Shadow Warrior (1997)
This is the only game out of the "big three" Build engine games I never completed, though I did actually buy it back in the day (I still have my original CD!). From what I had played of it, I didn't like it as much as Duke 3D or Blood. So I decided to finally complete this game this year.

When I play a good old DOS-era FPS, I only allow myself to save at the beginning of a level... if I get killed, it's back to the beginning. With Shadow Warrior, I make an exception for the unbelievably frustrating platforming sections. I save before any platforming, and reload if I die during a jump... but if I get killed later by an enemy, it's back to the beginning.

Anyway, I first tried playing the Shadow Warrior Classic Redux version on Steam. This is a modern source port sort of thing that feels great to play... but looks like garbage. Colors are washed out and lack contrast, and the lighting is dull. There is seriously something wrong with how this version of the game looks. There's a beta version you can access through Steam that tries to adjust the lighting to better match the original game, but it's way too dark... and since then, the game has been abandoned.

Next, I tried playing the game using the "Raze" engine. The game looks and feels great using this, but the game seemed way too difficult even on the "I Have No Fear" difficulty level ("normal" difficulty according to the manual). I struggled to clear the shareware episode, thanks mostly to the shadow ninjas and red ninjas. These enemies are a pain because they can shoot fire (shadow) and missiles (red), but they are out of control here. In this version, they throw out their most powerful attack immediately upon spotting you, giving you no time to react. The platforming also felt somewhat off.

Finally, I tried playing the game on my dedicated DOS machine (P133). Now, this is more like it! It looks just as good as I remember with moody correct lighting and good contrast. Most importantly, the difficulty is how I remember; harder than Duke 3D and Blood, but not frustratingly so. The shadow ninjas and red ninjas aren't instant death (they take a bit of time to react to your presence and start out with weaker attacks before switching to fire/missiles), and even the jumping feels better. I blasted through the shareware episode in one sitting without dying on the "I Have No Fear" setting, so I'll probably go through it again on the default difficulty of "Who Wants Wang?" ("hard").

I still don't like it as much as Duke 3D and Blood, but I'm warming up to it. The weapons feel great and the level design is top notch.

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 10:21:

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently. Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because mo […]
Show full quote

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently.
Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because most places and scenes didn't trigger any neural responses.
So, either I'm just getting old or the game wasn't that remarkable back then.
Considering many annoying situations, the overall gameplay and at times boring and artificially lenghtened leveldesign I'd tend to choose the latter option. Or is it just older me?
Sure it got many (for its time) fresh ideas of interacting with the environment but compared to the original Half Life I'd rate it well below that.

Other than that played through the original Doom (played via gzdoom for the sake of reducing eye-illness), Quake 2 & Unreal (both on "original" hardware aka V2-SLI), and some more.
Seems I'm in a phase of replaying all those old titles of childhood rather than exploring new stuff.

I felt that way about Half-Life 2 at the time it released. I remember getting into lengthy arguments with friends in college about it. I was adamant that HL2 was worse than HL1. Less interesting and more repetitive combat encounters, gimmicky physics/vehicle based sections, and the overall arc of the game seemed to follow no sensible arc. It was just a series of random and disjointed units. Which I later came to discover was exactly what they were as "making of" documentaries started coming out covering how different teams worked on different series of levels, with almost no communication between them, and no coordination about how their work fit into a larger picture. In the end they just stitched up whatever they had and called it a game. The writers that put down the narrative threads through it all truly worked miracles.

Namrok wrote on 2024-07-11, 13:35:

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 10:21:

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently. Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because mo […]
Show full quote

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently.
Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because most places and scenes didn't trigger any neural responses.
So, either I'm just getting old or the game wasn't that remarkable back then.
Considering many annoying situations, the overall gameplay and at times boring and artificially lenghtened leveldesign I'd tend to choose the latter option. Or is it just older me?
Sure it got many (for its time) fresh ideas of interacting with the environment but compared to the original Half Life I'd rate it well below that.

Other than that played through the original Doom (played via gzdoom for the sake of reducing eye-illness), Quake 2 & Unreal (both on "original" hardware aka V2-SLI), and some more.
Seems I'm in a phase of replaying all those old titles of childhood rather than exploring new stuff.

I felt that way about Half-Life 2 at the time it released. I remember getting into lengthy arguments with friends in college about it. I was adamant that HL2 was worse than HL1. Less interesting and more repetitive combat encounters, gimmicky physics/vehicle based sections, and the overall arc of the game seemed to follow no sensible arc. It was just a series of random and disjointed units. Which I later came to discover was exactly what they were as "making of" documentaries started coming out covering how different teams worked on different series of levels, with almost no communication between them, and no coordination about how their work fit into a larger picture. In the end they just stitched up whatever they had and called it a game. The writers that put down the narrative threads through it all truly worked miracles.

"Less interesting and more repetitive combat encounters, gimmicky physics/vehicle based sections, and the overall arc of the game seemed to follow no sensible arc. It was just a series of random and disjointed units."

Couldn't have said it any better.

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 14:11:

Namrok wrote on 2024-07-11, 13:35:

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 10:21:

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently. Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because mo […]
Show full quote

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently.
Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because most places and scenes didn't trigger any neural responses.
So, either I'm just getting old or the game wasn't that remarkable back then.
Considering many annoying situations, the overall gameplay and at times boring and artificially lenghtened leveldesign I'd tend to choose the latter option. Or is it just older me?
Sure it got many (for its time) fresh ideas of interacting with the environment but compared to the original Half Life I'd rate it well below that.

Other than that played through the original Doom (played via gzdoom for the sake of reducing eye-illness), Quake 2 & Unreal (both on "original" hardware aka V2-SLI), and some more.
Seems I'm in a phase of replaying all those old titles of childhood rather than exploring new stuff.

I felt that way about Half-Life 2 at the time it released. I remember getting into lengthy arguments with friends in college about it. I was adamant that HL2 was worse than HL1. Less interesting and more repetitive combat encounters, gimmicky physics/vehicle based sections, and the overall arc of the game seemed to follow no sensible arc. It was just a series of random and disjointed units. Which I later came to discover was exactly what they were as "making of" documentaries started coming out covering how different teams worked on different series of levels, with almost no communication between them, and no coordination about how their work fit into a larger picture. In the end they just stitched up whatever they had and called it a game. The writers that put down the narrative threads through it all truly worked miracles.

"Less interesting and more repetitive combat encounters, gimmicky physics/vehicle based sections, and the overall arc of the game seemed to follow no sensible arc. It was just a series of random and disjointed units."

Couldn't have said it any better.

I have always preferred HL1 because Black Mesa is one of the coolest environments that I've experienced in a game. That trumps everything else that HL2 can offer for me. When I think about my favourite parts of Half Life, it's almost entirely the environment and story instead of gameplay.

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 10:21:

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently. Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because mo […]
Show full quote

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently.
Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because most places and scenes didn't trigger any neural responses.
So, either I'm just getting old or the game wasn't that remarkable back then.
Considering many annoying situations, the overall gameplay and at times boring and artificially lenghtened leveldesign I'd tend to choose the latter option. Or is it just older me?
Sure it got many (for its time) fresh ideas of interacting with the environment but compared to the original Half Life I'd rate it well below that.

It's probably not you. I remember not being terribly impressed with HL2 either. My big issue with it is how overly linear the level design was and the contrived jump puzzles.

I remember Far Cry being far more impressive with its open level design and feeling of freedom of movement.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-07-11, 17:06:

I have always preferred HL1 because Black Mesa is one of the coolest environments that I've experienced in a game. That trumps everything else that HL2 can offer for me. When I think about my favourite parts of Half Life, it's almost entirely the environment and story instead of gameplay.

Just the original train ride was something special in the original Half-Life. It ushered in a way of doing cinematic storytelling in FPS games that hadn't been done before.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-07-11, 17:25:

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 10:21:

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently. Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because mo […]
Show full quote

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently.
Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because most places and scenes didn't trigger any neural responses.
So, either I'm just getting old or the game wasn't that remarkable back then.
Considering many annoying situations, the overall gameplay and at times boring and artificially lenghtened leveldesign I'd tend to choose the latter option. Or is it just older me?
Sure it got many (for its time) fresh ideas of interacting with the environment but compared to the original Half Life I'd rate it well below that.

It's probably not you. I remember not being terribly impressed with HL2 either. My big issue with it is how overly linear the level design was and the contrived jump puzzles.

I remember Far Cry being far more impressive with its open level design and feeling of freedom of movement.

I'm not a fan of open world games mostly. I prefer a targeted gameplay experience, not one where they expect me to create my own narratives leaving the gameplay to be either overly contrived with level appropriate encounters always, or just an open world with pushovers until you find the correct location for your current level. Give me corridor shooters any day of the week, I prefer gameplay over the emergent narratives of open worlds.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-07-11, 17:25:

ChrisK wrote on 2024-07-11, 10:21:

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently. Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because mo […]
Show full quote

Started to replay Half Life 2 recently.
Could swear I've never played most of the game (although I have, I know it!), because most places and scenes didn't trigger any neural responses.
So, either I'm just getting old or the game wasn't that remarkable back then.
Considering many annoying situations, the overall gameplay and at times boring and artificially lenghtened leveldesign I'd tend to choose the latter option. Or is it just older me?
Sure it got many (for its time) fresh ideas of interacting with the environment but compared to the original Half Life I'd rate it well below that.

It's probably not you. I remember not being terribly impressed with HL2 either. My big issue with it is how overly linear the level design was and the contrived jump puzzles.

I remember Far Cry being far more impressive with its open level design and feeling of freedom of movement.

Far Cry was less impressive when it auto saved with a preposterously accurate rocket 0.001 ms from hitting me in the face. In it's single save slot. Because auto save systems are pain.

I've been replaying campaigns of older Call of Duty games in recent times, I made it through CoD: Modern Warfare 3 yesterday.

newtmonkey wrote on 2024-07-11, 13:29:

Shadow Warrior (1997)

I loved Duke3D back in the day, Blood I've grown to appreciate over the years, but Shadow Warrior never really held my attention for some reason - it could be the difficulty of it, I'm easily offended on that front.

But SW sure does look and sound fantastic!

I don't necessarily dislike linear level designs. I like beeing guided through the game somewhat.
But when it is linear I hate situations where you just don't see where to go next. And this situation appeared just too many times in HL2.

What makes HL1 special for me are the sound effects. All those little buzzing and humming sounds when you recharge or interact with game elements etc. They are very unique and I could recognize them in 100 years.

Far Cry was one of my favourites too. Absolutely cutting-edge graphics for it's time. But I remember it getting very tough towards the end. Nothing for casual gamers.
Did it really autosave? That's something I just can't stand and I should remember if it did...

The issue with Half Life 2, as far as LOADING... I am concerned, is that it is about LOADING... as bland an experience is eating paper. People LOADING... go crazy about how immersive it is, but honestly I can find LOADING... nothing in the game world to immerse myself into.

HL2 did feel like disconnected levels, there were things i really liked though - the opening world building and the initial 'escape', i liked the car bit too and some of the environments - but it wasn't cohesive like HL1 and didn't have the black mesa environment, that was (and still is) one of the greatest of all time. I rate both highly though.

Far Cry was good, though 'open world' i did find there to be little reason to wander much off course - perhaps to get a fresh angle of attack occasionally. It all hung together well enough.

all three were games where i started a new game almost as soon as i'd finished the first game, so they must have been compelling

what i recall most in HL1 was the realisation that i didnt miss anything, there actually wasnt an alternative route - there just seemed to be, it was good design in that sense doubly so when i didn't mind the lack of alternative routes either

badmojo wrote on 2024-07-12, 00:49:

I loved Duke3D back in the day, Blood I've grown to appreciate over the years, but Shadow Warrior never really held my attention for some reason - it could be the difficulty of it, I'm easily offended on that front.

But SW sure does look and sound fantastic!

If you ever decide to revisit SW, I definitely recommend playing on the "I Know No Fear" difficulty level. For some reason, the game defaults to "Who Wants Wang," which is actually the "hard" difficulty level according to the manual. However, it's not fun hard like Doom on "Ultra Violence" or Duke 3D on "Come Get Some," but is instead just unbelievably frustrating and requires you to memorize levels to get through on a single life (or save scum throughout the entire game).

gerry wrote on 2024-06-25, 10:06:

recently i loaded gta3 on a machine just to test and ended up playing yet again, only this time i won 'Turismo' (El Burro's first phone mission) with a plain Taxi. i used to find this difficult as the competitors, though crashing all over, always seemed to recover and speed away at critical moments. Anyway, i love those portland missions, nostalgia but also just fun to try in different ways

and i ended up playing it through, and now doing it all again! what is it with some games, one playthrough never enough, even when its been played a dozen times 😀

What about the two episodes after Half-Life 2? It's been a long time since I've played those games, the episodes were much shorter, but I think the flow was better when it comes to levels.

Powerslave
Playing this on an actual DOS machine is a pain due to the weird controls that can't really be reconfigured how I would like, so I'm using the Raze engine to play this. So far, it's alright. It's much simpler than the holy trinity of Build engine games and doesn't have much going for it other than the Egyptian theme. Still, sometimes it's fun to just play a mindless blaster.

Shadow Warrior
Having completed the shareware episode on the "I Know No Fear" (normal) difficulty level, I decided to try the "Who Wants Wang" (hard) difficulty level before moving on to the registered episode. I managed to get through the first level with only a few restarts, but the second level is a complete nightmare! The level is absolutely full of lethal encounters in tiny rooms with groups of enemies including shadow ninjas that blind you and throw fire, red ninjas that shoot missiles, and kamikaze enemies that run at you with explosives. Meanwhile, three or four regular ninjas are blasting you at range with automatic weapons. The enemies all react nearly instantly, so you eat damage the second you open the door. I tried making "clever" use of the items (smoke bomb, flash bomb) but they don't appear to do anything except harm me! I can't see how this difficulty level works at all, unless you have the levels memorized or are saving after every room. A completely miserable experience.

With that, I moved on to playing the registered episode on "I Know No Fear." Much better! The game is still challenging, but you have much more leeway to make mistakes and react to stuff as it happens. The level design is perhaps even better than that of the excellent shareware episode, though the boss you fight at the end of the first level was an exercise in frustration; the game literally drops you in a pit of lava and you have very little room to maneuver during the fight.

UCyborg wrote on 2024-07-12, 10:17:

What about the two episodes after Half-Life 2? It's been a long time since I've played those games, the episodes were much shorter, but I think the flow was better when it comes to levels.

I've played through both (once) but honestly can't remember many details either.
Only two things: the feeling of incompleteness after the end of Ep. 2 which deserved some kind of sequel that never came to light as we all know.
And one scene, which I can't relate to a certain episode but I think it was the second one, where you had to fight some of those striders (those huge beasts with long legs) together with the resistance.
That part of the game was really driving your heartbeat and created a very immersive situation, at least for me.

Finished Return to Monkey Island... still haven't made up my mind on how to rank it among other entries. I'm not into that art style for starters (to me Curse of Monkey Island's art is my favorite). As a game and puzzles...it was too easy.
I thought I'd run for platinum trophy, but then I found you need to grind for 75 trivia cards, and speedrun the thing under 20mins.. so no thanks.

newtmonkey wrote on 2024-07-11, 13:29:

Shadow Warrior (1997)
This is the only game out of the "big three" Build engine games I never completed, though I did actually buy it back in the day (I still have my original CD!). From what I had played of it, I didn't like it as much as Duke 3D or Blood. So I decided to finally complete this game this year.

For me - it's Blood that I still have to complete from "the big three". I've completed Duke3D, including Episode 4, I think back in the nineties, and played through all of Shadow Warrior a few years ago. Blood - not sure I ever beat more than a couple of levels.

There's Redneck Rampage (+ sequel) too, but the levels there are sooo huge and obtuse...