Civvie 11 - Retro FPS Boomer

[BrunoMattei]

I've been waiting for him to do this one.

I played it last year or so. I would dare say it's underrated. It has some jank and the level design in the first game is questionable. But it's pretty good. The expansion pack Suckin' Grits on Route 66 has way better level design and is actually good. The sequel, yes it is a sequel, Rides Again has the level design problem but also has very early drivable vehicles. Being able to drive a vehicle in a FPS, no matter how primitive, was mind blowing back then. You have no idea what an advancement that was. When an early trailer of Halo came out dudes went nuts over the fact that two players could ride in a buggy with one guy on a turret.

I never completed Rides Again but I didn't hate it. A big problem is that all 3 games have the same exact soundtrack and the soundtrack is good but it can drive you insane in the same way as working retail for 8 hours straight listening to the same songs over and over and over can do for you.

 

[Stasi]

I played it last year or so. I would dare say it's underrated. It has some jank and the level design in the first game is questionable. But it's pretty good. The expansion pack Suckin' Grits on Route 66 has way better level design and is actually good. The sequel, yes it is a sequel, Rides Again has the level design problem but also has very early drivable vehicles. Being able to drive a vehicle in a FPS, no matter how primitive, was mind blowing back then. You have no idea what an advancement that was. When an early trailer of Halo came out dudes went nuts over the fact that two players could ride in a buggy with one guy on a turret.

I never completed Rides Again but I didn't hate it. A big problem is that all 3 games have the same exact soundtrack and the soundtrack is good but it can drive you insane in the same way as working retail for 8 hours straight listening to the same songs over and over and over can do for you.

Also played through them last year and have similar opinions. They are for sure the worst of the big build games (I've not played some of the shitty ones like TekWar) but RR games are by no means terrible and have a certain charm to them. Though I'm someone who has no issue looking at a guide if I'm stuck and had to a few times with RR - had no idea you had to blow up the grain silo in the first level and more than once got stuck looking for those barely visible keys. If I played this in the 90s with no internet I would probably hate it a lot more (and maybe would not have got very far in the game).

Soundtrack is fun but like you say way too short, I just ended up turning it off after a couple of levels and playing other shit in the background.

Civvie video was good, game is maybe not as bad as he makes it out but his points are valid and I can easily see some of that stuff completely turning people off the game.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Also played through them last year and have similar opinions. They are for sure the worst of the big build games (I've not played some of the shitty ones like TekWar) but RR games are by no means terrible and have a certain charm to them. Though I'm someone who has no issue looking at a guide if I'm stuck and had to a few times with RR - had no idea you had to blow up the grain silo in the first level and more than once got stuck looking for those barely visible keys. If I played this in the 90s with no internet I would probably hate it a lot more (and maybe would not have got very far in the game).

Soundtrack is fun but like you say way too short, I just ended up turning it off after a couple of levels and playing other shit in the background.

Civvie video was good, game is maybe not as bad as he makes it out but his points are valid and I can easily see some of that stuff completely turning people off the game.

The funny thing is that the BuildGDX source port fixed the key issue. In that port, the keys are much larger and easier to find. Civvie has to stop hanging around Build Engine purist faggots.

 

[BrunoMattei]

@Stasi forgot to add, you can also make your character shit if you crouch on a toilet.

 

[Stasi]

@Stasi forgot to add, you can also make your character shit if you crouch on a toilet.

Haha sounds like I missed a lot during my playthrough. Didn't know about the piss button Civvie mentioned either.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Haha sounds like I missed a lot during my playthrough. Didn't know about the piss button Civvie mentioned either.

I honestly never knew about the piss button and I beat the first game and expansion pack twice.

 

[Boss HM-2]

The funny thing is that the BuildGDX source port fixed the key issue. In that port, the keys are much larger and easier to find. Civvie has to stop hanging around Build Engine purist faggots.

You get purist fags with id engines too. For instance, did you know that the reason Quake 2 looks so brown is because of a bug where the in-game brightness settings don't actually scale with resolution? It still hasn't been fixed in ports either, so the main workaround is that, assuming you're on a 1080p monitor, you want to turn the brightness up in the options to around 75% in fullscreen mode.

 

[BrunoMattei]

You get purist fags with id engines too. For instance, did you know that the reason Quake 2 looks so brown is because of a bug where the in-game brightness settings don't actually scale with resolution? It still hasn't been fixed in ports either, so the main workaround is that, assuming you're on a 1080p monitor, you want to turn the brightness up in the options to around 75% in fullscreen mode.

I feel like Build Engine faggots are worse though.

 

[Gravemind]

I feel like Build Engine faggots are worse though.

Bit OT but, considering this thread only really gets some life about once a week, I'm curious. What's the hot discourse in Build Engine circles regarding purism and source ports?

 

[BrunoMattei]

Bit OT but, considering this thread only really gets some life about once a week, I'm curious. What's the hot discourse in Build Engine circles regarding purism and source ports?

Kind of hard to describe but they're ultra purists and will nitpick the tiniest thing. They all bitched and moaned about the official port of Blood: Fresh Supply. Granted that yes, it did launch with issues but the vast majority of issues have been patched out and aside from 1-2 quirks like civilians not screaming when being killed and switches being replaced with voxels it's an incredibly faithful recreation of the game. But that's not good enough for the faggots.

 

[The tired cat]

I gotta say, seems, Civvie seems way too harsh on this game. I actually remember playing it back in the '90s, after my dad brought a CD from work, and remember enjoying it a lot on his laptop through the version I had came with a sort of bootleg Russian translation and it kinda gave the game its own brand of charm.

 

[Brain Problems]

I gotta say, seems, Civvie seems way too harsh on this game. I actually remember playing it back in the '90s, after my dad brought a CD from work, and remember enjoying it a lot on his laptop through the version I had came with a sort of bootleg Russian translation and it kinda gave the game its own brand of charm.

He's hard on it because overall it isn't that bad but there are some mind-boggling design decisions that on their own are minor but together induce headache and frustration. I owned both games growing up and liked how they recreated cool environments in the engine but recall getting lost like no other game that I can think of from the era (maybe Dark Forces?). RR also feels worse because Blood and Duke and SW are just so much better by comparison.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I gotta say, seems, Civvie seems way too harsh on this game. I actually remember playing it back in the '90s, after my dad brought a CD from work, and remember enjoying it a lot on his laptop through the version I had came with a sort of bootleg Russian translation and it kinda gave the game its own brand of charm.

You know? It's funny. I defend it in this thread and I was inspired to try it again. I fire up BuildGDX and come to realize that it doesn't play nice with 4K displays. Will download the latest version and hopefully that fixes that issue. I go play Rides Again and the first level confused me a little and lead to maybe 5 minutes of back tracking. No big deal. Next level you're driving the motorcycle around and driving the cycle is jank but it's 98 and on the Build Engine so it gets a pass. I completely miss a key tucked away in some obscure corner of the map and even after looking up a YT playthrough I still couldn't find this fucking key. So I level skipped and the next level is exactly like level 3 of Duke 3D where you get your shit taken away and start in jail.

Not as good as Duke 3D but not too bad. I crowbar to death two goons and find dynamite in a cell. A wall has a crack in it and you know what to do. I throw the dynamite and try to duck away and instantly die. Rinse and repeat two more times. Third time I throw the dynamite from the toilet so I can instantly duck back down under the water. It works. Level plays out fine. I look for secrets and keys then find a fireplace. I go into the fireplace expecting a secret or whatever and get stuck. There's a fireplace you can go into and it goes straight down and you cannot get out. I wall humped, I jumped around, it's fuck you, you're stuck. I could quickload but that pissed me off so much that I exited for the night.

So, I dunno. The games aren't forgotten masterpieces. They are better then other trash on the Build Engine like Tekwar and Witchaven 1 and 2.

 

[Mr. Duck]

Kind of hard to describe but they're ultra purists and will nitpick the tiniest thing. They all bitched and moaned about the official port of Blood: Fresh Supply. Granted that yes, it did launch with issues but the vast majority of issues have been patched out and aside from 1-2 quirks like civilians not screaming when being killed and switches being replaced with voxels it's an incredibly faithful recreation of the game. But that's not good enough for the faggots.

Accuracy retards are killjoys, like when everybody sperged out at Graf Zahl for his Raze source port replacing Ken Silverman's spaghetti code with ZDoom code.

Or the Doom community in general when anyone plays a vanilla or Boom wad on ZDoom.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Accuracy retards are killjoys, like when everybody sperged out at Graf Zahl for his Raze source port replacing Ken Silverman's spaghetti code with ZDoom code.

Or the Doom community in general when anyone plays a vanilla or Boom wad on ZDoom.

I remember the faggots ree'ing over the burning man bug in Blood and how it should never be patched out in source ports.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Or the Doom community in general when anyone plays a vanilla or Boom wad on ZDoom.

What do people get so mad about? I thought ZDoom was like the one source port most of the community liked.

 

[ShitlordroltihS]

Who

 

[Gravemind]

What do people get so mad about? I thought ZDoom was like the one source port most of the community liked.

It's not VANILLA enough.

Also GZDoom does a gay thing where it uses texture filtering/smoothing and freelook by default. But it takes maybe a few minutes at most to comb through the settings and turn that shit off/tweak it to your liking. Probably something about not having demo recording/playback by default as well, and the purists absolutely seethe at that because it means your gameplay isn't considered "legitimate" and can't be submitted to the old speedrun databases like Compet-n.

 

[Kane Lives]

It's not VANILLA enough.

Also GZDoom does a gay thing where it uses texture filtering/smoothing and freelook by default. But it takes maybe a few minutes at most to comb through the settings and turn that shit off/tweak it to your liking. Probably something about not having demo recording/playback by default as well, and the purists absolutely seethe at that because it means your gameplay isn't considered "legitimate" and can't be submitted to the old speedrun databases like Compet-n.

Well Chocolate Doom exists for the purists anyway so I'm not seeing the problem.

For me, I take more issue on the steady inflation of difficulty on modern Doom wads. It used to be that revenants were enemies you used sparingly if your wad name isn't Plutonia or Hell Revealed. Nowadays it's expected you solo revenant(s) with just the shotgun.

 

[Gravemind]

Well Chocolate Doom exists for the purists anyway so I'm not seeing the problem.

For me, I take more issue on the steady inflation of difficulty on modern Doom wads. It used to be that revenants were enemies you used sparingly if your wad name isn't Plutonia or Hell Revealed. Nowadays it's expected you solo revenant(s) with just the shotgun.

It's kind of funny too that people want their Doom experience as vanilla as possible, but not so vanilla that it doesn't include some QoL, which, as I understand it, is why most Doomers seem to be preferential towards PrBoom+ or whatever the fuck the recent alternative to PrBoom+ is that supposedly fixes some issues that PrBoom+ has.