mouse (which John Romero was using all the way back with Wolf3d if memory serves). Mouse/Kb weren't all that commonly used in DOOM by the average player (I tried and failed several times to make the switch, not knowing how to adjust my sensitivity until way later and not really knowing about WASD during most of my attempts...it wasn't until Quake (1&2) that I manages to successfully switch...though I used ESDF and have ever since...can't remember if I tried WASD initially or if I just started with ESDF because that's where my hands naturally go).

Here's a link on way back to the DOOM guide Thresh wrote that I mentioned:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000815092627/http://www.gamersx.com/bibles/doom/doom-setup.asp

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Mouse/Kb weren't all that commonly used in DOOM by the average player (I tried and failed several times to make the switch, not knowing how to adjust my sensitivity until way later and not really knowing about WASD during most of my attempts...it wasn't until Quake (1&2) that I manages to successfully switch...though I used ESDF and have ever since...can't remember if I tried WASD initially or if I just started with ESDF because that's where my hands naturally go).

 

ESDF was pushed pretty hard by the Tribes games, you might have got it from them, if you played them.

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ESDF was pushed pretty hard by the Tribes games, you might have got it from them, if you played them.

I actually played it a good bit after I had already been using ESDF with QW and Q2...but I remember it being a pleasant surprise when I went in to rebind things.

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Gahhh, no save function at all - only autosaves and limited lives. Very annoying when you've just spent 5 minutes pressing switches then you die and you have no idea whether the presses have been saved. Also, the levels are getting ever more huge and multi-tiered, so now the map isn't helping me much.

 

I've got it on easy mode so I think I need to be less frugal with my ammo and make sure to take out enemies as quickly as possible.

 

Okay, I think I'm going to have to give up on Dark Forces. I just can't get off this level (it's only the 4th or 5th, I think). I get all the way through it, do a great long involved thing with switches and doors and shit, then I have to get all the way back to the start of the level except I can't find a route back because I've come down a high step to get here and there are these turret things everywhere that kill me in seconds so I can't methodically search everywhere. The map doesn't even help because it only shows the floors that you're at the same height as. If the game allowed me to save, I could probably push my way through until I figured out the route, but as it is, my lives get wiped out before I'm able to.

 

I might take a quick look at a play-through to see if that helps, but I'm not sure even if I find out the route whether I can be bothered to go through this huge damn level yet again. It's a shame. The atmosphere is great, but the levels are really frustrating in a way that Doom's weren't.

 

Turns out I was right about the music - it is by Clint Bajakian, who also did Sam And Max Hit The Road. The music for this level gets very reminiscent of the Mystery Vortex music at one point!

 

EDIT: I watched a walkthrough and it seems I was really close to finding my way back, it's just the crappy cliff textures make everything really confusing. Also it turns out you can shoot those turrets! So I might give this one last go...The problem is that it's not too stable so if you start alt-tabbing out to watch playthroughs and stuff like that, it tends to fuck the graphics up.

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Yeah, the level design in Dark Forces can be confounding at times. 

 

It's funny, because I remember Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight having really legible and naturalistic level design, and then I played Mysteries of the Sith and it was immediately back to these alternately cavernous and labyrinthine designs.

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I imagine once more dynamic lighting options and larger multi-story environments became possible in 3D games the job of FPS level design got so much easier. I think about my time playing Deus Ex as a 13 year old and even with a more open-world approach I never felt as lost as I would in Dark Forces or later levels of Doom.

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The next level (the mines) was a lot more linear but unfortunately had lots of platforming bits, which are a nightmare with these controls. I got to fight a dark trooper, which consisted of backpedaling in a circle shooting at him for 5 minutes. Then the door switch I needed to get out broke, then the game broke! I might use some level skip cheat codes to quickly make my way through the rest of the game and see any interesting bits (I seem to remember Vader shows up in this one?), then get onto Duke Nukem 3D.

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I've now given up on Dark Forces. It's cool to have such big, multi-tier levels, but after about half of the game it was starting to get repetitive enough that I didn't want to wander around lost flipping switches and shooting stormtroopers any more. 

The game's main strength is its great presentation and atmosphere. Lots of different OT-reminiscent settings, including Death Star type Imperial places, a grotty city with graffiti, and even a blockade runner feeling level with the nice white walls. It was nice to eventually get some aliens as well - the triclops ones and some Gamorrean guards, as well as a load of copies of that lizard bounter hunter in the orange jumpsuit. The mission briefings and mid-level updates in your earpiece (the first appearance of this trope!) tie everything together nicely, and it has a load of nice touches, like the little mouse robots running around, TIE Fighters flying around in-level, rooms where your laser blasts bounce of the walls, mines you can lay to fling enemies up in the air and the occasional clever puzzle such as following a schematic to position lifts thereby making a path through the shafts. It's just a shame it also has enough frustration (platforming, slippy-slidey ice levels, wonky aiming etc) and repetition to end up feeling like a chore at times.

I watched through a playthrough for the rest of it and was amused to see they had an "all your weapons are taken away" level, which would also become a standard FPS trope. Also, Coruscant has wall carvings and busts of Palpatine in his hood, in a very similar way to Doom's demon murals and Wolfenstein's Hitler-drenched decor!

 

Next: Duke Nukem 3D

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