I got my first non-garbage picked computer in the winter of 2000. Downloaded the Quake 1 demo after years of wanting to check it out and immediately fell in love. Later that night, I trudged out a couple miles on foot in several feet of snow to the closest Circuit City in the hopes of scoring a copy. They only had the Quake 2 pack with both expansions plus the that community disc. I played so much of that. It still feels like the most stuff ever packed into a game with all those really wild mods and maps. It never properly scratched the chainsaw ogre NIN soundtrack itch though.
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When I stepped back into it to play the Quake 2 raytrace mod last winter, the thing that struck me the most is how Quake 2 was the first step on the road to US military theming that culminated in Modern Warfare, away from the fantasy theming of Doom. The squad chatter and objectives stab at complexity but the game’s heart really isn’t in it.
The move to ‘realistic’ guns is an obvious step down and maybe Max Payne was the first to get modern guns feeling right without the crutch of demons or power progression?
Weak starting guns had definitely become a thing by this point as people over-learned the gun progression rules; it’s not like the Doom shotgun is weak.
I was playing Unreal 1 this morning and realized I want to call early PC shooters shark simulators. You glide effortlessly through corridors hunting for prey, sleek, with murder in your eyes. Stopping or even slowing death is stagnation and death, only your oily propulsion matters.
Weren’t there a few older shooters with a fisheye lens view? It’s absolutely right for this intensely-directly-straight-ahead mood.
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The only thing that comes to mind is the alien campaign in AVP.
Quake engine games let you set the field of view using the command fov and then a number “fov 120”.
90 is the default.
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Right, and I suppose the alien team in Natural Selection did this as well.
In my mind Forsaken looked like this, but that might have just been the N64 demo loop.
Yes, the alien team in Natural Selection did it too.
That’s a curious case. The horizontal FOV appears to differ between versions. Just eyeballing it I’d guess the ps1 version is 90 degrees and the n64 version is 100 degrees.
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there are a few quake sourceports that do full on fisheye lens
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needs some generic 90s punk rock to complete the aesthetic
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the midi soundtrack for this is sooooo good.
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Jimmy is also the creative lead behind The Adventures of Square.
http://adventuresofsquare.com/
http://jamespaddockmusic.com/
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Wasn’t the Extravision powerup in Marathon 2 kind of a fisheye experience?
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Indeed! (apparently Marathon 2 has been eliminated from Youtube, though)
So we’ve got a bunch of examples of this being used in exactly the floaty hunter-killer mode and I was probably regurgitating what I saw but still it feels so right. And it seems it died when '90s MTV style died even before the Unreal Tournament and Quake III-style left the world
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I played the first few levels of Sigil. It’s good! Doom has a fifth episode now.
I like sigil. it’s cramped, which some people hate. I don’t. sometimes cramped means you get instagibbed by something after you open a door or turn around a corner, which is lame, but let’s be real that was always a thing in doom anyway. it’s pretty hard. I don’t remember if I’m playing on ultra violent or nightmare (probably UV?), because I have no memory and I’m bad, but I’ve spent most of the game at very low health. if you want health, you usually have to get it from secrets, there’s very little just laying around. it feels well balanced. it looks and sounds great. I even like the ceiling crush level, but I am definitely a save scummer. I I hope romero does this again for doom 2
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sigil is pretty cool except e5m4
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I like it but I also have a thousand nitpicks. Playing on ultra violent and it definitely feels difficult but I am sometimes frustrated by the way greebles are used. There are a thousand details on every surface and doomguy will get stuck on every single one of them.
It honestly feels like the intersection of a good slaughter map and a bad sandy peterson map to differing degrees depending on the level.
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James Paddock has made an overview video.
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