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Hey gents, Just wanted to say thanks for all of the awesome recommendations in this thread - its turned me on to so many great games I never knew existed! (Blood, the duke expansions, a bajillion Doom mods) I bought the GOG version of Blood and just wanted to mention that there's a glitch that makes the lowest difficulty settings brutal. If you quicksave and then load a level, you'll TRIPLE the damage you take. Others have posted about this in the gog forums, and I never found a real solution. Basically, if you don't quicksave you're totally fine, but it certainly adds more difficulty to an already difficult experience. (All worth it for the top notch level design. Cryptic Passage in particular is worth all the praise ever thrown at it.) But what finally brought me to post is that I've been trying to get Lucasarts' Outlaws to work. Its basically star wars dark forces with a heaping helping of western awesomeness. And with judicious use of glide wrappers, compatibility modes and tweaks I've gotten the jerry rigged thing to work. Plus, I'm using itunes to play Clint Bajakian's gorgeous soundtrack - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evXZbJhEl_A Honestly, I'm shocked I got it working at all, since I'm on windows 7. But there's one problem - the 2.0 patch (http://www.lucasarts.com/support/update/outlaws.html) installer refuses to work on windows 7. It gives me that nasty "doesn't work on the system, check to see if its 32 or 64 bit blah blah blah" nonsense. Even a compatibility mode won't fix it. The kicker is that the 2.0 patch includes 4 new single player levels, that I vaguely remember to be unholy amounts of greatness. Anyone know of a way to circumvent the odd installer package? There's got to be a way to dig out the map files and play them separately, as i've figured out how to play a few fan made romps already.
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Apr 29, 2013 02:06
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Huzzah! Your google-fu or knowledge of obscure FPS' far outstrips my own. I also just ran through HACX: a commercial TC for Doom that... isn't very great at all. There's some great early levels that almost feel like a cyberpunk Duke Nukem, but the levels quickly devolve into endless switch hunts. For some drat reason I've been craving a retro Duke-style shooter thats focused on urban environments - office spaces, skyscrapers, and the like. Something like a longer more elaborate version of Shadow Warrior's Wanton Destruction. That Prime Target for Mac looks bleedin' perfect, but that game redefines the term obscure.
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Apr 30, 2013 02:52
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Zaphod, this might be a dumb question, but have you tweaked the gamma and contrast settings? One of the latter F keys shortcuts you there. And you'll want to get this working because boy howdy is it great. I've only played the first and second levels but this could very well function as a fifth Duke episode. It also features MORE! DUKE! NUKEM! For whatever reason, a lot of the top profile Duke single player mods don't feature Duke Nukem or his world much at all. Most modders tend to make their own stories and while that's cool, so much of my love for Duke 3d centers on the man himself. Between DNF 2013 and Blood Dragon, my inner 13 year old is ecstatic today.
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May 1, 2013 01:23
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At the risk of pissing off the fan community for Duke 3d, I'm kinda surprised there aren't that many truly outstanding mods. Doom is littered with amazing TCs and excellent mapsets of all types. Meanwhile, with Duke you've got the official stuff, two great expansions (DC and caribbean), and the mediocre at best Christmas pack. On the fan side, the new DNF is truly great - its gotten several of my friends back into the retro fps mindset. But outside of that the pickings get pretty slim. Starship troopers is drat nice, and The Gate is a classic from the old days. But a lot of the mods are overloaded with features and/or stray too far from Duke Nukem. Much as I enjoyed AMC TC, it felt more like this crazy culmination of the build engine than a rollicking Duke adventure. Speaking of Shadow Warrior though, I cannot recommend Wanton Destruction enough. Even in its slightly unfinished state, there are imaginative level designs all over the place. The whole package feels much more cohesive than Shadow Warrior itself. Still, all I really want is the option to zip around the level, slashing ninjas with my sword. The first few levels of Shadow Warrior are some of the best Build engine material stuff ever, and absolutely worth your time.
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May 9, 2013 01:02
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Well hells bells, I've ran into a snag with Outlaws again. I managed to get all the additional levels working AND the main game WITH cutscenes. I applied the Outlaws 2.0 patch, the windows installer, and had to switch out the OLGEO file to play the single player game. Plus, the Glide installer works beautifully and makes the game run silky smooth. And then I got to the back half of the single player game, starting with the sawmill. And i'm back to the "unable to load level" sign that kicks me out to the menu again. I tried several different OLGEO files, including the one directly off the CD. At first I thought it was because I was using virtual drives, but even after digging up my old discs the message persists. If I can't get it to work, no biggie. The first few levels were a blast, just wish I could see the (admittedly weaker) second half. Any ideas? P.S. Descent? Hell yes, that's always a good one to sink some time into.
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May 16, 2013 01:18
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Commander Keenan, that's almost certainly causing the problem. Back when I was on an older computer I remember the game having issues recognizing the second CD - usually asking me to insert disk two. But this just flat out brings up the "unable to load level" and sends me on my way.
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May 16, 2013 02:39
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Most of the megaWADs really disappointed me. I can imagine that stuff like Alien Vendetta/Memento Mori is great if you just want a more hectic version of Doom, but they left me cold. About the only gigantic mapsets that impressed the heck out of me were Epic 2 (egyptian themed with a few alien-style levels for variety) and Batman Doom. I'm sure there are great maps hidden away in stuff like Community Chest, but then again I'm clearly not the main audience for these WADs. I like big spectacles and new experiences - and stuff like Deus Vult favors nonstop difficult action and slaughter.
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May 17, 2013 22:35
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It plays nothing like the original Unreal, but Unreal tournament 2 for the xbox was a stupid amount of fun. They added melee combat and every match was like Jedi Outcast's slash and pray on speed. Totally nonsensical but a great time, especially at parties.
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May 26, 2013 08:37
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At the risk of generalizing... A brief and blunt look at the build engine games and expansions: Duke 3d Atomic - The grand pappy of everything that follows, and arguably still the strongest entry. Come for the balanced and innovative weaponry (the pipe bomb's soothing clink-clink, that beautiful moment when you realize that the rocket launcher isn't meant to be used just for special encounters, the trip mines), stay for the humor and the tight and compact level design. Plus, Duke! Though the second episode drains the fun factor (massive hitscanning enemies and very few easter eggs or humorous moments? Sign me up!), the 3rd and 4th episodes are wall-to-wall good times. Duke it Out in DC - Though there's no new weapon or enemies, this expansion starts at full throttle and never lets up. it starts with you storming the oval office - and somehow keeps throwing more and more DC landmarks your way. Plus, you get to rescue Bill Clinton! Duke Life's a Beach - new weapons, new enemies and a completely nonsensical theme all add up to the most memorable expansion pack. The level's seem even more wacked out and creative than DC - check out a level-long riff on Indiana Jones or the sprawling water park. The music, the coconut launchers, the new Duke one liners - Is there a man alive who doesn't love this? Nuclear Winter - Starts off by badly plagiarising the first two Duke 3d levels... and gets worse from there. For completionists only, the level design is pointed, angular, and lacking in every way. There IS a new enemy that livens up the action, and a decent moment or two. But its also got a godawful final boss that pisses away the smallest modicum of goodwill the past levels created. Redneck Rampage - Wildly unbalanced weapons and enemies. Arcane and obscure level design. An overly complicated health system. Yet for whatever reason, Redneck Rampage has charm and charisma to burn. The stereotypes are so lovingly bonkers (someone actually wanted to make a game that allows you to shoot chickens with a dynamite stick up their rear end, and god bless them for it) and the music is so kicky that the whole package somehow hangs together. Redneck Rampage: Suckin Grits on Route 66 - Imagine if someone came across a cool tool set, but noticed that the previous builder hadn't put them together in quite the right way. Route 66 takes everything from the original game and creates a leaner, meaner game. All of the awesome weapons left to rot until the last third of the original game are introduced almost immediately, and the player is invited to go nuts. The level design is still a bit brutal, but roadblocks are much easier to overcome and the programmer's logic is easily discernible. Redneck Rampage Rides Again - I have no memory of playing this. I mean, I remember the Elvis level and other bits and pieces. But this is basically just more Redneck Rampage - for better and worse. Completely unmemorable, but not offensively annoying. Shadow Warrior - A grab bag of crazy ideas, all thrown together in a stew. The game lacks even the barest sense of coherence. Levels zip from ancient kung fu temples to Auric Goldfinger-inspired fortresses. The weapon set is even more non-sequitor. (A beating heart! A laser! A sword! A nuclear bomb!) Its easy to see why Shadow Warrior bombed. People blame the offensive stereotypes, but its clear the game never had a unifying idea, theme, or voice to tie the strands together. The dirty secret is that if you don't mind the chaos, Shadow Warrior is a great deal of fun. Hacking up ninjas with the sword, leaping across buildings, another strangely compelling set piece - There is fun to be had here, and its easier to find than most think. Twin Dragon - More coherent than the original set of levels, offering up a great deal of enjoyment. Held back by one too many "Docks/Warehouse/Brown Building" levels to truly sing, but enough interesting levels pop up to keep the pace moving. Wanton Destruction - Holy hell! The build engine is pushed to all sorts of crazy limits, and the levelset is aided by a great theme: Lo Wang is in San Francisco, looking to kickass. The slightly americanized settings to Shadow Warrior create a beautiful balance between Duke and Lo Wang's worlds. A plane crash! A truly thrilling action sequence among the rickety girders! Challenging arenas to take down bosses! Seriously, go play it. Blood - The true climax to the Build era. Cranks up the gore (and the gibs!) to ludicrous levels. Your first real weapon is a pistol that shoots flares, lighting enemies ablaze. Spray tommy gun bullets, light hair spray cans on fire and chuck them like grenades. Turn enemies to dust with the voodoo doll. The levels mash together any and all Horror tropes into a delicious send up of the genre, matched by a caustic protagonist with the best one liners since Duke. The only real negative is the lack of a true source port for the title. Even with a myriad of fixes, I've known several friends who simply can't deal with the perspective and control issues that come with the package. PostMortem - Official addon... and annoying as all hell. Dull levels full of duller enemies do not play to the strengths of Blood at all. Cryptic Passage - Sunstorm returns for a final addon, and the results are wickedly entertaining. Each level feels like the sort of showcase/tech demo that a modder throws online to instant praise. Even more than Wanton Destruction, this is one best experienced on your own. Go forth, play, and be merry!
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May 30, 2013 12:42
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I also unfortunately played NAM and WWII, two of the most wretched gaming experiences I've seen. I've sunk time into some pretty dreadful stuff over the years, but I gave up after the first level for both.
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May 31, 2013 07:17
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In the early levels, learn how to slice and dice with the sword. The game is much stingier with ammo, but I generally got by with the uzi or riot shotgun. Never did find a good use for the sticky bombs though - they always awkwardly landed in front of me and dealt major damage.
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May 31, 2013 10:47
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I remember playing Wolf 3d on an uncle's work desktop computer the year it came out. I was still bopping koopa heads with mario so to my preteen eyes Wolfenstein was practically a simulation. In particular, my uncle came in a few hours later and was shocked to see that I was still grinding through one of the earlier levels. "Why are you stuck? Can't kill the nazis fast enough?" "No, I keep getting lost. This is a maze!" I shouted in frustration. My uncle wordlessly moved to the third drawer in his desk, ruffled through some papers, and pulled out his own hand-drawn maps for Wolfenstein. Switches, treasures, secrets, all of it. All on graph paper. "Then map the maze." He said.
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Jun 4, 2013 06:53
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Pirates! Doom actually uses some Outlaws sprites and assets, so they're understandably quite similar :P I've given up trying to get Outlaws to work on Windows 7 though. Even though its not the most AMAZING game ever, my nostalgia for it is so high that i'm planning on digging out my ten year old desktop computer this weekend to play Outlaws again.
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Jun 5, 2013 00:31
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My end progress after patches and fan made installations was perilously close to working - all of the added missions and the first half of the single player campaign played perfectly. But I couldn't get past the "unable to load level" for the levels on disk two, so I think the easier solution is just to dust off the old PC and enjoy it that way.
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Jun 5, 2013 00:59
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Hey Convex, you can reach me at K1049305@kingston.ac.uk Knew that student email would come in handy some time... Also, anyone check out that new Deus Ex mod? I'm having fun playing Half Life 1 for the first time in eons (and the first time on the PC), and will be digging through all the expansions and mods for quite some time. But after that... Deus Ex will probably be reinstalled 
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Jun 5, 2013 08:33
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Is there anyway to get Prime target working on modernish systems? I've got a desktop with windows 7 and a mac laptop with 10.6.8 working. I tried sheepshaver but it flatout refuses to work, not even opening the application at all. Not like I really need another fps to play... trying to play through all the Half life 1 mods on my list. Should be playing HL1 a long, long while.
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Jun 19, 2013 05:53
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I doubleclick on the sheepshaver icon and... nothing happens. Literally, nothing. No "this file won't work" message, just nothing. The icon doesn't even appear in my dock. The install guide is also talking about needing a Mac OS install cd which I don't think I have laying around, so I don't think I have the technical lay of the land to pull off this install.
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Jun 19, 2013 09:26
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I've never played FEAR but its from Monolith - the same geniuses who gave us No One Lives Forever. And if you haven't played NOLF, you are truly missing out.
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Jun 26, 2013 03:05
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At the risk of sounding dumb, what does an official release for a mod like Sven mean? I've downloaded a few pre-Steam mods for Half life 1 and so far they've seemed to work great. If its just for more exposure, that's still awesome. I've got a long standing date to play Half Life Decay with an old friend. We might just have to get to it.
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Jul 17, 2013 04:32
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Is there any actual footage of Reloaded? Every article mentions it looking great, but I don't think I've ever seen running footage of it. Someone mentioned it was like one of the polymer required mods - Duke Nukem Eternity. Which looked cool from the youtube footage, but the polymer made the dang thing unplayable on my 6 year old beaten down PC. Speaking of footage though, check out gameplay footage of Shadow Warrior. I stumbled across it a few days ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX7vNIivcig
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Jul 18, 2013 05:41
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Yeah, so many of the mod-created Doom maps create bosses that are solely about figuring about or even exploiting arcane bits of AI. And for me, that just isn't very fun. Winter's Fury was the latest example of a "completely fun and playable levelset wrecked by ungodly difficult boss battles". And so many people fluff that off, but if we're willing to mark down developer AAA games for having unfocused difficulty curves, why in the world do mods get a free pass? I should be able to look at something like "Cold as Hell" For Doom and be able to say "This is completely awful because even the lowest difficulty is nigh unplayable to any who lack the highest of skills" without being shat upon. (I'm looking at you, Doomworld.)
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Jul 23, 2013 03:32
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Hey guys, I'm playing Half life 1 again, for the first time in a very long time. And I've forgotten just how fragile Freeman is, even on easy difficulty. Two marines with a good line of sight can whittle your health down in seconds. Anyway, given all the platforming and "traps", I've been quicksaving like a fiend. But I just read that the game not only has checkpoints, but that the checkpoints will even "spawn" (when you reload) you with more health. Any idea on how that system works? Or if it even exists? There's not a ton of internet chatter on half life 1 these days - google keeps on pointing me towards the sequel.
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Aug 12, 2013 10:26
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I'll definitely give Black Mesa a go - but I wanted to replay the original non-HD, non-remade Half Life since I haven't played it in close to a decade. And while some things hold up (the atmosphere, the variety, the immersion), the creaky gameplay mechanics of the time really did hurt my experience. 1) I'm happy for a health bar instead of regenerating life, but jesus H Christ - I'd forgotten how easy it is to take damage. Playing on easy, a vortigaunt hit can take up to 20 points off my lifebar. Play through a ten second anything less than perfectly and you can lose half your health in a flash. 2) Even today, the marine AI is still pretty impressive. There were several points where they flanked or flushed me out of cover with a grenade. Do headshots do more damage than body blows? I was running around so frenetically in combat that I couldn't tell much of a difference. 3) 1st person platforming. Not as bad as some had warned me, but combined with the numerous "random explosion" takes out this side of the room scripted sequences, I was mashing that F7 key left and right. 4) The Xen sequence at the end isn't THAT bad. Its definitely not great, and it could've been cut, but it's clearly Valve experimenting with the world one more time. 5) That final boss though? Can go suck a bag of dicks. From the finicky jumping pads to complete lack of feedback (good luck figuring out what to do after blowing up the crystals) its just an astonishingly bad bit of game design. After beating the boss and not having a drat clue how I won (as I was on my way up to fire into his brain, he started exploding) I replayed the section with god mode on. And yeah, it feels entirely random when his little brain opens up for damage. 6) I don't want to end on a bum note, so I'll tell a tiny anecdote from a friend who played Half Life when it first came around. Like quite a few others, we didn't even know there WAS a Half life until we had been playing Counter Strike for months. (I also somehow owned CounterStrike and never realized it came with an AWESOME western mod). Anyway, I mentioned that I didn't really care for PC shooters. And he said, "But dude, this is like the beatles. They do survival horror, they do military action, they do aliens they do puzzles they do it all. And they do it all well." And more than a decade later, I think that's the most impressive element of Half Life. There is an absolutely mindboggling amount of variety from level and level. And to further the metaphor, even though some of the songs definitely sound antiquated and with fare more static than I remember, its still one hell of an album.
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Aug 13, 2013 01:24
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Okay, now I'm confused. http://justgamesretro.com/win/half-life This review states that scientists can HEAL YOU. Is that a thing? Did I somehow never see that because I was quicksaving so often that I was rarely in dire enough straits for a medkit to be given? Or is the review wrong?
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Aug 13, 2013 14:03
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Jedi Knight is a stupidly great game. Amazing shoddy FMVs aside, the actual game itself holds up well. The sense of scale is particularly impressive, with a real "holy crap I'm adventuring in Star Wars!" feel to the whole thing.
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Aug 30, 2013 08:59
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I posted about Half Life 1 a few pages back, and I think the game half-holds up. The awkward platforming and "random explosions taking off chunks of health" trial and error gameplay make it a little creaky around the edges. The atmosphere and variety remain immaculate though. Doom is the game that has aged incredibly well. I missed playing the original when I was growing up (my parents gave me Dark Forces as a compromise) and somehow never caught back up until two years ago. Cue me, in a foreign country, without a console gaming system. My only computer is a rickety MacBook. I buy Doom for five dollars and end up having a loving BLAST. Smarter and more knowledgeable men than I have listed why the game holds up. But for me, its all about the purity. A lot of the things Half life and Duke and Quake did were more about showcasing off fancy new technology. Doom was about shooting demons in the face, and everything came back to that original idea.
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Sep 25, 2013 19:03
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Chex Quest is great, if only for proving that Doom's still a great game even if you remove the gore.
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Oct 9, 2013 21:14
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I'm still sad I never got Prime Target working on my Mac... cursed technology!
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Oct 24, 2013 13:51
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No idea when this happened, but gamefly has Redneck Rampage for free. (Well, free for gamefly users). Such a gloriously stupid title.
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Nov 1, 2013 09:46
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I've mentioned this before, but Half Life's final boss can go straight to that very special, very hot hell. Awful, terrible design in every single way. Fights are brutal or stupidly easy depending on the completely random attacks he throws your way, there's hardly any positive feedback that you're actually doing damage, the bulk of the fight is based on that bizarre "jump on pads that may or may not kill you when you land"... It's textbook bad game design. Xen gets crapped on pretty regularly, but most of it is a decent change of pace. But that boss... blech.
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Dec 6, 2013 05:03
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Random odd question of the day - how does split screen co-op work on the XBLA versions of Doom? Do they throw more enemies and ammo at you? If my friend dies do we both fail?
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Dec 18, 2013 03:06
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Caribbean and D.C. are so good they occasionally outshine the original game. If you're a fan of those, I highly recommend Wonton Destruction for Shadow Warrior.
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Dec 26, 2013 03:35
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So, um, I went to GOG.com today for the first time in months and I seem to have drunkenly purchased the thief trilogy a few months back. Anyone mind telling me what I'm in for if I check out the first one? My computer can't run anything modern, so I don't need any fancy enhancements or anything. Is the gameplay superclunky or anything like that? I used to be a stealth fan way back with stuff like Metal Gear and Splinter Cell, but never got around to Thief.
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Jan 16, 2014 02:39
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If you haven't given it a go, the 360 remake of Perfect Dark is loving sexy. Beautiful implementation of a modern FPS scheme (or close to it) to an old, practically ancient control scheme.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:17
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High res updates really depend on the game itself. I generally like an upgraded resolution but cannot stand the pixel smoothing effect given to so many classics. That said, I did enjoy the hell out of Duke 3d's High Def Pack from a years ago - but only for the environments. Games that radically change the character animations and designs tend to really feel sacrilegious. There's a horde of improvements for Thief 1 that I've largely ignored - I'm playing with a slightly upgraded resolution 800 x 600 but everything else is probably pretty close to the original. That said, old control schemes really are the largest obstacle to enjoyment. I'm a console gamer and already feel pretty out of sorts with WASD - but anything beyond that really jerks me out of the experience. For comparison's sake... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIY-d3U7qK8
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Jan 21, 2014 23:04
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I know Bulletstorm remains a divisive game, but their parody of Call of duty always brought me a chuckle or two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_msAKWdOs
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Jan 30, 2014 00:47
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There is absolutely room for a Duke Nukem figure to come along and take the piss out of our endless military and "serious" shooters. But it also has to be a good shooter, first and foremost. DNF was both a bad shooter (the mechanics are awful, no real sense of oomph with any weapons, hardly any new weapons) and attacking targets that were a decade old.
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Feb 2, 2014 05:07
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Regarding Duke 3d, I was livid that the xbla doesn't have split screen. I love the rewinding replay system, but dang guys - how did they NOT have that ability?
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Feb 3, 2014 01:49
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Why in the world is Duke nukem such a locus for lovely legal activity?
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Feb 23, 2014 08:57
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So how large of a chance is there that Shadow Warrior might pop up on a console in a year or two? I can't exactly afford to buy a new laptop solely for it, but am definitely jealous of my PC-owning friends at the moment.
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Mar 14, 2014 19:18
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