- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
It's pretty incredible what id was able to get computers to do using aggressive optimizations like that.
Playing Old Games For the First Time - Give a Short Review of Some 10+ Year Old Game You Played For the First Time
- Thread starter The Ugly One
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
Oh man, you should take a look at Unreal 95 if you haven't done so. It's fucking bonkers.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
Unreal 1 did things that is hard to rationalize in a game engine context. It was much slower than id for a reason.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
The only source I have really played with is Q1, but I thought it was pretty neat how compact the data structures were.
I think it would be fun to port one of these old games to a classic console. Maybe do something really stupid, like try to port Unreal to Saturn.
I think it would be fun to port one of these old games to a classic console. Maybe do something really stupid, like try to port Unreal to Saturn.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
Games and graphics programming were pretty insane.
Speaking of old games, it's great that console Powerslave is now available on PC, that's a different game of sorts with bespoke additions and limitations between versions.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
I miss the says where game devs used games as a way to broadcast their love of heavy metal rather than transgenderism.
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2020
Bearing in mind that a lot of the old guard devs are the same ones endorsing (to different degrees) troon agendas today, possibly because it's considered the new "counter-culture" wave.
So, to bastardize my point another way, there's something to be said about a 90's-early aughts heavy metal-to-troonery pipeline.
Womble of Wimbledon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
Playing Rayman for the first time. I played every other game in the series over the years but never the original. It is brutally fucking hard in that retro side-scroller kind of way. Still fun but best enjoyed in short bursts.
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2018
It's been some years since I played Vietcong (2003) and it took some fucking around with unofficial patches to get running nicely on Win10, but it was a very enjoyable game. Long missions through remote dense jungle, minimal GUI, you go down quickly when shot, the undergrowth full of traps, the atmosphere can get you quite paranoid. I hate to use this word as it's been thoroughly ruined by autismal retards, but it's a very immersive game.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
They did a decent job on the jungle environment. I remember when all Turok could really do is make jungle sounds plus a few tree trunks.
Well, I finally got around to playing Portal 2. It came out in 2011, so yep, it's old. Like the first, this is not a long game. I beat it in 7 hours, and since it's a puzzle game, there's not really any replayability unless you're a speed-running autist. As for how it holds up? Well, the game looks and sounds pretty nice, even today, so there's that. IMO, graphics turned a corner in the DX9 era, where a well-designed game looked realistic enough that 10, 15 years later, it still looks pretty good.
The writing's clever and amusing. GlaDOS, Wheatley, and Cave Johnson are all well-written and funny in their own way. I definitely liked exploring the old, ruined, 20th century facility.
There's a reason I didn't play this until now. I thought Portal was boring and easy, and Portal 2 is really no different. There's some bouncy goop and speed goop that adds a bit more flair to some of the later puzzles, but this game suffers from a few fundamental problems.
1. If you let the player shoot portals onto any surface, getting to the exit is trivial. But if you restrict the surfaces, then all you really have to do is hunt around for the one or two surfaces you can shoot portals onto that will actually do anything or get you somewhere...so you either make things trivial or obvious.
2. Since you can only have a single portal pair at any time, you can't make a puzzle that requires setting up a complex Rube Goldberg type system, then triggering it. Every puzzle is solved via sequence of simple actions, and therefore, you only really need to figure out what the next action is, not the whole sequence at once.
3. It's a puzzle game, so if the puzzles are too hard, it won't sell well, because room-temp IQ morons will get frustrated and quit. So even the "hard" puzzles at the end have to be easy enough for a moron to solve.
The end effect is that the game's cleverness is a mirage. Nearly every room comes down to hunting for a white surface, shooting your portal gun at it, and seeing what happens. You don't need to think too hard about cause and effect. You're in a room and can only shoot your portal gun into about 3 or 4 places, it'll work out. Even in really complex rooms, there are only 2 or 3 things you can possibly do at the beginning, so just do those, and the next steps will be obvious, because they'll also be the only things you can do.
Overall, I don't really think too highly of this game, but it's short enough that it's worth playing if you want to see what the fuss was about. The best thing about it is the visual design and the writing, but the actual game itself is pretty weak in concept, although executed with a lot of polish. It's too bad Valve shut down its game development studio instead of spinning it off as a separate company.
Well, I finally got around to playing Portal 2. It came out in 2011, so yep, it's old. Like the first, this is not a long game. I beat it in 7 hours, and since it's a puzzle game, there's not really any replayability unless you're a speed-running autist. As for how it holds up? Well, the game looks and sounds pretty nice, even today, so there's that. IMO, graphics turned a corner in the DX9 era, where a well-designed game looked realistic enough that 10, 15 years later, it still looks pretty good.
The writing's clever and amusing. GlaDOS, Wheatley, and Cave Johnson are all well-written and funny in their own way. I definitely liked exploring the old, ruined, 20th century facility.
There's a reason I didn't play this until now. I thought Portal was boring and easy, and Portal 2 is really no different. There's some bouncy goop and speed goop that adds a bit more flair to some of the later puzzles, but this game suffers from a few fundamental problems.
1. If you let the player shoot portals onto any surface, getting to the exit is trivial. But if you restrict the surfaces, then all you really have to do is hunt around for the one or two surfaces you can shoot portals onto that will actually do anything or get you somewhere...so you either make things trivial or obvious.
2. Since you can only have a single portal pair at any time, you can't make a puzzle that requires setting up a complex Rube Goldberg type system, then triggering it. Every puzzle is solved via sequence of simple actions, and therefore, you only really need to figure out what the next action is, not the whole sequence at once.
3. It's a puzzle game, so if the puzzles are too hard, it won't sell well, because room-temp IQ morons will get frustrated and quit. So even the "hard" puzzles at the end have to be easy enough for a moron to solve.
The end effect is that the game's cleverness is a mirage. Nearly every room comes down to hunting for a white surface, shooting your portal gun at it, and seeing what happens. You don't need to think too hard about cause and effect. You're in a room and can only shoot your portal gun into about 3 or 4 places, it'll work out. Even in really complex rooms, there are only 2 or 3 things you can possibly do at the beginning, so just do those, and the next steps will be obvious, because they'll also be the only things you can do.
Overall, I don't really think too highly of this game, but it's short enough that it's worth playing if you want to see what the fuss was about. The best thing about it is the visual design and the writing, but the actual game itself is pretty weak in concept, although executed with a lot of polish. It's too bad Valve shut down its game development studio instead of spinning it off as a separate company.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2020
If you like Vietcong you should give Men of Valor a chance. It also takes place in Vietnam and imho has also grewat gameplay especially in the evening jungel mission when the bamboo obstructs vision and makes the whole jungle fights more immersive. I still have the original and I might try to make it run on Win 10 or Win 11
Argrabius
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2022
Recently “I Maed A Gam3 W1th Z0mb1es 1n It!!!1” released on the xbox360 in 2009 and now has gone free on steam. Very fun twin stick shooter, even better with a friend on local coop. It strikes a nice balance with the difficulty where going for the zero deaths run achievement is difficult but fair, I don’t think I have had a single death that was out my hands. Going for highscore is also pretty fun since it changes your playstyle a lot opting more for weapons which kill many far targets effectively rather than just ones that shred enemies that are close to you the best. The best part is the music which starts with the creator singing about the game and how you should buy it for a dollar with the finale being a heavier reprisal of that first theme. No online multiplayer unfortunately which is the only thing I don’t like with it. 8/10 game well worth the price of free
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2022
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2020
MechAssault and MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf are pretty much two of the more underrated Xbox special games to ever come out for the console. If anything, I find the soundtrack during the robot wars to be very pleasing to the ears.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
Turrican is great!
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- Joined
- Aug 18, 2020
I replayed Portal 2 a while back. Just as when I played in 2012, I got stuck in that one area at the very bottom of the old facility. The one that is over water. Did anyone else get stuck there?
The hardest part of Portal 2 is figuring out how to smash every single one of Wheatley's monitors.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
There are a lot of them that are over water. But I remember a couple of those taking a few minutes.
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2020
I should have been clearer. I meant this place, during the "blue gel" section:
IIRC the solution is to shoot a portal high up on one of the pillars.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
I vaguely remember one of the places that looked like that having a kind of odd sequence to make your way up a pair of pillars.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
I recently finished Unreal Tournament 1999. It's technically not the first time I played it, but I never played all the single-player missions before. Epic recently took all Unreal games off all storefronts, including the single-player games, with no real reason given. Fortunately, the GOG versions don't have DRM and are easy to pirate.
Arena shooters are a dead genre now, probably because the lack of custom loadouts makes them hard to monetize. But IMO, the gameplay has held up quite well, and the old UT graphics engine really handles light, darkness and color quite nicely, especially compared to the Quake II engine. Obviously, the graphics are extremely dated now, but there's something about them that just works for what they're trying to do. Most of the modes should feel familiar to anyone today, and the maps are largely well-executed. The one exception is Assault. As far as I know, this was a very, very early attempt at multiplayer objective-based maps, and the ones in UT are just garbage. The maps are either too big, or too full of choke points, and the objectives don't really take any time to take. But CTF, Domination, and TDM are all really fun.
I would say this is worth having a go if you've never played UT before and want a taste of the best of multiplayer gaming in the late 1990s.
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Arena shooters are a dead genre now, probably because the lack of custom loadouts makes them hard to monetize. But IMO, the gameplay has held up quite well, and the old UT graphics engine really handles light, darkness and color quite nicely, especially compared to the Quake II engine. Obviously, the graphics are extremely dated now, but there's something about them that just works for what they're trying to do. Most of the modes should feel familiar to anyone today, and the maps are largely well-executed. The one exception is Assault. As far as I know, this was a very, very early attempt at multiplayer objective-based maps, and the ones in UT are just garbage. The maps are either too big, or too full of choke points, and the objectives don't really take any time to take. But CTF, Domination, and TDM are all really fun.
I would say this is worth having a go if you've never played UT before and want a taste of the best of multiplayer gaming in the late 1990s.
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