Ben X

The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

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That jeep chase sequence is very tough, it's not a bad place to stop. I want to mention one of the more ridiculous things the game throws at you later on though. You get captured, then thrown out of a helicopter. All your weapons are taken away, so all you have is an M4 with 30 bullets on some dead guy close to where you land. Right away there is one of those leaping trigens charging at you, which takes almost all your ammo. You then have to get through an island that is completely infested with trigens, it's like the game is taunting you to give up. It actually devolves even further, but that particular moment stood out to me.

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Dammit, Medal of Honor Pacific Assault is free on Origin right now, so I guess that's another WWII shooter to slot in. Apparently 'the game received "favorable" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic'.

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3 hours ago, Ben X said:

Dammit, Medal of Honor Pacific Assault is free on Origin right now, so I guess that's another WWII shooter to slot in. Apparently 'the game received "favorable" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic'.

That game allowed for coop in the entire campaign which I really liked, it was a solid enough shooter with a pretty fun player Vs AI mode.

The parts of that game I remember best are

riding an elephant and the game ending on a cliffhanger because they planned a sequel but never made it

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20 minutes ago, Cordeos said:

That game allowed for coop in the entire campaign

 

Ooh, I don't suppose there's any chance that works online nowadays? Might be fun to do at least parts of it with comrades-in-thumbs...

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Painkiller is feeling like a bit of a chore, to be honest. I don't think I'm so much into the bullet hell FPSes like this and Serious Sam. I'll keep going in them until I hit an annoying bit and then give up. I think I've actually hit that already with the swamp monster boss. The bosses are annoying bullet-sponges in general, but this one requires you to shoot temporary bubbles when they appear near the boss and I've only managed to get it to happen twice ever. I checked a walkthrough and there doesn't seem to be anything I'm missing. So I maaaay give up on this game already. I'll see how I feel when I come back to it. The cheesy atmosphere/enemy design is cool and shooting enemies with the ice-gun is always fun, but it's not enough to rescue this from being a slog.

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I got past that boss and luckily glitched my way through another one that would probably have led me to give up on the game, as it has some stupidly harsh and unavoidable fall damage. I actually got right up to the end of game boss, but I couldn't figure out the trick, so I watched a video of it instead (you have to shoot the meteors into Lucifer).

 

The final level setting was really cool - lots of different battles from different eras frozen in time. It's a shame the rest of the game wasn't so inventive. It had its moments, like the Ghost Rider guys who grab nearby enemies and use them as shields, but the essentially real-world locations and general grimdark feel mean this game isn't as memorable as Serious Sam. Oh, and the inter-level cut-scenes are as dreadful as people were saying! Pointless, interminable, and ugly, with so many misread lines, plus they feature Eve (yes, that one) looking like a default Unity naked female model but with a hair bra (which, bizarrely, you can see right through anyway).

 

I think another reason this felt like a bit of a slog was that the weapons, as per usual with these games that have a big wacky selection, weren't very satisfying or well-balanced on the whole. If they'd reduced the stake-gun reload time and given it the secondary freeze mode, they could have got rid of every other weapon except the chain-gun (with its rocket launcher secondary mode).

 

Here's a much more favourable retrospective from The Will Porter: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/painkiller-retrospective

 

And now I'm onto Thi3f!

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I'm already getting bad deja vu to the first Thief game! It's fun sneaking around putting out candles and what have you, but I just get frustrated by not knowing what the consequences of any of my actions are going to be. I'll definitely need to look into a fan mod I read about that links all the levels together and eliminates the DXIW- scale loading times before I go any further with this, I think.

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Another free FPS! I just got Killing Floor for free from Humble Bundle, but when I registered it I was given two free passes to the full game as well, so I'm not sure what I've actually got in my library... So if I've got a playable version of the game, and if someone wants to play co-op with me, I'll give it a go once I hit that point of my playthrough!

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Yes, you absolutely should get the Sneaky Upgrade if you're gonna play Thief 3.

 

Thief 2 is one of my all-time faves, and Thief 3 was one of my all-time letdowns. I actually think the accursed fourth game is better, gameplay-wise. At least it introduced new things like the swoop-mechanic, whereas Thief 3 is just a clunkier version of the first 2 games, but with smaller levels. And no rope-arrows or swimmable water! Boo! However it's not all bad. The narrative is good, it ties up Garrett's story nicely, and the Cradle-level is very spooky and good.

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Ehhh fuck it, I can't be bothered to muck about with mods (especially as I have to work out how to avoid shitty fan textures) just to play this game for ten more minutes before remembering that it's just not my sort of thing. Also, that lock-picking mini-game.

 

I'll paste here what I posted on the Size Forums when I played DooM3 over a couple of months a few years ago:

 

Quote

 

It plays fine on my new PC (although it doesn't seem to retain settings properly), but I'm trying to get it running to modern standards - basically, higher resolution with everything set to max. I've tried fucking about with creating a autoexec.cfg, but what seems to work easily for other people on various forums isn't working for me.

 

EDIT: okay, I can effect changes by editing the config.cfg file. Apparently that tends to reset after each play but it seems alright at the moment. It would still be nice to have a simple mod that gives me a nice options menu for all this instead of having to l33t h@ck everything, though...

 

Well, I've tweaked pretty much every setting in the config file (plus added a few in), and it looks pretty damn gorgeous. It actually stands up well to Rage's indoor corridor sections. 

All I need is a setting that just unlocks all the weapons cabinets, because I'm sure as hell not going to read all these emails and listen to all these audio logs. Instead I'll just keep it on easy and blast my way through it.

 

I left this alone for a while because I got to a really tough section; I just came back to it and sauntered through that section. I am getting a bit bored now, though. The locations are all very samey and they don't introduce new enemy types regularly enough. This game really could have been half as long.

It seems that after Hell (which I haven't got to yet) there's a load more research station levels, so I may end up skipping those.

 

I got through Hell, which was really ace except for the pain in the arse boss (I'm starting to wonder if id are taking the piss after this and Rage having a big glowing hit point), then I thought I may as well give the soul cube a fair go, and I'm nearly done now so I think I'll probably finish it. I'd like to see the cyberdemon. I also want to get to use the BFG at least once, which has been impossible up til now because it's a weapon that's too dangerous in closed quarters, in a corridor shooter! Then I've got to decide whether to play the expansion pack, which iirc has a gravity gun!

 

I finished the main game. The soul cube plus the BFG changed things up just enough that I kept going, plus the excavated ruins were pretty cool. The EOGB was just another big thing to shoot, although perhaps only the soul cube did damage to it, I'm not sure.

Basically, this game needs to be at least halved in length and it would be amazing. It's also very similar to Rage - the data logs and NPCs which precede Rage's RPG-lite stuff, the walky robot turret friends, the Half-Lifey walking round the base at the start, the Imps clambering along walls and jumping at you. As I said in the Rage thread, if these games got a mod that lineared them out and cut all the bullshit and padding, they'd be fantastic.

 

The gravity gun and bullet-time make this much more fun (although once again it's starting to get repetitive, of course). Whoever makes that fan mod I'm daydreaming about should definitely stick some of this in there too.

 

 

And now I'm moving onto Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault. I'll have a bit of a play, and if anyone wants to try co-op, let me know!

 

 

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So far, MOH:PA is like a very clumsy Far Cry. After a long sequence of levels which were nicely presented but where I didn't have to do much (boot camp and Pearl Harbor mainly), I'm now in the jungle. It's very difficult to figure out where I'm supposed to go or where the enemy are. I keep on coming up against leaf-painted walls and having to sit back and watch my squad until I can tell what the hell's going on. The shooting's not very satisfying so far either - crappy WWII weapons plus enemies that don't always react to getting shot. The atmosphere is as you'd expect - a mix of gung-ho and glumness, with an R Lee Ermey clone chucked in for good measure.

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I got to a bit where you have to take down two fighter planes with a shitty gun and you die 19 times out of 20 no matter how good you are. I fluked past it once only to get to a turret section where I only had 7 health left. My paramedic doesn't want to help me because he's in a raft. Fuuuuck this, uninstalled.

 

Star Wars: Republic Commando next!

 

(I don't have any Half-Life 2 + episodes posts to paste here, but they're brilliant, obviously EDIT: in fact, fuck it, I'm going to play a bit of HL2 just to remind myself how amazing it was in 2004)

 

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Man I really liked Republic Commando.  A very underappreciated game in my opinion.  I don't recall the characters or story being especially engaging but I felt the gameplay was solid with the squad tactics and versatile weapon.  Haven't played in a long time though so my memory's probably a bit fuzzy.

 

Kind of in the mood to play it now.  I might pick it up real cheap on Steam.

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Oh yeah, it's 75% off at the mo.

 

In case you missed my edit, I'm having a bit of a blast through HL2 first. I probably won't go through any vehicle sections, though, so shouldn't be long before I get into SWRC.

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The presentation for Republic Commando is great, especially if you enjoyed at least the design of Episode II. There's a cool little intro where you're a clone, growing from baby in a tube, to young Kiwi kid doing computer tests, to full-on Temuera Morrison meeting your squad and seeing armies of clones and transports gathering. Then you're thrown into the Geonosis battle from the end of the movie and having great fun blasting all those droids and bugs. The HUD is nice and helpful, with objectives and possible team-member orders highlighted (focus fire on this droid, snipe here, blow this up).

 

The only problems I've hit so far are:

it's surprisingly difficult already, with laser-shooting bugs that take up to 3 clips of ammo. I'm actually tempted to go back and put it on easy, unless there's a tactic I'm missing.

as with Pacific Assault, there's a team system where you can tell your team to pull back, defend an area etc. I always find these way too difficult to think about in the heat of battle, as there's never an easy way to remember which key does what. It's an RTS element that doesn't really mix well with FPS.

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Yeah if I remember right giving orders mid fight is less than ideal.  I think there are a number of sections where you can plan ahead a bit and setup your squad before the fight happens which makes things much better.  I also do seem to recall coming out of many enemy encounters with little ammo. 

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Yeah, it's better once you figure out how they want you to use it, can be pretty satisfying. It's still insanely difficult, though. Anything but the lowest of enemies can kill you from full health in a couple of shots. There's a siege section now and I just don't see how it's possible.

 

EDIT: okay, a walkthrough advised me to use the sniper positions which I hadn't spotted. You kind of have to charge into deadly situations just to get your team set in the only positions that will allow you to win...

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I had to put this down to easy just to make it possible, and it's actually not too bad now, although I do spend a lot of time healing my squad mates and using health-recharging bacta stations which can make it feel like a slog.

 

I'll be interested to hear how your replay goes if you pick it up, @SecretAsianMan

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There isn't really any decision making to giving orders in Republic Commando.  It's pretty much just looking for points of interest to spam the use key at, which will automatically make whichever squad member gets assigned to them way more effective than they are by default.

 

Also that game has a regenerating shield like the one in Halo, but if I remember right, unlike Halo none of the enemies have shields like this, so if you're struggling make sure you use and abuse the fact that you have potentially infinite health while your enemies don't.

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Yeah, I noticed the shields on my tactical display, but I hadn't quite figured out how they worked. I guess the deal is that you only lose health if your shields are at zero, so as long as you duck under cover before your shields go down, you're fine? The revive mechanic is also cool and has gotten me out of some jams, but to be honest I'd rather they just alleviated the difficulty a little instead because, along with bacta stations, reviving team-mates or waiting to get revived myself is where I spend a lot of game time.

 

And yeah, now I'm used to just running in and immediately setting my guys up, it's a lot better. Although sometimes there aren't any POI for them, or there's a ceiling turret, which they just cannot handle. Those fucking Star Wars ceiling turrets have been the bane of this FPS play-through. Also the flying droids with lightning attack were stupidly overpowered on Normal setting, especially when I was on my own. I just cannot believe that they play-tested this and decided the difficulty levels were spot on.

 

Basically, there's lots of cool stuff going on here but also a load of bullshit enemies, bad ammo balancing etc getting in the way of it.

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I've finished ii! It's actually pretty short, which is definitely a good thing without a lot more variety being introduced. Overall, once I switched to easy, I very much enjoyed this. Great atmosphere and attention to detail (your visor's wiper cleaning away bug splatter, wire-frames of targeted enemies showing through walls), and satisfying squad mechanics. It's actually made me want to re-watch the prequel trilogy, which is pretty damn impressive. I wish this had done better so we could have got the planned sequel, Imperial Commando. That would have been great, starting the game as a Republic commando on Kashyyyk to retrieve your fallen crewman when Order 66 is given and suddenly turning sides and taking down a load of wookies and jedi.

 

Retrospectives here:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/10/01/retrospective-republic-commando/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/retrospective-star-wars-republic-commando-article

 

and part 2 of a dev commentary (parts 3 and 4 are also available, but part one got taken down because of the John Williams score, which I'm gutted about):

 

 

NEXT: Prey

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I'm glad you liked it.  I think it's one of the better Star Wars video games.  It certainly has flaws but I think the foundation is solid and a sequel could have smoothed out the rough edges while presenting an interesting non-Jedi side of the Star Wars mythos.

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