Ben X

The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

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Yeah, I took a quick peek at the sequel, and while it seems like they have more interesting and varied enemies, and varied blade options with some cool dismemberment stuff, the partly proc-gen RPG stuff doesn't sound up my alley.

 

Shadow Warrior 1 co-op seems like it would be fun, though, shame it isn't available.

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If you weren't opposed there might be a mod or two to de-junk a lot of the proc-gen gun fluff in SW2 but like also you've just played through #1 so maybe #2 isn't the thing you want in yer life atm :P

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Okay, finished. Frankly, I wish I'd stopped at the two-thirds mark, because from there it's just same fight, different room, over and over. No new moves, no new enemies, and even the mind-numbing boss fights get repeated over and over. Plus, the story sank into incomprehensible demon family back-stabbing and failed attempts at pathos. Probably the most frustrating thing of all was that when they finally gave me the new powerful sword that I've been chasing the whole game, I was allowed to run down a corridor for 30 seconds killing a handful of grunts before they took it off me again for the rest of the game! I couldn't believe it! The central dynamics are fun enough that it still came out as a positive experience overall, but it's really frustrating that such a strong first half got utterly fumbled.

 

(There was one absolutely amazing bit that I have to mention, though, where you find a secret room that is a small grassy area from the original, pixel graphics and all. Pretty standard easter egg, I thought, as I walked over to pick up the collectible. As I did, suddenly a heavy metal track kicked in and a black bunny appeared, flying at my neck and ripping me to shreds. The combination of surprise and mixed pop culture references had me cackling even as I desperately hacked away at the little beast.)

 

I couldn't find any interesting videos or what have you about this game. There is a forum thread, but unfortunately no one actually posted in it once they played the game - opinions are scattered through the 'completed games' thread and the like. Seems people had a similar reaction to mine, anyway.

 

In my search through my various games libraries (oh for a free app that allows you to consolidate them all into one list) I've actually realised that I own Spec Ops The Line, but I think I'll play Wolfenstein New Order first before going back to that. I won't get far in, as I'm away for a week or so from tomorrow, so I'd rather just have a quick blast than get one step into what I understand is a cleverly satirical shooter with mediocre mechanics.

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I played through a moderately good chunk of Shadow Warrior before I ended up reformatting my computer a while ago (dunno if my save is still in the cloud). It sounds like I ducked out before the tedious stuff.

 

Spec Ops isn't satire - there's basically zero humor. I think it's a tremendous game. Most people aren't huge fans of the shooting and divide up just based on whether the story worked for them vs. whether it didn't.

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@Jutranjo - I did see mention of the train level being hidden in there behind a destructible wall somewhere as well, actually. I guess I needed to speculatively blow more shit up.

 

@TychoCelchuuu - ah, okay, not satire but commentary about how shooters distance you from the real horrors of war or something though, right?

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I've played through to the start of the second level and so far so Call Of Duty, give or take a couple of robots. I suspect they're slowly easing me into the more interesting stuff that I've heard about with some straightforward opening sections. And that'll have to do it for at least the next couple of weeks, see you for more FPS action soon!

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Ah ha, you're right! Off the list it goes, thanks Tycho!

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I found the New Order really hard to get into. Both it and New Colossus play in a very unique style that feels more like a very bombastic immersive sim at times than it does a traditional shooter. Lots of sneaking, lots of exploration, but when you finally do go loud with dual wielded shockhammers, god damn is it satisfying. Basically, that blend worked great for me once I found my groove, but I found both incredibly and frustratingly hard for the first few levels while I found it. I also know that it didn't work nearly as well for a lot of people. Most common complaint about both that I heard from others was "man, it's too bad that the game feels so weird to play because the story is amazingly fun and surprisingly good at times". Then there's me off in the corner quietly saying "noreallyguysit'sgoodjustdon'tplayitlikeanormalshooter..."

 

Long story short, I hope you get into it and am curious to see how this goes for you.

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Ah, yeah, I had noticed that there's a fair amount of map-checking, skill-upgrading, document-reading and the like. I very quickly assumed that it was all fluff grafted onto a regular shooter and got a bit of a "when do they get to the fireworks factory" feeling, but it sounds like I should try to embrace it. Wolfenstein is not a franchise I would have expected to go in that direction, but it does seem to be becoming a bit of a trend in shooters, along with the arcadey score-chasing.

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On 6/15/2018 at 9:44 PM, TychoCelchuuu said:

I played through a moderately good chunk of Shadow Warrior before I ended up reformatting my computer a while ago (dunno if my save is still in the cloud). It sounds like I ducked out before the tedious stuff.

 

Spec Ops isn't satire - there's basically zero humor. I think it's a tremendous game. Most people aren't huge fans of the shooting and divide up just based on whether the story worked for them vs. whether it didn't.

I think the shooting was okay, but I don't think the gameplay supports the story. I'll wait for Ben to get through it, but It's been like five years since I played it so I'm not sure I can articulate how I felt about it. Anyway, it's a game you should finish if you're gonna bother with it at all, it's not very long.

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18 hours ago, Ben X said:

Ah, yeah, I had noticed that there's a fair amount of map-checking, skill-upgrading, document-reading and the like. I very quickly assumed that it was all fluff grafted onto a regular shooter and got a bit of a "when do they get to the fireworks factory" feeling, but it sounds like I should try to embrace it. Wolfenstein is not a franchise I would have expected to go in that direction, but it does seem to be becoming a bit of a trend in shooters, along with the arcadey score-chasing.

 

I mean, also one of the best things about those games is that they DO get to the fireworks factory. They just take their time getting there and are oddly slow-paced for a game named "Wolfenstein" along the journey. The tonal swings in those games are HARD.

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I've played a little more of this, and it all feels rather loose. The shooting's okay, but I've been given like fifteen weapons options with no real idea of the difference between them. There's the immersive sim stuff plus the action stuff, but both of them feel rather undercooked, and I'm constantly bombarded with messages about perks and achievements and what have you. I got through the CoD/RTCW section at the start, and through the insane asylum. It's interesting that they're going this hard with the story, but I feel like a lot of beats get fudged. I'm often thinking "ah, I see what you were trying to do there". I did really like the scene where BJ is told that it's 1960, the war's over and the US surrendered (even if they did give away the twist earlier, plus unceremoniously cut to it at the top of the scene) - it's a convincing portrayal of confusion and panic .

 

I've just got to a bit where I have to stealth around and clear out a section. While it's weird to be doing this in a Wolfenstein game, I'm still trying to embrace it, even if the clunky weapons system doesn't help matters.

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19 hours ago, Ben X said:

I've just got to a bit where I have to stealth around and clear out a section. While it's weird to be doing this in a Wolfenstein game, I'm still trying to embrace it, even if the clunky weapons system doesn't help matters.

 

[Annoying know-it-all nerd voice]Uuuuuhhhhhh ACTUALLY the original 1981 Wolfenstein game was one of the FIRST stealth games![/Annoying know-it-all nerd voice] 

 

Anyway I loved the stealth stuff in TNO, but then I love stealth in general. If there's a stealth option in a game, you bet I'm gonna STEALTH.

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I feel like the game really hits its stride around the end of the internment camp section. If it's still not for you then, there's not much else to say.

 

 

...I still love it (and TNC) though.

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On 7/14/2018 at 8:21 AM, Henke said:

[Annoying know-it-all nerd voice]Uuuuuhhhhhh ACTUALLY the original 1981 Wolfenstein game was one of the FIRST stealth games![/Annoying know-it-all nerd voice] 

 

Ha ha, good point. Okay, it feels weird to me to be doing this in a Wolfenstein game..!

 

Well, I've just reached the internment camp, and I hope @miffy495 is right about this game hitting its stride soon because so far it's a real slog. It's either getting funnelled through scripted sequences, boring hub levels where you have to go pick up bits of paper and lumps of concrete, or war-of-attrition shooting sections . The latest one involved standing in a side-room and shooting all the guys as they ran towards me, then shooting three big robots with my laser gun that needs about five recharges at the power-point per robot, then shooting a slightly bigger robot. The game may gesture towards immersive sim mechanics but it doesn't offer any alternative playstyles - stealth goes out of the window very quickly and there aren't any interesting weapons to play with. I even completed an optional goal of finding four toys, and all I got was an unlocked model! Who gives a shit about unlocking models?!

 

What's more, while the visual fidelity is pretty good, the art design and story are both rendered rather dull by the plot point that the Nazis are using super-concrete to build everything. This not only makes for a boring story, it also makes for a very very grey game.

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I got to a point where the autosaves were really pissing me off, so I knocked this down to the lowest difficulty setting and barrelled through it. I'm glad I did, because the rest of the game was pretty much just more Nazis and robots in grey corridors. The moon base was quite cool with all the laser guns and HAL-style vents, but it was still mainly grey corridors. It's telling that the dev team is made of a load of ex-Starbreeze people, who made Riddick. It's the same mix of ambition, polish, clunkiness and frustration. Outside of mechanics, one thing that really stuck out to me was how often they broke the immersion with perks and collectibles and what have you. In one cutscene, a character says "oh by the way, I found my cousin's journal. Here, you take it in case you fancy reading it." It's just completely irrelevant to the plot and yet for the rest of the game these loud notifications came up telling me I'd unlocked another page or something and really putting me off. The side-objectives reward you with gold items, which are meaningless trinkets, whenever you get to a new location it tells you "new concept art for this location unlocked!" which may as well scream "this is a video game level!" at you, and the excellent alt-history music is mainly experienced via the menu system which is a terrible waste. 

 

Making of

Post-mortem

Forum thread

 

I did put a game called Zigurrat on this list, but looking at it again, the dungeon crawler aspect of it seems strong enough that I can't be bothered. So it's down to the last two games on this list - if I get through them relatively quickly, this will only have taken me three years!

 

Next up: Superhot

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Just a little way into Superhot so far. Took me a bit longer to get the hang of it than the original gamejam version, but I'm really enjoying it now. It's basically an exercise of patience, always fighting the urge to just run! The visual style is really cool, though I am already thinking this would be really cool with lots of visual detail, watching people's (or monsters or whatever) expressions change in super slow-mo. I like the old-school hacker narrative bits too, very intriguing, and fun to snoop around in and find other little games. I'm guessing the twist is that this is all actually real and I just think I'm playing a game? That's a twist I've seen at least twice before though, so hopefully they come up with something different...

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Oh, wow, finished it already. That was short but sweet. I wouldn't have minded a couple more levels where it ramped things up somehow, but probably a good idea not to outstay its welcome. I really enjoyed the addition of 'hotswitching' - it was great fun to throw your weapon at someone, body-jump into them, grab that weapon out of midair then swing round and blast the enemy standing next to you. I really enjoyed all the story-telling as well, and they didn't pull that twist, thankfully.

 

No real negatives at all! A couple of levels were a bit tough - like the elevator one - and it would have been nice to get replays without the text over them and the player movement smoothed out somehow, but that's about it. Apparently the VR version of this is great, I'd love to try that.

 

Forum thread

 

Last game now - Strafe

 

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Okay, as I suspected, I bounced off Strafe's roguelike/proc-gen stuff a little. I like the presentation, but I'm not having that much fun. So I'll keep it installed for a bit in case I want to dive back in, but I'm going to call this big FPS playthrough DONE.

 

A couple of  middling reviews that I pretty much agree with.

 

Thanks for all your interest and donations, everyone! I was tempted to do the same with all my unplayed adventure games but I'd probably get sick of them without swapping to other genres regularly, so I'm just going to play whatever I feel like for a while. It'll feel weird not keeping a travelogue here, but I guess I can post in game-specific threads for recent games and post my final opinions in the Games Completed thread for older ones where I would't want to necro-post.

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Congratulations, Ben. It's been quite the trip. Good show! I'm going to miss seeing this thread get updated.

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Man, 36 pages of this shit and they still can't get my name right.

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Yay! So, what's the verdict? What's THE BEST FPS GAME? :D

 

I'm pretty sure I've played at least 80% of your list, but a lot of the older stuff is wrapped up in nostalgia, so I'd love to hear how you feel, having just played all this stuff recently.

 

1 hour ago, Ben X said:

Apparently the VR version of this is great, I'd love to try that.

 

It is indeed good shit. I feel like most of the best first person shooters I've played the past couple of years have been VR games. Robo Recall, Arizona Sunshine, In Death, Rec Room! VR is where all the interesting FPS stuff is happening at the moment.

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