Frank Miller’s Ronin 2 looks a lot like a Daikatana comic…
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i thought that was the maxx at first
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I need to post about middle aged hl2 modder leon
he has a very eccentric style that has more in common with quake than half life. all the music in his mods is stolen from like medal of honor allied assault and max payne. you regularly have to platform on thin ass ledges that look like level boundaries. corridors lead to nowhere. in his first map pack none of the doors that are openable look like doors you can open
almost all the enemies are combine soldiers and he puts shotgunners behind you and around corners 24/7 like hes making a doom map. you fight hordes of enemies. he will explain stuff to you with text pop ups right before you run into it which ruins any suspense a boss encounter could have. and he loves keycard hunts and inane cutscenes that take control away from you
but his levels have this really odd and distinct style that i think is entertaining
[Call of Duty 2 credits song solemnly plays as you walk around for 10 minutes trying to figure out where to go]
also he made a 20 hour long mod thats his version of what half life episode 3 would look like??? and it has bizarre made in gmod cutscenes where gordon freeman goes “Holy SHEIT” and gets yeeted out of a minecart at 100 mph??? he was 55 years old when he made this.
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Coastline to Atmosphere was great. I only got lost a few times. It’s sort of like the highway 17 chapter but… off. the dxm hl2 coastline experience. and it has an all timer FPS nightmare sequence. Here is the full thing, Max Payne music and everything. It goes on for way longer than you could ever imagine.
It even has a part where you go to a movie theater and the guys in the movie start shooting at you and you have to shoot back like Cryostasis!!!
Leon is a genius.
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this is such a good and funny setpiece, its also a really good demonstration of his non half life sensibilities in encounter design. leon really said im going to have dr breen telepathically taunt you with overlapping dialogue while you get owned by the brightstone cove tseldora spiders and max’s choice: duty vs passion plays
genuinely exciting to play through!!
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I keep thinking about how negative all the modern reviews are for Coastline to Atmosphere whereas in 2006 when it came out IIRC PC Gamer talked it up and people were generally a lot more positive on it. Nowadays it’s all people calling him stupid or incompetent because Valve broke some of the scripted events with engine updates and they don’t like the way he makes levels. It’s kinda dumb but part of the appeal of mods at least for me is having to get used to a specific persons weird design language and if you end up understanding where they are coming from then that’s great you’re going to have a good time…it doesnt make them an idiot or boring because you dont understand what theyre trying to do or had a technical problem that isnt their fault…if you go back and play old, early half life 1 mods they would be completely unacceptable by the standards of Modern Game Design but it really didnt matter in 2000 or whatever. that wasnt the point. stuff like timeline was crazy because of the spectacle off playing a NEW GAME IN HALF LIFE WOWOWOW. sure you barely had any ammo and the encounter design was frankly insanely awful but LOOK AT THE TEXTUREWORK!!!
it kinda sucks that if you want to make anything like this now people basically expect you to either hew so close to valve’s style that you’re making some shit like black mesa or whatever their idea of AAA game design is. if koumei satou released mistake of pythagoras today most of the comments would be negative probably. a dark future for the leons and tecnobacons of the world
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Been tracking down Leon’s entire body of work insofar as it’s available online and I’m finding posts I could have made in another place, another lifetime…
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sin has a shotgun I think a lot of people would probably call doom 3-esque in nature but when it hits it really hits. you can see here how much emphasis the game puts on the locational damage model as this blown-in-half thug has skinned his knees as well. probably the only game that does it “better” is soldier of fortune and i’m pretty sure the enemies in that game can’t shoot your gun out of your hands like they can in sin, so. ritual entertainment undefeated
i think this is the first game i played that had usable computers you had to type on and stuff
a thing that’s awesome is that in 2037 everything still runs on dos you can examine the file systems of the computers. this is how you find everyones bank account numbers and pins to ruin peoples lives at the ATM for no reason if you want to
lol at the texturework in this game. I need to get a good screenshot of the john blade anti drug poster that says SUCK A NUTT and LICK DICK on it. night dive did not change any of the calendars or posters with titties, or uh, bank memos with full penetration on them. which is kind of incredible for 2026
now if you’ll excuse me i’m going to enjoy a nice can of
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night dive are cowards cuz they removed the rats taking 1hp from you, bypassing armor, every time they touch you. it sounds insane but i loved this feature because it’s like nes game bullshit. always be attentive, john blade…
when i was playing earlier i was thinking completely unironically “Damn I think this game is better than Half-Life” then i got killed by a door build engine style
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I always think about how Don’t Try This At Home, a deathmatch map from the expansion, is spiritually a Marathon map in name and also literally cuz it’s basically Thunderdome
playing some DM was refreshing because it reminded me you can use the plasma rifle’s primary for indirect fire like an RPG, that UT99 ripped off the redeemer from the guided rocket launcher in wages of sin, and that everything is so incredibly unbalanced for mp it’s fucking hilarious
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an incredible detail about this game is all the bank robbers in the early levels say “WHO ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE, BARNEY MILLER?” and sometimes Blade will say “that’s RIGHT, Barney Miller is back!!!” as a one liner, which even for 1998 is kind of amazingly dated. it’s like on the level of the Newhart reference in Baldur’s Gate. the lead designer of this game was 41 years old. lol
check out this awesome asshole enemy placement in level 2. you come through that window on the right and bro is hiding in the corner waiting to put your ass in the dirt. it’s testament to the quality of the shotgun that it immediately gibbed this deceitful thug in one blast
the next level opens with these mfs literally ambushing you from the fuckin dumpsters too which is of course fully interactable so you can open and close the lids whenever you want.
sin is basically an actual spiritual successor to duke 3d but blade is like a more competent jack burton than annoying as fuck like duke is lol. i also like his voice actor way more. it’s testament to the character that john blade has stuck around in the fps gamer’s mind despite everyone shit talking this game insanely hard for nearly 30 years.
there’s a secret in the 4th level where you can find someone’s Julie Strain goon cave which is also funny cuz these guys ended up making Heavy Metal: FAKK 2 a few years later
there are more BOOBS in this room but I won’t keep harping on how funny it is that they had to pay artists to upres all this stuff so you could see some nipples better. immediately after this you get attacked by union construction workers and I couldn’t stop thinking about dead to rights. they lust to kill john blade, but cannot…
and when he dies you can see his ass crack
sin fuckin rocks
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the incredibly jank ATV physics are amazing. if you get off while it’s moving it will like continue going for a while and start spinning in circles or hit a wall then bounce back 100 feet. i hit like four light posts in a row, they’d disappear in a big ass quake explosion and blade just kept going “damn” without me taking any hp damage. between that and the elexis sinclair figma level 4 had me hooting and hollering
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gonna make a mod for this game where i replace half the booby textures with the cover of julia fox’s autobiography
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imagining ryo shenmue turning this in his hands “hmmm.. i know this”
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vowing to take as many screenshots of bulletin boards as possible now that the textures are much more readable
dylan
crazy
2 feet
20 lbs
mean as hell
this is some real 
type shit
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“The true spiritual successor to Duke 3D” is such a good way to frame this game. A world that exists in perpetual action movie teenager fantasy.
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you can tell this games haters aren’t even dedicated to the bit cuz they’ll complain about the second level starting with a brief sewer and fail to mention the diabolical pitch black tunnel section in the fourth level where you literally can’t see and there are guys with shotguns hiding around the corners, which is actual sicko shit
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wages of sin was made by 2015 and had a guided missile with vaguely military style ui → 2015 employees go on to form infinity ward → mw2 predator missile kill streak
i want to make some kind of nonsensical chart showing how sin and ion fury both come from duke3d then phantom fury wraps back around to being a discount copy of sin, which i am loathe to say but slipgate ironworks keeps putting out bad games lately between that and the kingpin remaster. theoretically i am the target audience for blade and shelly teaming up so lmao that even i have to shrug my shoulders. in the hands of a good dev the big trouble in little china ass dynamic those two would have could be killer.
The abandoned subway level is incredible. You’re picking up cartoon sacks of money and talking to some of the greatest videogame bums this side of the Deus Ex mole people.
the guy who goes I DON’T KNOWWWW in the above video sounds like the high-strung evangelist voice set from Neverwinter Nights if he fell off the wagon
I think these two guys in the next video speak for themselves lol. voice acting is one of this game’s great strengths
blue balls brand ramen…
and it’s across from this of course. I know it’s 1998 so it’s not a surprise but they really hammer on this Monica Lewinsky shit. Do you think if this had come out a few years earlier there would be OJ Simpson shit everywhere? Not sure if that would be better or worse than these middle aged level designers being obsessed with the president’s wandering penis.
the posters in this level are all absurd. i like the snl 1996 on here in case it’s too erudite of a reference for you
you fight the first boss in this level and hes just some hulked out mutant guy who you circlestrafe around, and the gimmick is basically that you always fight him in way too tight of spaces. so basically you just have to use the shotgun and treat him like a doom 3 imp.
the next mission after this is a mandatory stealth mission, so, lmfao
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