Good evening.

October seems to be a fairly productive month for us at FFG. No, not because it’s Halloween. (You know, that really isn’t such a big deal over here).

Anyway, it’s been a little while, but we’ve got one of our discussion review features for you tonight. The game is Outlaws. Yee-haw! *fires guns into the air* (sincere apologies).

Hi everyone.

I seem to be on a bit of a roll with these futuristic racers. Here’s another one for you: a game called Ballistics, from 2001.

Thank goodness for Stoo and his Duke Nukem retrospective! Next time: something completely different.

Hello everyone. A lot of my retro gaming time lately has been eaten up by a vast, sprawling 90s cRPG (I’ll leave you to speculate on which one), the sort of one that could take months yet to finish. I could cut it short but kinda feel like I want the full, beardy, dicerolling experience.

So I’m trying to fit in a few others along the way, the sort that aren’t such a massive commitment. Today we’re going back to the Apogee lineup, looking at the first couple of installments in the Duke Nukem series, back in the days before he went 3D and started hanging around strip clubs.

Hello.

Another day, another review, another future hover racer thing (but, you know, from the past). It’s Slipstream 5000.

Hi there.

There’s been a lot written about this game recently, probably because the PlayStation is 20 this year (in Europe, at least). I can assure you, though, that the timing of this review is completely coincidental. (Oh! To be able to plan such things so meticulously…)

The PC version, as we shall see, loses a few cool points, and – perhaps – so do I, for refusing to call it WipEout or wipEout or wipE’out”.

Look, I’m not writing the logo. It’s called Wipeout.

I’ve been waiting for this for years – System Shock is finally on gog.com.

This is the game we once called the Thinking Man’s Doom. In those days all shooters tended to be described by reference to Doom – but this one had some rather different DNA. Its direct ancestor from Looking Glass Studios was actually a first-person RPG, Ultima Underworld, and while it’s debatable whether we’d call Shock itself an RPG, there are some clear differences to the Doom template.

It’s a slower, more thoughtful experience. There’s more emphasis on exploring, and interacting with your environment. It’s tense and cautious, particularly in the early stages as you creep around with a few paltry weapons, listening out for the chattering of killer cyborgs. Rather than a set of maps to shoot monsters, its levels make up a cohesive little enclosed world, of offices and engineering decks and hangars that make up Citadel Station, a place of which you gain understanding as you progress. Audio logs, found on the bodies of the crew whose bodies litter the corridors, allow you to slowly piece together the tragic story of what happened here. The insane ruling Artifiical Intelligence, Shodan, regularly taunts you; simultaneously dismissing you as an insect yet fixating on destroying you. With her delusions of godhood, she’s one of the truly memorable villains of gaming. Rather than simply looking for keys shooting your way through her domain you must search for key systems such as mining decks and garden groves, and find ways to disable them, to thwart her murderous plans.

It also boasts a rather advanced engine for the day (un fact so did UU). It allows for sloped floors and ceilings, where Doom’s were all made of flat expanses and steps. It let you jump and climb, so no being thwarted by 3-foot walls. you can throw stuff, be it grenades or just random items. These all helped make its world feel that little bit more convincing.

I don’t mean to belittle Doom. Okay I’m sound like a shock fanboy, but believe me I’ve spent hours on Doom too. It’s much faster and smoother while movement in Shock is clunky. It’s more focused on shooting, has more intense and battles against larger numbers of monsters, and it brought us deathmatch. These elements made it a success for pretty good reasons. Still, I reckon Shock deserved a bit more popularity. I idly wonder, if it had sold more, spiritual descendants like Deus Ex would have appeared earlier, or more frequently.

I could blather on longer, but you could also just read my old writeup. It’s one of the greatest games of its sort of the decade, really.

I’ve not yet played GOG’s version, and will report back if there’s anything major to note. They do mention adding proper modern mouselook which would help fix the clunky controls which were one of Shock’s greatest flaws. Widescreen support sounds good also. As does having the game wrapped up and ready to run with Dosbox (or whatever they’ve used to make it compatible with modern PCs). The brilliant, moody sountrack is included too. So this is definitely one of those oldies I’m re-buying even though I already have it on CD.

Anyway, here are a few tips for those of you trying System Shock for the first time.

– Each level has a cyborg conversion unit. Find this, flick a switch to reconfigure it and you will return to it every time you die on that level.
– Destroy cameras and computer nodes to lower the security rating on each level, which opens some locked doors
– Levels 1 to 6 each have a room of computer nodes and a screen showing a cycling numeral. When you destroy the nodes, the screen fixes on a certain digit. Write this down, it’ll save backtracking later.
– Ammo is scarce early on. Save shots from stronger guns. Maybe make note of charging stations then use the sparq (which runs off your batteries).
– The magpulse is death to robots. The flechette is super-useful against the rapidly respawning mutants in the groves. The Laser Rapier is death to anything, if you can get close enough, and especially if you pop a berserk patch.
– Some players find cyberspace annoying. You might want to set it to difficulty level 1 on a first playthrough. (put everything else on 2).

Hello there.

It’s been a little bit quiet around here recently. Sorry about that. But at some point in the summer I did manage to play, and write about, an old game.

So here it is: Screamer 4×4.

Today’s lineup of RPG monsters that have been giving me grief are from Might and Magic 6.

disclaimer: it’s possible that my problem was simply attempting to fight some of these when my party was a bit under-levelled. It’s also possible that I’m bad at RPGs.

Harpy Witches
These ladies manage to be obnoxious in two different ways. First up, they can cast curse on your party. This spell hits all four of your guys at once, and doesn’t appear to need to be aimed. It just instantly applies and so can’t be dodged. Since the harpies are often airborne, you may not even notice they are there until there’s a sudden blippy noise and a blue flash on your character portraits.

Being cursed basically means you hero suddenly becomes woefully incompetent. Their spells fail with a useless fizzling noise. They can’t shoot strait, their arrows firing harmlessly into empty space. They wave their swords around like a kid with a flag at a parade. Trying to direct a team where everyone is cursed is a frustrating shambles.

There’s a remove curse spell, sure. But if you’re up against several harpies at once, they’ll just re-curse you all, several times over. With that ever-irritating BLIP noise telling you it happened again. So decursing is only really viable if you can run away and then adopt hit and run tactics with bows and spells.

Once in melee range, the harpy witches are not particularly hard hitting. However, each attack has a small chance of prematurely aging your characters. I’m not sure exactly what effect that has, but it’s presumably its some sort of stat penalty. I don’t particularly want my guys accelerating towards middle age as they blunder around, and I’ve not yet found any sort of reverse-aging spell.

Fire Archers
A more straightforward problem, these ladies launch exploding arrows. So they they are effectively carrying rocket launchers. That’s fantastic news, apparently we’re playing Doom now.

Melee enemies, even when very tough, can be dealt with by keeping your distance and using turn based mode. Shoot them full of spells and arrow, go to realtime and retreat, go back to turn based and shoot some more.

High end enemies with projectile and spell attacks of their own are more challenging. In turn based mode you are stationary, so you’re extremely vulnerable. So I have to go over to the chaotic mess that is realtime combat, where it’s much harder to co-ordinate your actions. I found myself using the most ridiculous tactic of running in erratic circles, to throw off their target-tracking, whilst stabbing the “attack” button every time my characters were ready to use their own bows and spells.

source: crpaddict.blogspot.co.uk

Evil Eye
Good grief. Welcome to ranged-enemy hell. They bomb the hell out of you with elemental spells that also cause secondary effects like sleep or fear. Also, while you might expect a magic-based floaty head monster to be balanced by physical frailty, the weakest version has as many hitpoints as a heavyweight like a dwarf lord or an ogre chieftain. I’m going to come back and try this dungeon again later.

Now, just so this item isn’t entirely me complaining, here’s an enemy that is awesome!

Lizard Wizard
I like these guys just because they sound like some sort of 70s prog rock band. They’re not especially challenging, most likely because off the vast amounts of LSD they’re taking. Also they’re preoccupied with writing some 19 minute songs for their next concept album.

So, armed with a new computer, and with a recent Need for Speed review in the bank, I decided to check out some more recent entries in the series.

Following the relative disappointment of Carbon, EA Black Box, the team responsible for NFS games since Underground (on PC at least: they also did the good version of Hot Pursuit 2 on PS2 in 2002 – the PC version was developed by a different team and, by all accounts, wasn’t so great) were given two more bites at the cherry. Pro Street was derided as a dull track based racer, while Undercover’s attempts to return to the ‘roots’ of Underground and Most Wanted were considered largely unsuccessful. (Disclaimer: I haven’t played either – one day FFG may have its own opinions to offer, but for now, we’re only repeating those read elsewhere.)

I guess Michael Bay would have liked this bit.

Anyway, the license passed to other hands for a couple of years while Black Box worked on The Run, the 2011 instalment of NFS. The concept – a coast to coast race on the open roads of the USA – was very appealing to me, and although I was put off at the time by slightly smelly reviews, I was tempted back by cheap copies several years after the fact (it was ever thus).

As a kid, films like Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run were among my favourites, while Test Drive 2 and the original Need for Speed were the kind of games that promised something similar (within the limitations of the time). Despite technological advances, though, there has never really been such a thing as a great long-haul racer, with the low key charms of Euro Truck Simulator 2 being the closest we’ve come to a driving game that revels in the experience of getting from A to B.

The Run does look very nice, and it’s not entirely without thrills – this ice-dodging section is particularly good.

Hopes that The Run might be that game are soon undermined by a host of obvious flaws, including – but not limited to – a dreadful and somewhat underdeveloped plot, an unsympathetic main character, a desire to combine missions and scripted gameplay with the open road, and a misguided focus on Hollywood set pieces at the expense of open world driving.

You are Jack, a guy who – as far as we can tell – is in some financial trouble that appears to be entirely of his own making. Instead of being deservedly murdered by Chicago mobsters, he is instead bailed out by a woman called Sam – who, for reasons unknown, helps him enter a race called The Run, the prize money for which could ease his woes, in exchange for a significant cut.

Jack is the kind of dickhead EA think people playing the game would like to be.

Depending on your point of view, it’s either deliberately minimalist, or they didn’t have time to finish it. There was a big song and dance about Michael Bay’s involvement (although I think he just directed a trailer) and also regarding the inclusion of out-of-car sections using QTEs, so it’s a surprise that there’s so little to it, story-wise.

The main problem I have with the game is that you have to drive flat out all the time to stay ahead of opponents and – when they appear – the police. Inevitably, you’ll crash or go off road multiple times and then the game force-resets you back to a checkpoint, which sort of undermines the free-wheeling spirit of a drive on the open road. Also, there are action movie bits where you have to avoid gunfire and explosions – but, unlike a movie, you fuck it up several times because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

The Run is short, and your time (roughly 2 hours) is logged, implying that repeat plays are encouraged. Which would be fine if this wasn’t such a choreographed, rubber band experience in the first place. A slightly more realistic driving model, with more emphasis on being careful, some evident love for the vehicles available (like the original NFS or Test Drive Unlimited) and abandoning the story and associated set pieces altogether would all make this a more appealing proposition.

But, as it is, it’s a bit like watching a slightly crap film again – not too demanding in terms of energy and time commitment – but still not something you want to be doing.

Gog have recently added to their lineup a couple of strategy games based on Warhammer 40k, the famous science-fantasy tabletop wargame. These games are great for those of us us who feel like commanding some space marines against the enemies of the Imperium, but never got around to finding a gaming club. Or can’t paint to save our lives. Or don’t particularly want to be hanging around a Games Workshop full of 12 year olds.

First up there’s Chaos Gate. It handles a bit like the old X-Com games: turn based, with each character allocated a certain amount of action points to move, shoot, reload etc. Your forces in each battle consist of a few squads of marines, facing off against their traitorous Chaos-worshipping counterparts.

I recall finding it a bit slow to start off with, largely due to the weedy standard weapons the marines carry. If you stick with it though, more interesting options are wheeled out. Like the Assault Marines who charge around the battlefield on jetpacks, waving axes and pistols. You also get Librarians which basically Wizards. Genetically engineered super-soldier wizards that is, because 40k rejoices in the outlandishly ridiculous. Also the Terminators, who wear even huger armour than regular huge space marine armour and are armed with a mix of shockingly powerful Gatling guns and giant hammers.

(Some users have reported issues with Chaos Gate crashing, see some advice from gog here).

Then there’s Final Liberation, also turn based but based on the spin-off game Epic, which depicts warfare on a much larger scale. So you have tanks, artillery and even Titans (which is what 40k calls giant mecha). This one pits the armies of the imperium against the green horde of the Orks. I recall it can be pretty challenging, unless you save-scum the hell out of it (who would ever do such a thing), as you have to constantly push forward to capture objectives to win a battle. Can’t just sit back and shoot, despite your massed ranks of heavy guns. Close combat is also a consideration – Orks on motorbikes don’t look like much of a threat at this scale, but they’ll do horrible things to tanks up close.

I have a certain fondness for the full-motion-video cutscenes, which are basically what you’d get if you took your local amateur dramatics society, dressed them up in 40k outfits and put them on top of late-90s CG. So basically a fan-film, I guess. I mock a bit, but they have a certain charm in that low-budget british scifi kind of way. They’re also honestly more enjoyable to watch than that terrible CG space-marine movie released a few years ago.

There’s also Shadow of the Horned Rat , which is based on 40k’s stablemate, Warhammer fantasy battle. So it’s a game of goblins and crossbows instead of tanks and lasers. I’ve never played this one so can’t comment, other than to say it looks like it’s realtime. It’s also having crashing problems, so might want to hold off until gog find a fix.