The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

[Ben X]

This is generally good fun. A bit too much of the typical Dark Forces running around mazes pushing buttons, and it's pretty tough even now I'm getting used to the alternate fire modes, but it's still cool running around blasting Imperials and seeing gronks walking past. There was a nice little bit where I needed my mate Jan to push a button for me, and she asked me to come back and help her fight through some troopers then escort her back to the button.

 

I've got to a bit where I can't figure out what I need to do (oh Allied Assault, how I miss your objectives compass!) so I'll check a walk-through before I get back to this (EDIT: grrr, I had to blow up a crate through a window which opens a door for some reason - I can't tell which crates explode, they all look the same!). I didn't start again on baby mode in the end, which might be my undoing, but these games really should be balanced well enough that I can get through on normal.

[thepaulhoey]

Jedi Knight 2 is really annoying! I'm ok with the guns, got used to them after a bit but the level design is just nonsense. I feel like I'm just running around pressing buttons to see what door it opens and hope there's a switch for another door in that room.

 

I'm only on the first level but I was at the part where the bridge tunnel thing explodes the second time, I back pedaled a bit and fell to my doom because I guess the bit behind me fell as well? Oh well, I'll just load and wait it hasn't made a save since I got to the facility? Esc -> Exit.

 

I loved this game when it was released and the combat is still fun but the level design is just plain annoying.

[Ben X]

Yep, that's Dark Forces games for you! Iirc, there are a load of console cheats that you can use to cheat your way through the shittier bits. I'm resisting the temptation because once I crack I'll just cheat my way through the whole thing and not really experience it properly.

[Ben X]

Right, this is stupidly hard. The Imperial Remnant apparently hired fully-trained ninjas as their stormtroopers, each one is like a fricking boss battle. I'm going to see if there's a console cheat to put it down to easy mode.

 

EDIT: fuck, there is not. Not sure how many times I can be bothered to attempt the third level with its Serious Sam style enemy-filled rooms but shitty weapons and sparse health packs. I may just have to cheat my way through.

[Roderick]

I have fond memories of Jedi Outcast (which started the hilarious colon-naming gig here on the forums). I played it originally on the Gamecube(!) in French(!), which taught me the phrase 'que le Force soit avec toi!' I think if i'd replay it today, I'd find it rather opaque as an experience, and I'd wonder why it wasn't more like The Force Unleashed or something.

[Ben X]

Right, I discovered a couple of things which have helped: area-specific damage apparently exists in this game, so head-shots help; supply keys open a certain type of crate.

 

The main things that are annoying me are the difficulty - you can fire five times directly at a stormtrooper and manage to miss him as he ninjas about the place and your weapon fires anywhere it likes - and the bad signposting which means I'm always missing switches, lifts, tunnels etc. I haven't had to check a playthrough for a game so much in a while. If it weren't for those two issues I'd really be enjoying this game as the presentation's great and when you do know what you're doing and get lucky with the combat, it's good fun playing Han Solo, blasting Imperials and hitting switches until shit blows up.

 

I've just got to the Jedi Temple on Yavin and met Luke Skywalker. I'm on the cusp of getting my saber and Force powers, so hopefully it will all pick up soon. 

[Ben X]

Nope. Unlocking my saber and Force powers unleashes a load of snipers and suicide bombers against which my new stuff give no protection, so it's even harder. This is just stupid, I'm going to have to start cheating to top my health up. Otherwise I'd be quitting here, I think.

[Badfinger]

You're playing two of my favorite games as a teenager back to back and your reaction is shocking me.

 

You definitely should be able to deflect blasters with the lightsaber. I remember being essentially unkillable in the back third of the game, and it was more about how to force ballet your way through the game.

[Ben X]

I can deflect blasters but not the snipers or the thermal detonators (which are also annoying because you have to kill from a distance the triclops guys - 'Grans', says Wookiepedia - who throw them, otherwise they explode).

 

I actually managed to push on a bit further without cheating, but it took a fuck-load of quick-saving, memorising and luck. I pushed through some pretty annoying sections with these two games, so I'm obviously enjoying them in general, it's just there's a fair amount of very difficult/unfair bullshit in there too.

[SecretAsianMan]

Thermal detonators you can toss around with force push/pull.  If I remember correctly force speed lets you dodge sniper shots Matrix style.  I think sometimes it would auto-dodge but I was never able to get that to work consistently.

[Ben X]

Yeah, Speed lets you dodge them mostly, but you can't have it on all the time. I had a bit of a trial run Force-pushing my own thermal detonators and it was far too random to trust in a combat situation (apart from which you don't really get the time to switch force power and line it all up all while you've got snipers taking your health from 100 to zero in three quick, accurate shots - maybe if I keep Push as my selected power and use F3 to put speed on instead, I might pull it off occasionally.). This is the problem a lot of games with loads of different powers/weapons have - it's often too much of a hassle/risk to use them so you just stick with the third gun up. I had the same issue with Dark Messiah.

 

.

[eot]

On 2016-12-31 at 8:15 PM, Ben X said:

I got it working! I couldn't handle the Ultra Realism.

 

I have died about a million times already, and I;m not really giving the game a chance,I guess, but I can't be bothered to crawl over a huge green polygon for ten minutes over and over again just to get popped in the head. The cut scenes are buggy and awful, like a 6 year old retelling a Tom Clancy novel with their teddy bears, and the objective marker system is FUBAR. 

 

So! Onto Return To Castle Wolfenstein!

Operation Flashpoint is definitely an acquired taste, but I think it's brilliant. Much of what made DayZ great can be traced directly back to OpFl. I'm not sure if you know but there's a feature to speed up time, just like in flight sims, so those dull sections can be over quite fast. It is a game where you fail a lot though.

 

As for RTCW, that's a beloved game and I have some fondness for it too, but I replayed it maybe two years ago and found that aside from a few levels it really wasn't that great. It's also strangely punishing at times. The only thing that really holds up about it is the flamethrower effect.

[SecretAsianMan]

3 hours ago, Ben X said:

Yeah, Speed lets you dodge them mostly, but you can't have it on all the time. I had a bit of a trial run Force-pushing my own thermal detonators and it was far too random to trust in a combat situation (apart from which you don't really get the time to switch force power and line it all up all while you've got snipers taking your health from 100 to zero in three quick, accurate shots - maybe if I keep Push as my selected power and use F3 to put speed on instead, I might pull it off occasionally.). This is the problem a lot of games with loads of different powers/weapons have - it's often too much of a hassle/risk to use them so you just stick with the third gun up. I had the same issue with Dark Messiah.

 

I remember rebinding the keys to be able to access my frequently used force powers easier.  Mostly push and lightning with the occasional choke.

[Ben X]

6 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

I remember rebinding the keys to be able to access my frequently used force powers easier.  Mostly push and lightning with the occasional choke.

 

Ah, I don't have those yet! Just push, pull, speed and jump. No heal either

 

9 hours ago, eot said:

Operation Flashpoint is definitely an acquired taste, but I think it's brilliant. Much of what made DayZ great can be traced directly back to OpFl. I'm not sure if you know but there's a feature to speed up time, just like in flight sims, so those dull sections can be over quite fast. It is a game where you fail a lot though.

 

As for RTCW, that's a beloved game and I have some fondness for it too, but I replayed it maybe two years ago and found that aside from a few levels it really wasn't that great. It's also strangely punishing at times. The only thing that really holds up about it is the flamethrower effect.

 

Yeah, I kind of knew Op Flash wouldn't be my thing before installing it! As for RTCW, I had difficulty finding any in-depth retrospectives for it, only general Wolfenstein ones and even in those it is portrayed as mediocre. I think the shine must have come off it over the years, as I was under the impression it was fondly thought of, too. The flamethrower effect is sweet, though!

[marginalgloss]

11 hours ago, eot said:

Operation Flashpoint is definitely an acquired taste, but I think it's brilliant. Much of what made DayZ great can be traced directly back to OpFl. I'm not sure if you know but there's a feature to speed up time, just like in flight sims, so those dull sections can be over quite fast. It is a game where you fail a lot though.

 

 

This takes me back - I played so much Operation Flashpoint back in the day. I've still got the boxed 'Gold Edition' somewhere that came with all the discs of extra content. I never want to get rid of it!

It was hard as nails, and IIRC there was no proper manual saving system - I think it used checkpoints or something, which meant you could lose huge chunks of progress if you weren't careful – but for some reason that didn’t put me off. You just had to be unbelievably careful. My main memory is of inching through bushes, waiting for some suspicious cluster of three dark pixels against a hillside to move enough to risk a shot. But perhaps there are trainers available now to mitigate the whole ‘die from one unseen bullet from a mile away’ thing. 

Some of the mission design in that game was astonishingly ambitious for its time. It walked a fine line between ‘serious military simulator’ and ‘machine for creating emergent open world nonsense’ along the lines of Far Cry 2/MGSV.  I'm thinking of stuff like:

 

The one where you’re ordered to keep watch over a tiny campsite by the ocean. You’re totally alone, it’s at night, and of course there are Russian commandos trying to sneak up on you in the dark. No threat indicators, no red dots on a mini-map – just a campfire, a rifle, and the vague portent of your impending death. 

 

The one where you get lost behind enemy lines without a weapon, a map, or a compass. You have only a note which tells you to ‘Go west’ to get back to the friendly side – but how to figure out which way is west? You have to look at the stars! (They mapped the night sky in realistic detail for this game. Again, there’s nothing in the game that tells you this is what to do – it’s an open world, so you can go any way you want.)

 

The one after that where you get captured by the Russians and have to escape their base before they march you to a firing squad. You could book it over the fence, sneak out, or just steal a tank and drive down the road screaming bloody murder. You could even steal a Hind D (“…a Hind D…?!”) and strafe the place with rockets, if you were really quick.

 

The ‘Resistance’ add on campaign, which took the emergent stuff to a ridiculous degree. The first mission had you as an ex-soldier settling down for a quiet life in the countryside. A couple of Russians pull up one day – this is all in-engine, in-game stuff, no cutscenes – and ask you if you’ll collaborate with them. You can choose to help them (in which case the game basically ends) or you can run into your shed, get your old rifle, and take them out. But then you have to steal their jeep and head for the horizon before backup arrives. 

 

The Resistance stuff also had a unique risk/reward mechanic whereby in order to equip your squad of freedom fighters for future missions, you had to take guns and ammo and vehicles from the Russians by literally picking stuff up from the bodies of fallen soldiers. This lead to some interesting moments where you knew there were a bunch of tanks about to rumble over the nearest hill but you had to desperately salvage ammo from a raid – it was really clever and tense. Unfortunately, micromanaging the squad AI was also a pain in the butt, and all this only added to the already considerable difficulty of the game. But for its time it seemed unbelievably sophisticated. 

 

 

[Simon]

21 hours ago, Ben X said:

Nope. Unlocking my saber and Force powers unleashes a load of snipers and suicide bombers against which my new stuff give no protection, so it's even harder. This is just stupid, I'm going to have to start cheating to top my health up. Otherwise I'd be quitting here, I think.

 

Ah yes, I seem to remember that it rather meanly gives you the saber and then chucks a level at you where it's relatively little use. Is it Nar Shaddaa?

Persevere if you can - I remember the later half of the game being really satisfying. I'd sort of forgotten about just how painful the gunplay of the earlier was levels until this thread, but doing silly stuff with the Force powers and cutting your way through dozens of enemies in seconds should be all the sweeter once you get there.
 

I never got around to Jedi Academy (also by Raven), but I bought it on Steam recently, I'll give that a whirl when I have time. I see it's further down your list too.

[SecretAsianMan]

5 hours ago, Ben X said:

 

Ah, I don't have those yet! Just push, pull, speed and jump. No heal either

 

Choke+Push was maybe one of my favorite things to do in that game.  Nothing like lifting up some poor hapless Stormtrooper then tossing him at his buddies. 

 

I very highly recommend you rebind the force powers to more useful and accessible keys.  One of my biggest annoyances with older PC games is the default bindings that are based on keyboard function rather than gameplay function.  It's easy to fix but the logic being asking me to use F3 when the V key is sitting there doing nothing always boggled my mind.

[Ben X]

Hooray, I made it to Bespin and I now have... Force Heal! Woo hoo! I think I'm going to have to rebind some keys now as I have too many powers that I'll want on a regular basis. I still haven't tried mind trick yet, but level 1 doesn't sound too useful.

 

I'm still really enjoying this game, there are so many great Star Warsy touches and references, and when you're flipping between your powers, saber and the sniper rifle and taking enemies down no sweat, it's great. But honestly, anyone befuddled by my frustrations needs to go back and play the bit where you get locked in a room with six ever-moving ever-firing laser turrets, and all you can do is strafe and shoot at them for ages until you manage to get them all, then the instant you fire your kill-shot on the final turret, a door opens up and you get hit with laser fire by a ton more enemies.

 

For not the first time in my life, I've wished more games had fan-edit mods where they simply remove or fix the shit sections.

[Salacious Snake]

12 hours ago, marginalgloss said:

The ‘Resistance’ add on campaign, which took the emergent stuff to a ridiculous degree.

 

I totally forgot about Resistance. I think that may have been the best Bohemia campaign. 

 

I agree about the AI squad stuff. My favorite bits in OpFlash/ArmA are when you're just a dude among dudes following orders, because it's so cumbersome when you have to babysit a bunch of virtual student drivers. I've always wanted to get more into the multiplayer, but it seems like a commitment.

[Ben X]

Alright, now this game is fun! With speed and heal, I have the freedom to try out all my other powers like choke and lightning without getting punished for it. There are still some teeth-grinding moments, like the droid escort section, but overall it's lovely to run into an arena of enemies, scope the room out and work out tactics on the fly as I bounce around. And the snipers are ameliorated too, as I can retreat, Force heal, then head back in and snipe them back. Also, Bespin's got some really nice huge vertical spaces that really evoke that setting (plus the Death Star and other vertical spaces as discussed in the Rogue One thread) from the movies, and the maps aren't half as confusing and fiddly, even though there's still the occasional corridor-labyrinth.

 

The saber duels are cool, too, though I feel like I'm not quite understanding the tactics of them. I just tend to keep swinging until I get a good hit in. I'll probably check the manual again and then google for tips before I do any more. (EDIT: the first guide I found - holy cow it's deep!)

[SecretAsianMan]

There supposedly is some depth to the saber mechanics, such as combos and hidden moves, but I never found them particularly useful in the single player.  I think what I did the most was use the heavy stance overhead swing as an opening attack to crash through their defense then switch to the normal or fast stance and hack away.  For anyone not using a lightsaber I just stayed with the fast stance since one or two saber swings is enough.

[Ben X]

I don't have different stances yet, and I'll probably end up sticking to normal the whole time even when I get the others! Good to at least be aware of a few basics like the back slash, running up walls etc. I'm on the first big saber battle now - the lizard dude's lady sidekick. It's quite tough, but I think if I make good use of the tunnels I'll manage it.

[eot]

I don't think I've played Jedi Outcast without cheating to get the lightsaber in the first level. I also spent way more time with the demo than the actual game.

[Ben X]

I'm pretty bored of this now. Just endless running round mazes and pushing buttons. The Force combat is still fun, though saber duels feel mostly like luck to me - the best sword mechanics I've ever played are the original Prince Of Persia, and I'd love to play a 3D equivalent of those. I might push through to the end, I'm not sure - judging from walkthroughs, I'm nearly there.

 

In the meantime, here are some links:

 

A retrospective article which captures the highs and lows well 

An objective review

Jake asks for feedback on the game for an upcoming Thumbs review of it (which I can't find)

A (rather homoerotic) Thumbs thread about the game: 

 

 

[SecretAsianMan]

I feel that your opinion echos mine.  In general I thought the gameplay was fun but the level design was pretty uninspired in a lot of ways.  Repetitive corridors and shafts get old fast.  I want to say Jedi Academy was better about that but I honestly don't remember.  I think at the very least it had more variety.