It’s been too long since I played the first game, but in 2, you try to go straight and live the simple farm life and it’s such a boring part of the game. Typically that’s a bad thing, but I loved how it simulated that itch for chaos. As a player, you’re thinking the same thing as the character. “Not long ago, I was riding around shooting people and making tons of money, and now I’m shoveling shit for pennies a day.” When the mission comes to go back to your roots and raise some hell, you know you shouldn’t, but damn does it feel good to get back to doing what you love.
Its a fantastic game! Got really close to beating it but dropped off. Music was good, the actual monsters very fun. Some of the better pixel art and the controls were tight.
Some of the bosses are VERY hard, to the point I had to look up guides. Its worth the $$. Honestly I wish they had an easy mode or something to get us though the hardest parts.
Eh, Wolf3D (not to be confused with the OG top down stealth games that NOBODY played… and where the original levels fundamentally don’t exist anymore for fascinating reasons) was fast paced, for the time.
Yeah, it was very much slow room clearing early on. But from probably episode 3 on, you were generally run and gunning just because of resource limits and enemy health pools. Not to mention encounter design and more “hidden rooms” that open up when a fight kicks off.
And DOOM 2 was similarly fast for its time with encounter design specifically negating the effectiveness of the proto-cover shooter gameplay that DOOM1 actually was.
But yeah. This is very much more of a Rise of the Triad game. And ROTT was genuinely fast paced even for today (and can be REAL disorienting if you play any of the remakes).
But, I’ll take people comparing stuff to DOOM over calling it a “boomer shooter” any day of the week. Even if the vast majority of those are actually Quake-likes. Similar to how this gets the Wolf3D nod when it is very much an ROTT-like.
It is literally the “guy who has only seen boss baby” meme. The purpose of “game as genre” is to help people understand what they are buying. Souls games have gotten murky, but “a soulsborne” is a good way of explaining the basic gameplay loop and the ones that add their own thang to it (like Nioh) stand out. But we’ve also seen that fall apart with the massive pushback of “… Jedi Survivor isn’t really a souls game at all? Outside of the checkpoint system and i-frames?”.
Because, yes, saying that Call of Duty is “a DOOM game” would convey some of the mechanics of the game. But anyone who has played both will tell you they are VERY different games (even if there is a good argument that DOOM 2 and CoD are the same kind of cover shooter, funny enough)
And yeah, ROTT was not popular at all. But every few years we get an ROTT (mostly remakes of the same game from different studios) and people realize they were too old for that shit when they were 5. But for the people who DO love that gameplay? Not having to sift through every “doom game” or (ugh) “boomer shooter” would be nice. Same with how games like Strafe suffered from constantly being compared to DOOM when it was really kinda just a blatant reskin of quake 2.
Like I said, there are MUCH worse ways to characterize these games. But there is something to be said about discussing what the games actually ARE in the vein of so that others can decide if it is worth their time.
My experience was only playing at friends’ houses who had Play Stations, but I never felt like one was better than the other. I appreciated the mechanic of upgrading items helped to give a different element to the game instead of it being the same thing Nintendo was doing but with different characters. What we really played a lot with friends, though, was Battle Mode on Mario Kart. I don’t think CTR had that, or else no one thought it was as good. It really hasn’t been as good in Mario Kart either since the Wii version I’d say.
SimCity 4. That was before the franchise went to shit.
I dunno why exactly, but I just don’t get the same enjoyment out of Skylines or other city builders.
The perfect mix of unsuspecting hero, chosen one, and bad ass. The sequel also gives her an Ellen Riply in Aliens vibe as well. Shame about 3rd Birthday and the fact we will never get another one. For those who don’t know, the owner of the original IP didn’t want to renew the license for the games, which means the games can no longer use anything from the novel which includes all references to mitochondria and Eve. That’s why 3rd Birthday was seemingly a totally different game; they tried to make a sequel that couldn’t reference any of the main plot points of the previous games or novel.
Shukran from Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei Ou on the Super Famicom
Ifrit is a djinn who was once the king of the djinn. Then he was cursed and bound to a ring until he granted the wishes of 1000 people. He’s granted wishes to 999 people when his ring comes into the possession of an orphan girl named Shukran. Over the years he’s become bitter and cynical, and he just expects she’s going to want gold or such, but instead, to his surprise and dismay, she wishes to bring peace to the land. And she means it. So Ifrit has to first set out to find and recruit the most powerful of his former djinn subjects, and since he can’t stray far from the ring, Shukran has to come along.
She’s far and away the weakest character in the game, but at every turn, when it’s (eventually predictably) revealed that whichever djinn they’re trying to recruit at the moment has a well-deserved grudge against Ifrit and no intention of helping him with anything, it’s Shukran and her optimism, determination, honor and kindness that wins them over, and (after Shukran and Ifrit and their allies complete whatever trial or quest the djinn tasks them with) they end up swearing allegiance not to him, but to her. So while she herself remains ridiculously weak, she is very much the driving force behind the party. And over time she can summon more and more powerful djinn in battle, and they’re decidedly not weak.
If you don’t mind a bit of a grindy ARPG aspect to it and REALLY annoying progression for traversal? Everspace 2 is probably THE best space combat in a modern release… which is sad but it is still actually really good and has some great set pieces. It is basically Freelancer 2, if that helps. If you just want shooty shooty boom boom then the original Everspace may be a better fit but… there is a reason so many of us slept on 2 after trying to like 1.
If you want something that is basically a love letter to Privateer? Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. I personally don’t vibe with it but I think that is because it is too close to what I expect to be using a HOTAS with (it is very much a gamepad/m+kb game) and the “vibes” of the Rebel Galaxy series are more “space redneck” than “space western”.
I have yet to actually get around to it (just been, what, eight or nine years now?) but I hear that some of the player origins in X4 are really good for getting into combat. I sincerely doubt that because the X series has always had REALLY good combat… broken up by 10 hours of trading so you can afford repairs and the missiles you use. But worth a look.
If you don’t mind getting out of a fighter and into a corvette or even a capital ship?
I REALLY like Cosmoteer but it is pretty grindy to start with. Space Pirates and Zombies, shitty acronym aside, has much better onboarding and similar gameplay but also much less control or a sense of “this is mine”.
And it is a love it or hate it kind of pseudo-series (really more like major functionality patches sold as a sequel) but check out Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2. You control capital ships in the 40k universe and Tindalos very much understood the assignment Just understand that 40k doesn’t pretend that space combat is anything other than romanticized WW1 naval fleet combat and it really feels like you are controlling ships of the line as it were.
Lots of intresting things there! Just read some reviews for RGO and it sounds like my kinda thing! And I’m going to try out BGA2, because I do like the somewhat ponderous naval vibe to battles too. Thanks!
I’m reminded of my daughter who used her Hulk puppet as a baby puppet. Kids will always find a way to play what they want.
She also didn’t care much for the story in Spider-Man or GTA but then again I think those games are designed with such players in mind.
Every time I think of some example I realise that it’s actually encouraged by the game. Like Creative Mode in Minecraft to just build stuff, playing Sim City without catastrophes, killing every NPC in an RPG.
My brother used to shoot me in the back in Doom co-op. But if PvP wasn’t intended it would be turned off.
My brother used to shoot me in the back in Doom co-op. But if PvP wasn’t intended it would be turned off.
Reminds me of playing Rainbow 6 on the N64. It had co-op, with no PvP but it had friendly fire so my friend and I would clear out all but one terrorist so the mission wouldn’t end, and then try to kill each other in a now mostly empty map. I once dodge his bullets because it was one the earliest games where your model would bend and move as you aimed, and my controls wonked out and made me look strsight up in the sky so my dude was bending over backwards as my friend shot over me lol
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