|
|
Archived old news: September 2000
News: Wednesday 27/09/00
What I won't be doing...
...is mapping news or map related articles for those games I'll review for, this isn't going to be a one stop resource like TSQLR, this is more for fun. But I'll still be doing the usual ramblings with occasional nuggets of interest. Maybe =). Oh BTW, managed to fool a couple of people with the "novel" rating system =).
The truth about KISS:
I've seen a few grumbling around that "KISS suxx0rz because it's full of KISS music and glam rock crap". Thus I will correct people: KISS the game does not feature much KISS the band and what it does feature is very low key and easy to ignore. You collect pieces of armour that build up to a KISS style outfit including face paint - but you barely ever see this since you are playing in 1st person, and it's little more than extravagent armour, you don't fight with guitars or anything else you might imagine. There are some rock influences in the place names and posters or murals on the wall, again these are unintrusive compared to the vast bulk of the cool, well designed, atmospheric architecture (circus levels aside). And there is - very rarely - some KISS music on jukeboxes or radios. But for God's sake I'm over halfway through the game, I've encountered maybe 3 or 4 KISS tracks playing, you can destroy or turn off the damn radios, and the main game music is mostly ambient and atmospheric. Etc etc!! To be honest I would actually like *more* KISS music in the game, no it's not my taste in music but I think it fits with the hardcore action and dark humour. So now you know...
Trials and tribulations:
After praising EBUK's 1337 next day delivery, the f00kin Elite Force CD was cracked so that had to go back to a local EB shop....still, saved £3 over the shop price. Installed that and FAKK2 (which came in an initially worrying DVD case, EA's new format apparently) over the weekend. Of course instead of playing them I just fucked around wasting time, on this occasion spending ages trying to get no-cd cracks for all the recent games (fed-up with having to screw around with changing CDs and slow start-ups). Wheel of Time and Elite Force worked, Descent3 didn't work with any of 7 different cracks, KISS didn't work with 2 or 3, and naturally FAKK2 didn't work with anything I tried (including patching it to 1.02, got that marvellous error again, ha-bloody-ha). Eventually, as well as grinding my way through KISS some more, I settled for playing a bit of Descent 3 which is just as confusing as before but still quite intriguing and has great effects too. And I think I'll go play some right now...
News: Saturday 23/09/00
<=== Hey look! New reviews section!
An idea I've been toying with recently, now all these cool games are coming out, and I've kinda worked out a way to keep it fun so it's not too much work. When I feel like it, I'll be doing single player map reviews for new games I like that don't have a huge mapping scene. I've checked for all the games listed, and none of them have single player review sites yet, so this will be the first place to get these reviews - though I expect some sites will blatantly copy what I've done... Anyway, the reviews will be less serious and analytical than my TSQLR nor Nali City reviews, but they'll still provide some accurate information of course. If you want maps reviewed, simply email with a link to the map (sorry, no space to post maps here). For more information, see the information page.
The first review being:
A review of Illhaven for Wheel of Time - this conversion of Kew's legendary Unreal map has been out for ages, but still not reviewed until now. This review sees the unveiling of Shambler's Revolutionary New Reviewing Format™, which includes factual information, my personal opinion, and suggested improvements in seperate sections, allowing an unparalleled blend of objectivity, subjectivity and map testing all in one review!! Not only that, the reviews will use Shambler's Patented New Rating System™, which neatly circumvents all petty arguments and embarrassing inconsitencies with ratings, by using a completely incomprehensible system!! Thanks to Bal and Calvin and Hobbes for inspiring the ratings =).
So there ya go...
If other maps for those other games come along, I'll review them when I have the time and inclination - so email links to any maps you've made or heard of. Also time and inclination permitting, the other rantings and articles/demos will continue...
One more thing.
This does mean I've closed spektrum - it's become obvious there aren't going to be enough Daikatana single player maps to warrant a large, seperate site for them. I will most definitely still support DKT SP maps here, and I've transferred my overall thoughts on Daikatana, the links to my unique Daikatana speedrun demos, and a few silly IRC chat logs that feature members of the DKT scene. The new review format was also planned for spektrum - I learnt a lot about making a review site really good from tweaking spektrum prior to DKT's release. I'd like to give a big thanks to Gwog, big boss at PlanetDaikatana who was not only phenomenally supportive of the site, but also a very cool guy doing a very dirty job. Don't worry Gwog, if any DKT SP levels get released, they *will* get reviewed here.
And finally...
* Shambler gives than a handbag
* than|CS walks ten paces in the opposite direction of shambler
* than|CS remembers he has to turn around now
* than|CS turns around and wallops shambler with the handbag
<than|CS> well
<than|CS> I would if HANDBAGS WERE FUCKING RANGED WEAPONS
<than|CS> BUT THE WHOLE HANDBAGS AT TEN PACES IS WRONG
<than|CS> it would never work
Ehhhh....calm down than =).
News: Thursday 21/09/00
Games etc.
Finished FAKK2 demo...
...that was extremely cool, ordered the game. This is the most inspiring thing I've played since BZII (which was the coolest thing I played since WOT...). It looks *great*, feels so different, such a fresh atmosphere compared to other action games, and has funky combats (the diving birds being particularly amusing). I don't even have any problems with the 3PS any more...
Finished Elite Force demo...
...that was cool, ordered the game. Not only that, I ordered it yesterday, it came today - much respect to EB UK for low price + no delivery charge + bloody quick delivery. And thanks to the SCRAD for pointing me towards them - and indeed the game. Once I got headbob switched very firmly OFF, this was a refreshing change of style, with a more orderly, morally rigid ethos (compared to the anarchic mayhem of KISS for example). And it looks pretty cool, has good character interaction, and satisfying weapons. Although SCRAD warned me the Borg ship in the demo was arse-ugly compared to what's in the full game, I quite liked the oppressive mechanical feel - pure functionality with no consideration for aesthetic niceties. The Star Trek aspect provides a good, coherent game universe, though some aspects are annoying - the characters look as gay as you'd expect, and in grand Star Trek tradition, it's full of pseudo-scientific gobble-de-gook..."Ensign Munro, disable the Core Drive Linear Induction Plasma Regeneration Coils immediately!" ... "Bluuhrhrhrhhghhgh??".
Finished Drakan demo...
...that was fairly cool, didn't order the game. 3rd person dragon'em'up set in snowy canyons using a terrain engine - too much fogging, it's obviously not optimised for P3 600s... Quite good looking, the cliffs, water, and weather effects especially, though other effects are old skool. The thing that impressed me most was how the mountains seemed insignificant when you fly the dragon around them, but when you're on foot they're f00king enormous and tower over you like, errr, mountains. Dragon's quite easy to control, though God knows how I managed to get it to fly upside down as often as I did =). On foot Rynn is damn slow and combat is fugly: wave sword or axe until thing is hopefully dead. I found it a bit too...."normal", overall, aside from the setting and some graphics, it didn't inspire me.
Good old Bal is thinking of making a FAKK2 map:
* Shambler reviews Balfakk2sp1 "Pitch black swamp with only those plants that fire snot at you" and rates it 0.5/10
<Bal> actually, its tech
* Shambler reviews Balfakk2sp1 "Pitch black tech box with only those plants that fire snot at you" and rates it 0.5/10
<Bal> hehe
<Bal> ratings shamb? =)
<Shambler> yes
* Shambler reviews Balfakk2sp2 "Square islands connected by nearly impossible jumps (High r_speeds special edition version)" and rates it ¶/¦§
News: Tuesday 19/09/00
Something oddly familiar...
Two weeks ago I had the misfortune to read the magazine PC Zone, a somewhat tedious experience since they were droning on about the following things:
1. The future of FPS games is only real-life themed online games.
2. Half-Life is the defining game that all other games must match up to.
3. Every mention of an FPS game must include an irrelevant and baseless insult to Daikatana.
Two weeks later, I "accidentally" buy the next PC Zone because I wanted the Star Trek Elite Force demo off the cover CD, and much to my surprise, found they were droning on about the following things:
1. The future of FPS games is only real-life themed online games.
2. Half-Life is the defining game that all other games must match up to.
3. Every mention of an FPS game must include an irrelevant and baseless insult to Daikatana.
Blurubruplelblelrueurrburueleurlps. I mean for fuck's sake. I mean Christ I give up. So boring. So wrong. So desperate to suck up to on-line culture. So obssessed with their own anally-retentive little agendas. All I can say is thank fuck there are no large game demos I want to try soon. Even then, screw my principles about not downloading large demos - I'd rather sit watching the download percentage for 8 hours that read any more of their crap. PC Zone are all devoted CounterStrike fanatics, btw. Draw your own conclusions.
Something again oddly familiar...
The *one* useful thing I got from PC Zone was some info, that, unusually, I hadn't seen already on the net, about a decent looking forthcoming Battlezone II clone called Aquarius. For some entirely unknown reason, I haven't got back to playing BZII for a few months, but I still rank it as awesome, particularly the combination of FPS action and strategy - something I'm looking for in future games. The developers of Aquarius obviously haven't heard of BZII as they are claiming a revolutionary action/strategy blend - but believe me it looks like a BZII clone so far, albeit with air combat too. Game looks pretty good, not as good as BZII or Tribes2 though (aside from Matrox-specific bump mapping) - the screenshots don't show much enviromental variety. I'll see about this one, despite being interested in the gameplay, it's curiously not as inspiring as I'd expect. Aquarius site here, GaStrategy preview here.
Games coming out of my arse...
Seems my increasingly open-minded attitude to games is back-firing as I can see them swamping me. Aside from working my way through over 1/4 of KISS this weekend, I also squeezed in playing the Drakan Demo - yet another game that being able to play 3rd person has opened my eyes to. Now SCRAD has just recommended that I get Star Trek Elite Force, due to the cool alien enviroments and large numbers of enemy. Which will have to wait until I've finished the remainder of Battlezone 2. And played Descent3. Then bought FAKK2 and Deep Fighter. I wonder what I'll make of the Deus Ex demo. Etc etc...
In case you wondered...
<Shambler> counterstrike is the death of fps gaming
And Half-Life, for that matter. PC Zone forced me to say that. Blame them.
News: Tuesday 05/09/00:
PC game magazines: A mild and contrite view. By Shambler.
10 months ago I had the misfortune to read some PC game magazines, a somewhat tedious experience since they were droning on about the following things:
1. The future of FPS games is only real-life themed online games.
2. Half-Life is the defining game that all other games must match up to.
3. Contrary to reality, Return to Na Pali apparently sucks.
10 months later, I "accidentally" buy PC Zone because I had nothing to read and wanted the Deus Ex demo off the cover CD, and much to my surprise, found they were droning on about the following things:
1. The future of FPS games is only real-life themed online games.
2. Half-Life is the defining game that all other games must match up to.
3. Contrary to reality, Daikatana apparently sucks.
Snore. Bunch of fucking twats. Having access to a huge amount of gaming information online - and from my own perspective, writing fair, high quality reviews - does make you realise how fucking useless gaming magazines are. And PC Zone at least has appalling screenshots. And they get gaming news months after it's been seen online. Etc. But it's the bullshit manifesto mentioned above that pisses me off. Not that a supposedly professional magazine should have a fucking manifesto anyway... Not only are they wrong in the crap they spout, they seem to spout it repeatedly ad nauseum as if that will make any difference. No lads, saying that "a game must be better than Half-Life to be worthwhile" 130 times doesn't make you right, it just makes you wrong 130 times. Idiots. And as for Daikatana, LOL that must be the least professional attitude I've seen to a game. Okay I didn't waste my time reading their non-review, but in the issue I got, every fucking time they mention any FPS game, they have to get in some petty, irrelevant, unamusing, innaccurate, timewasting jibe at Daikatana. Well done I bet you're fucking proud of that, yeah really fair attitude to a game that, slagging it off in other FPS game reviews. Of course all these pointless little insults are entirely wrong about Daikatana, and sometimes directly contradict with statements elsewhere in the magazine, but that goes without saying. I wish I'd shoplifted the fucking thing as it certainly wasn't worth buying. BTW, for my view on the other two "dronages", go here and scroll 4/5 the way down to News: Thursday 4/11/99...
Having said that...
The *one* useful thing I got from PC Zone was some info, that, unusually, I hadn't seen already on the net, about a new, cool looking, underwater action game called Deep Fighter. Looks quite neat, both reviews praise it's graphics, and apparently the controls are quite simple. I like the underwater theme too, a rich and suitable enviroment for an action game, where fogging is a natural phenomenon. Unfortunately there's no demo to p1mp, but here's the: Ubisoft Deep Fighter Site (which, amusingly, has a link to P.A.D.I., a nice touch =)), Gamespot review, and Gamesdomain review, to read and check out shots.
Anyway...
<gibbie> Hi Shambler let's talk about design/technical/aesthetic/moral issues in custom maps.
<Shambler> no, let's talk about how GAY frogbots are
<gibbie> okay!
<gibbie> FROGBOTS ARE NOT GAY
<Shambler> FROGBOTS ARE GAY
<gibbie> FROGBOTS ARE NOT GAY
<Shambler> FROGBOTS ARE GAY
<gibbie> FROGBOTS ARE NOT GAY
<gibbie> oh this discussion rocks
<Shambler> FROGBOTS ARE GAY
<Shambler> yes
<gibbie> FROGBOTS ARE NOT GAY
<gibbie> SP QUAKE IS GAY :)
<Shambler> GIBBIE IS GAY
<gibbie> SHAMBLER IS GAY
Apologies to both homosexuals and homophobes...
News: Sunday 17/09/00
Positive vibes - things that are cool:
In response to accusations that my so-called "updates" are nothing more than "random profanity-ridden tirades", and indeed I am nothing more than a "miserable knob" (which is true), I shall endeavour to write a positive update about cool gaming stuff:
¨ Giants:
A very cool looking action game that I hadn't given much attention as I dismissed it as a 3rd person game and therefore not relevant to me. But since Fakk2 is proving 3rd person is *gasp* playable, I took a long hard look at this huge Gamer's Pulse preview. And indeed it all seems good to me: Bright exotic setting, sweem graphics, bizarre creatures, expansive open landscapes, tactical aspects, varied choice of players, and a SCOPE! Not only that, according to an interview there, all the characters have a choice of 1st or 3rd person to view. So it's now a game I'm looking forward to for sure (added to Info page).
¨¨ Boups.com:
Not entirely gaming related....but thanks to the Mineral, speedrunner and fellow junglist, for pointing me to Boups.com, a Belgian drum'n'bass Real Audio station. My God drum'n'bass 24 hours a day if I could stay online that long - an overwhelming prospect =). There's live mixes sometimes and a blend of individual tracks and mix tapes at other times and it's all drum'n'bass!! /me quivers!! I'm listening to it as I write this. Pity RA is a pile of arse, so I can't really browse nor download at the same time, but hey it's a good find.
¨¨¨ DM-IceoToxin:
As I mentioned on here a while back, my favourite custom Unreal Tournament DM map has usually been DM-RealWorldGoneBad, a cool urban courtyard map with a great style and atmosphere. Haven't been playing any UT botmatch recently but something's come along to coax me out of retirement: DM-IceoToxin, which is the same map but remixed with icy Artic textures and a bleaker feel, the gloomy urban night of the original being replaced by a frozen serenity - very cool stuff. More info at MaxModule's Portfolio.
¨¨¨¨ Fakk2demo again:
Due to the b0rked sky in one map and the exceptionally gay error trying to patch the demo, I resorted getting the v102 demo - extreme measures but hell I wanted to play it. Thankfully it worked fine... I haven't played the map yet but it looks very nice (like the rest of the demo so far). Though, having a second full map is entirely superfluous, especially since it has 5 extra weapons and 1 extra skin - just more megs to download, when you've already got a perfectly adquate demonstration of what the game is like from the intro map, training map, first full map, and related cutscenes. Ho hum - I'm still playing that superfluous map though :P.
¨¨¨¨¨ Kiss / Psycho Circus / Nightmare Child:
A game I have been playing. Not speedrunning. Not reviewing. Playing. *Gasp!* A cool proper action based FPS game that should not be dismissed due to any prejudices about those painty faced glam rockers. Honestly =). It's kinda like it looks in the screenshots - atmospheric with a slightly dark comic book vibe - but in-game the graphics and feel are more solid and the effects are cool, nicely styled maps too with subtle fogging. Kiss prides itself on horde base combat which features prominently (though only a couple of creatures are horde creatures) and does indeed give a frantic pace. My favourite bits are the characterful touches with monsters and weapons: The flying gasbags who you can pop and then watch as they buzz around wildly before exploding, the headless swarms who you can dismemember easily (my favourite is flicking one with the whip and seeing it's body fly backwards, the limbs left in the air before falling to the ground), the ballcrushing "double shotgun equivalent" that spews black smoke... Good stuff, definitely worth a look for action FPS fans - info (and bloody annoying Flash menu - grrrr) at Kisspsychocircus.com. It's also the only game I've played that has a small high quality model of a puppet on a bright red tricycle in one of the maps....errrr...
See?? I can do it!!
News: Friday 15/09/99
Celebrating the new design...
...by not updating at all, haha. Oh well, just not much planned at the moment, you know. Besides, the new design was to help it function better as an archive. Most people seemed to like it:
<Vondur> oi oi oi o ioi o oioi ioooooo no more purple site!!!! oh horror!!!!
Heh =). Anyway it all seems to work fine, the content is more accessible, I can link individual pages and keep the menu on, and I like the clean style too. And if nothing more significant gets posted, well, as I say, it's a good archive.
So what have I been doing:
Errr not really playing games despite what I said. I actually installed a couple but that's the closest I got. FFS I spend far too much time arsing around on IRC, tinkering with sites and generally wasting computer leisure time instead of actually playing games....and when I do get the time to play games I just do bloody speedrunning instead. LOL.
*Shambler slaps Shambler around a bit with a large trout...
Well, I ordered and installed KISS, Descent 3 (a pleasing £5 / $8 =)), and Heavy Gear2. As I always do, checked out a couple of DM maps to tinker with the controls: KISS is just fine, looks nice, really cool weapons effects. Descent 3 has the same mouse sensitivity problem that I will just have to put up with =(, but it also looks cool. So far, so good.
And then...
Heavy Gear 2, well it *looks* great on the couple of maps I checked out.....BUT YOU CAN'T FUCKING REBIND ALL THE KEY / MOUSE FUNCTIONS FOR FUCKING HELL'S SAKE. I ranted about this in the appallingly uncontrollable demo, but it said in the demo readme you could rebind all the functions in the game. Can you?? Can you FUCK!! You can't move with the fucking mouse, you can't use shift or ctrl for anything. It's a fucking disaster!! What is most annoying about this is the game looks really good in the maps I tried, the tactics, squads, and Gear modifying I read about in the manual sound really good - and I really want to play the game. Except I can't because the cuntwits who made it won't let you chose any controls, and fucking lied about that in the demo. Cunts. I spit on your development company. My camel exposes it's arse at you. May you suffer penile boils. Etc. I don't know whether I can be arsed to completely relearn the way I control games....I might just either return the game or ceremoniously destroy the CD out of principle.
So I end up playing:
Fakk 2 Demo, which r0x0rz. And is fully controllable with a normal FPS set-up despite being 3PS. Hurrah for common sense. Unfortunately due to the fact that "Americans are twats", the game itself (which I will definitely get) isn't out here yet, so I have to play the demo. Which was all going fine and indeed groovy....until the second full map (which I don't think should have been included anyway as it's just making the demo too big and you get a perfectly good sense of what the game is like from the intro and the first map). Somehow the sky is replaced by a mass of blurry HOM, and there's nothing I can do to change it (playing with console settings, installing WickedGL drivers etc). So I try to use the v102 demo patch, and much to my contemptuous amusement, the pinnacle of gayness in what has been a fairly gay time trying to play games:
....what-fucking-ever.
And finally, since Vondur is on form:
<Vondur> we played hl a bit
<Vondur> but got long and hard vomitag
Talking about his DarkForestCon2000™ Lan party, where Quake and UT were the games of choice, many virgins were sacrificed to the Ancient Gods, evil rites were performed, and bears were wrestled into the frozen ground.
News: Monday 11/09/99
IT'S NOT PURPLE!!!!
*Gasp*.
Etc.
Thanks to Killjoy, Than, and the SCRAD for checking the site. Now, I'd like to go play some games, if no-one minds...
News: Saturday 02/09/00
Delta Force - Land Warrior demo:
Yes back on that tip looking for action games with a bit more interest than your average FPS shooter. This one was recommended by the good old SCRAD...
SCRAD: "'Ere Shambles, you remember that Delta Force game I was playin' a while back wot 'ad those voxels that made good outdoor gubbins but looked well pixelly?? Well them same geezers 'ave managed to 3D accelerate them voxels and they're smooth and all in this new Delta Force game they got a demo of..."
Shambler: "Righty ho SCRADDY I shall check it out my son, eh, sounds rather neat what."
SCRAD: "...It's that real life shooting terrorists type malarkey, not really your cup of tea though?"
And indeed it is real life shooting terrorists malarkey and indeed it has accelerated and smoothed out voxels. Which, while it allows for enormous, expansive, outdoor areas with undulating hills and no need for fogging (I climbed one of the pyramids and could look at the entire map without any slowdown), it doesn't look as good as I'd hoped. The hills and ground wobble worryingly and pop-up is quite noticable, okay there's not a polygon to be seen on the ground and you can see for *miles*, but I find BZII style polygonal terrain much more refined. Equally, the polygonal buildings, enemy, and weapons in this are only adequate. It's set in an Egyptian ruins/pyramid complex, and, for example, I found the textures, atmosphere and skins in the Serious Sam Test (reviewed) more refined. It's pretty decent looking but there's much better around sans voxels. The unrefined nature of the terrain does have some issues for gameplay, clipping with buildings is very vague, weapons go into walls and sometimes most of the player does. It's worse for the enemy, at long distance some of them disappear into the sand entirely...
The gameplay itself surprised me - firstly how much fun the real-life style malarkey was, secondly how easy it was. The focus is on shooting lots of terrorists, relying on a radar to find them and a scope to snipe them - which is great!! Radar and scope are turning into two of my favourite things in action games and it's fun using them in this, really makes a difference to normal FPS gameplay. Being realistic (ish), it's one-shot-one-kill for the enemy....and for you - this encourages using cover and sneaking around, which I enjoyed. It's also quite exploratory, there's lots of ways to get to your objective, the most cunning being crawling for 5 real-time minutes down a trench with no danger of getting shot =). The downside is, unless you stand still for ages, the enemy are pretty bloody hopeless: Playing on "Normal" skill, the lower of two settings, they try to kill you by firing everywhere around you and scaring you to death by near misses, rather than actually shooting you. They move around and take cover okay, but, for example, I ran wildly through a "killing zone" at one side of the map, through about a dozen enemy, and survived - even Quake grunts would have killed me by then!! I shall have to try it on "Hard" skill and see if that's better. Soooo... I do kinda like this despite it's real life nature, but the whole thing feels a bit too flimsy in graphics and gameplay.
Download the Delta Force Land Warrior demo (24 meg), visit the DFLW site.
More views sometime, probably...
Top
|
