Waltorious Writes About Games

Game-related ramblings.

Tag: History Lessons

History Lessons: No One Lives Forever (part 1)

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On July 7, 2012

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It’s been a while since I wrote a History Lesson post. You may wish to read my introduction if you haven’t already, and previous History Lesson posts can be found here. This is also the first History Lesson post that I’m writing as I play, rather than after the fact.

Having decided to take a break from Skyrim, I figured I should change gears. Instead of a modern game set in a medieval fantasy world, how about an older game set in the modern world? It seemed like the perfect time to try No One Lives Forever, a game I’ve been meaning to play for a long time. No One Lives Forever was released in 2000 by Monolith, the same studio behind Shogo: Mobile Armor Division (which was the subject of a guest post on this very blog), and it is set in 1967. Inspired equally by James Bond and Austin Powers, it tells the story of ’60s superspy Cate Archer, an operative in the British branch of the international intelligence agency UNITY. While ostensibly a first-person shooter, No One Lives Forever is known more for its implementation of stealth gameplay and for its variety of imaginative set pieces. It’s one of those games that many people hear about but few have played, touted as a classic that never quite reached the status it should have.

It’s also one of the rare games that feature a female protagonist. Let’s talk about that for a second.

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Alternate History: Doom [Guest Post]

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On November 6, 2011

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I have mentioned Doom, the 1993 game that basically launched the first-person shooter genre, a few times on this blog. But I’ve never actually played it (gasp! I should probably rectify that). Fortunately, jefequeso has played it, and he contributed this piece about what it’s like to revisit the game today. Read on!

Let’s face it—even the most casual of gamers has at least some passing knowledge of Doom. As the title that essentially jumpstarted the FPS industry, it’s not exactly obscure. So this is going to be somewhat different from the other History Lessons, in that it’s not about introducing people to an old game they might have missed. Rather, this is about re-visiting a classic almost all of us have played and looking at some of the things that make it still entertaining today.

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History Lessons: Duke Nukem 3D

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On November 3, 2011

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2011 saw the release of Duke Nukem Forever, a mere 14 years after it was originally announced. The game was not well received, but really the release itself is more significant than the actual game. Duke Nukem Forever was the classic example of vaporware, a game that had garnered enormous amounts of hype but which suffered delay after delay, until it entered a state of limbo with few believing it would ever be released. Yet somehow the game was never cancelled, and it became a sort of myth, elevated to legendary status.

Why so much excitement about one game? The protracted development certainly didn’t help, with expectations for the final product rising with each delay, but the original spark was the hit game Duke Nukem 3D. Released back in 1996, the game earned an extremely devoted following. I had never played it, so I decided to try it and see what all the fuss was about.

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Alternate History: Shogo: Mobile Armor Division [Guest Post]

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On October 21, 2011

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There is too much gaming history to be covered by one man. Fortunately, jefequeso offered to help by contributing this guest piece on Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, the 1998 first-person shooter by Monolith. Read on for his thoughts on the game.

Monolith is something of an enigma. While FPS developers such as Valve and id have signature styles that permeate their classic titles as well as their new releases, it’s hard to see the Monolith that created Shogo: Mobile Armor Division going on to make games as gritty and brutalized as Condemned and FEAR. Shogo is a lighthearted, funny, entertaining, addictive, broken, infuriating, borderline unplayable gem of an FPS, about as far removed from FEAR’s visceral gunfights and Condemned’s disturbing imagery as you can get.

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History Lessons: System Shock

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On October 15, 2011

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In 2007, 2K Boston (now known as Irrational Games) released Bioshock, which proved to be a big hit. I wanted to play it but I didn’t have a good enough PC at the time. But as I read more about the game I learned that it was a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, a game I’d heard many good things about but had never played. So I figured I’d find a copy of that and try it first. But then I decided I should really start at the beginning, and try the first System Shock game. I didn’t know much about that one, other than that it was much older, having been released in 1994. I was able to find a cheap used copy on eBay, got it running pretty easily in DOSBox, and gave it a go.

I was not prepared.

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History Lessons: Another World

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On October 11, 2011

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Another World (known in the United States as Out of This World) was released in 1991, by a single man, Eric Chahi (who has recently returned to game development with From Dust). The original release was for the Amiga, a system which I have never even seen, let alone owned, but there was a DOS port a year later, which I did play.  The game made a big impression on me, as it did for many others, for reasons I will discuss.

In 2006, Eric Chahi released the Another World 15th Anniversary Edition, an updated version of the game that runs natively on Windows, has optional updated graphics, some improved checkpointing, and a bunch of extras including making-of videos. I recently got around to playing the new edition, which inspired me to write a History Lesson about it.

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History Lessons: Outcast

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On October 3, 2011

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Outcast was released in 1999, which turned out to be very unfortunate timing. It was a time when graphics cards (known then as “3D Accelerator Cards”) had just taken off, and the games industry was running wild with crazy, high-resolution, detailed texture-mapped games that were miles ahead of what had been possible just a few years before. But Outcast took advantage of a different type of graphics, eschewing polygons (well, partly) in favor of voxels, which are in essence 3D pixels. Think Minecraft, but make all the blocks really tiny. The newfangled 3D cards did not support voxel graphics, so Outcast needed to be run entirely on your CPU. To make things worse, you needed pretty much the absolute best CPU available to play the game at any decent framerate. At a time when gamers were spending their money on shiny new 3D cards, Outcast was asking you to shell out for a new CPU instead. As a result, very few people played it.

I was one of the many who didn’t play it. I did try the demo, though, and it was very impressive at the time. I remember being floored by the water graphics… the realistic ripples and waves that I saw were unthinkable at the time; even the 3D accelerator cards couldn’t do graphics like that. The landscapes were also incredible, with believable rolling hills and soaring mountains. Curves, basically, which polygon-based graphics would be unable to accomplish for some time yet. Too bad the demo ran at about 5 FPS on my machine; all I was really able to do was admire the scenery and then quit. Outcast was some kind of dream game that I knew I would never be able to play because there was no way I could afford the dream machine I would need.

Until now, of course.

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History Lessons: Might and Magic Book One: Secret of the Inner Sanctum

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On September 23, 2011

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The Might and Magic series is probably most famous for the Heroes of Might and Magic spin-off series of tactical fantasy warfare and conquest.  But the original games were old-school, party based RPGs.  I played and enjoyed games 4-6 of the series back in the day, so I was excited when a giant pack containing games 1-6 was (re-)released on GOG.com.  True to my methodical nature, I decided to start with the very first game, which I was surprised to learn was released way back in 1986.  Now THAT’S old-school.  While I am no stranger to ye olden days of DOS, still I braced myself for a very limited and trying experience, for how deep could a game so old be?  Just by virtue of the tiny file size limits, I was expecting a much smaller experience than the sprawling, epic games that came later.

I was wrong.  Might and Magic Book One is very, very impressive, and definitely worth a look as a History Lesson.

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History Lessons: Introduction

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On September 23, 2011

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History Lessons will be a series of posts about older games viewed through a modern lens.  I take a look at a bunch of games of yesteryear and examine the ways in which these games have inspired and evolved into the games of today.  For readers who have already played these games, the posts may not be particularly informative, but my goal is to inspire those who never experienced these games to give them a try, to gain some historical perspective on our favorite pasttime.  As such, I will endeavor to avoid spoilers.

The focus will be on games that I did not play when they were released, but have only played for the first time recently.  This will hopefully keep me relatively free of the effects of nostalgia, and allow me to make unbiased judgements about the games’ merits.  I will not completely exclude games simply because I’ve played them before, but if I write about those games I will re-play them to make sure I have a fresh perspective.  Some entries will be about games I’ve already finished and will be single posts, while others I will write as I play, in several installments.  I’m not going to impose any limits on what I write about, so some entries may be entirely about mechanics while others might be about how the games evoke emotion in the player (me)… basically I’ll write about whatever strikes me most.  Hopefully they’ll be interesting.

So without further ado, let’s get started!

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