AMC TC. Duke Nukem is presumably dead, but the Earth still faces many dangers, numerous villains hasn’t got their asses kicked, so Earth Defense Force forms Allied Military Complex squad to continue Duke’s mission battling anything threatening humanity, that is, of course, a role you will be taking on as a player.
So what does AMC offer to you?
- 3 complete episodes consisting of big levels with a considerable amount of stuff to explore;
- 10 playable characters each one with at least 9 weapons in their arsenal;
- A big amount of unlockables: additional weapons, support equipment, ammunition types, upgrades, hidden levels, cosmetic stuff and more;
- Massive variety in everything: character roster, enemies, arsenal and equipment, visuals, gameplay etc;
- A dedicated artist is involved in the development, so the mod features a shitload of custom sprites that are pretty well done, there are also cutscenes, artwork and even full motion videos;
- A good selection of music;
- A pretty ok story for an FPS game, but since the full version of the mod is supposed to have 5 episodes it’s not yet finished.
Sounds pretty good, eh? But any experienced player would say “It can’t be that good” and sadly it’s true, here are the drawbacks:
- The “action” part of the mod has so many problems, that I just can’t put it shortly;
- Almost complete absence of challenge;
- Voice acting is mostly terrible, not just the acting itself but also the audio quality and audio levels;
- UI is mostly shit;
- A lot of missions are character restricted, meaning you can’t select what character you want to play, some of them feature no character specific mechanics and no story related to them, so they restrict your choice for no real reason;
- Some bugs.
I will divide the text bellow in two parts, just like the lists above. Firstly I will introduce you to the mod and mention the positives, after we're done with that I will dump the barrel of shit - that is the negative parts of the mod. Now I’ll go into details.
Right from the start you can play episodes in any order you want, although for the sake of story I recommend you do it chronologically. The first episode is the shortest one consisting only of 7 missions, but the following ones have double of that amount, as a bonus there are EDF missions - user maps that were originally made for Duke Nukem 3D, you can complete them for some cash and cosmetics. The missions themselves don’t start automatically, AMC squad has it’s own base that serves as a hub for every mission in the game. The base itself is pretty big, you can run around freely and explore if you want to, sadly there are no hidden goodies to find and the location mostly used for immersion, however there are more things to do there other than selecting the mission you want to play.
In the base you can:
- Meet a weapon merchant and purchase new weapons if you have enough money and have met certain conditions;
- Research various stuff in laboratories;
- Buy upgrades for you weapons;
- Swap characters;
- Access shooting range to test your arsenal;
- Go through training course.
Inner part of the base.
There are also some NPCs you can talk to, some info about the world and people you can read and certain characters can phone their buddies, but all of this is basically just a lore dump, it doesn’t affect the gameplay in any way.
Thankfully all places that are important for the gameplay are located near each other (except weapon merchant, but you won’t be visiting him often) so you wouldn’t be forced to do pointless legwork.
The missions are divided in 2 categories - mandatory and optional ones. Completing each mission earns you some budget – primary resource used for pretty much anything in the game, and credits, which are only used for upgrading weapons. I haven’t figured out exactly how income works, seems to be related to how many enemies you kill, but the weapon upgrades are cheap and there aren’t a lot of them, so you can buy them pretty quickly, however they reset each time you start a new episode. As for the budget you will always have something to spend it on, if you don’t want to bother you can cheat – open amtc.cfg file and edit AMC_BUDGET value.
But wait, there’s more. You can purchase satellites to prospect for resources, what do you do with them? You build factories to generate supplies and spend them on mining process, doing so earns you a massive amount of budget. You know what else you can do with supplies? You can buy airports and have aircrafts drop them during missions in case you need some additional health, ammo and armor, although this works only for the specific missions.
To be able to do research you will need manpower and brainpower. How do you get that? You rescue scientists in various missions, each rescued lab coat increases your technology level by 1, the more advanced research project is the higher technology level it requires to complete. Then there are special people that will join you and unlock additional weapons, weapon upgrades and technologies, that is if you manage to find and save them.
That might seem like a lot to take in, but in reality it sounds more complicated than it actually is, it wouldn’t take you long to understand what’s what.
From left to right: Snowfall, Mikko Sandt, Zaxtor Znort, Merlijn Oostrum, Sang, Highwire, Rusty Nails, Geoffrey, James Stanfield, Micky Crisp.
At the start of the first episode you will have 8 characters available for play: Mikko Sandt, Zaxtor Znort, Merlijn Oostrum, Sang, Highwire, Rusty Nails, Geoffrey and James Stanfield. Micky Crisp and Snowfall will join you later. All of the characters are actually self-insert versions of the developers of the mod, they share names and, with the exception of Rusty, are voiced by them. I haven't seen something like that before, but ok. While I don't really care about self-insert, I have a problem with voice acting. I've already said that's it's mostly terrible, I can give guys credit for trying, but it doesn't change the outcome. Rusty kind of stands out, because his voice actor seems to understand a thing or two about acting (goes under Major Tom moniker, he also provided VO for other mods) he also has some of the best lines in the game, no idea if these things are related, but unfortunately shitty sound quality and editing diminish his contribution significantly. Only paradigm troops have proper voice over in the mod, why couldn't the authors bring everybody else to their level?
Alright, but what about gameplay? At first I wanted to write a more detailed description of every character and their arsenal, covering their strong and weak sides, but since the game is so easy I don't see the point in doing it, instead I will be brief.
It's fine, it's good, gameplay wise I like every character in the game, except one. Each character comes with certain strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes even special abilities. They have various amounts of health, stamina and different types of armor, the stronger the armor the more damage it absorbs, and just like in Blood there are 3 types of armor: physical, fire and spiritual. All of the characters can carry 10 weapons at once, 9 of them are character specific, the first slot is occupied by general weapons, which anyone can pick up and use. The 2-6 slot weapons follow a set pattern that should be well familiar to you: pistol, shotgun, machine gun, grenade laucnher, hand grenade; some characters deviate from that path, then the ninth slot is occupied by mines, the remaining three slots can host anything: heavy machine guns, sniper rifles, rail guns, energy weapons, nail guns, staves, petrifiers and other shit. You can unlock more weapons by finding them during missions or buying them from the weapon merchant, there are no additional weapons for Snowfall, however. The support items from Duke Nukem 3D are still here, though they have been changed. Medkit, jetpack, nightvision googles, scuba gear and protective boots work the same, but instead of holoduke each character has a specific item that does something unique, steroids are also slightly altered, depending on the character they can provide some additional bonuses on top of the usual increase in speed and melee strength. Characters can also carry special ammunition, melee weapons and artifacts, while special ammo is very strong, the latter two don't usually make much difference but they are nice to have nonetheless, as with the rest of the equipment you can unlock them by playing the game and exploring levels.
Before starting a mission you can equip a selected character with the mentioned above gear, you can't give them character specific weapons, but everything else goes. This will cost you some budget, but the costs will only seem scary at the very beggining, later on you wouldn't even be thinking about them.
Despite the mentioned above lack of difficulty, picking the right character and the right equipment can make your life noticeably easier, but in most conditions it's whatever. The only thing you really have to consider is what type of enemies you will be dealing with. You see, some enemies are armored, either partially or fully, not all weapons can damage armored enemies and some characters have easier time dealing with armored enemies. There are also enemies that are considered supernatural, they also require you to have some specific weapons to deal with them. These 2 are the most important factors to consider when you're preparing for a mission, everything else doesn't really mean much.
Character select screen showcasing loadout.
If I were to rank characters relative to their overall power I would go like this:
- Geoffrey - above average health and stamina, strong armor. Fantastic arsenal that allows for efficient destruction of every foe in the game right from the very beggining, just upgrade his pistol and you're set. His special item is infinite ammo bandana that combined with his amazing arsenal allows you to go nuts, only one of his guns require reloading, so fire away;
- Snowfall - his arsenal rivals Geoffrey's in power, but Snowfall himself has significantly less health, he is also more dependant on upgrades and research projects. And finally his special item is nearly useless, you only need it for one very specific mission;
- Highwire, James, Micky - Highwire is kind of lacking at the beggining but becomes very strong after you purchase some alternative weapons for him, his special item allows him to call EDF troops for assistance, EDF troops start out weak, but grow in strength significantly after upgrades. James is "not beginner friendly" type of character, he's very good but requires you to be familiar with how the game works, he's the character with the most weapons in the game. Micky is in the same position as Highwire, only that his better weapons take longer to get;
- Rusty, Zaxtor, Sang, Mikko - Rusty has the weakest grenades in the game, dart gun also sucks, good character otherwise, but doesn't have the same killing power as the guys above. Zaxtor has the biggest healthpool in the game, but also the weakest armor, his low tier weapons are very strong, but high tier ones are weaker in comparison to other characters. He also struggles to deal with armored or supernatural enemies. Sang requires additional weapons to get going, along with Snowfall he's one of the most fragile characters in the game, that's why his special item grants him god mode, just like James he's not very beginner friendly and doesn't have as much fire power. These factors combined make him a rather undesirable choice until later game. Mikko is the type of character that trades firepower for survivability, his healthpool is second only to Zaxtor, unfortunately he doesn't wear the strongest armor, but he's still tanky due to his healthpool. His starting arsenal is rather ass, it becomes better after you unlock alternative weapons but sadly never really rises to greatness;
- Merlijn - this character sucks, he's outright badly made, I don't like him. I will explain later why.
This ranking considers that you have every upgrade unlocked and every research project completed, but it wouldn't be very different if you don't. It also skips many details, but they don't matter considering mod's very dissapointing lack of difficulty. AMC squad doesn't always venture on it's own, from time to time you will have a chance to get some EDF troops to support you, they are surprisngly strong, especially after being upgraded, and even have an ok pathfinding.
5 minutes into the game and you realise that this is going to be good.
The mod takes no time to introduce you to it's strogest sides - level design and pretty visuals. From the start to finish it never fails to deliver on this front (sadly, there are some exceptions) and keeps on going strong. The levels come with great variety, you will be visiting: deserts, snowy mountains, swamps, temples, jungles, various urban areas, space ships and stations, other worlds and planets. All levels are not only visiaully distinct, but also memorable, they are loaded with custom textures, skyboxes and effects. There are even non-combat areas, like cities and colonies where you can visit various NPCs to learn more about game world and unlock additional equipment for the AMC squad. All of this is complemented by a carefully selected music, there are no tracks recorded specifically for the mod, but I find chosen soundtrack to be very good and well fitting to whatever is happening on the screen. Although it's not without faults, but overall I'm inclined to say that the mod looks better than most of the modern shooters, it really can make you go "wow". The last time it happened was when I played Ancient Aliens for Doom, at the time I thought that I could no longer possibly experience such level of excitement again, but Ancient Aliens proved me wrong. AMC TC had the same effect on me, it's amazing. If you've lost your hope in commercial titles, then there are always modders ready to land you a hand.
The authors tried to spice up the game by introducing various gimmicks, vehicle segments, platforming and some other stuff, although most of the gameplay is about the usual "kill all of the bad guys" thing. Majority of those segments are really short and are done well, so you won't be annoyed by them, in fact I think that the authors should've added more. Geoffrey and Mikko get their own hacking minigame that primarily consists of platforming, James goes through time portals and gets access to the new segments of the level, Rusty can talk to the dead for some additional lore and Sang can break blood sigils to get to areas not available to others, remaining characters have no similar gimmicks, but I think it would've been interesting if they did. What's really disappointing however, is how seldom these gimmicks are used, most of the levels feature only one gimmick for one particular character, so you don't have to replay them to see everything that they have to offer. There are no unique dialogues for the in-game events either, it's such a missed opportunity, implementing these two things could've added a lot of replayability to the game. The only exception to this is "Gaza Pyramids" - the mission from the third episode, it's one of the largest ones in the game and also one of the most well done in my opinion.
Duke Nukem 3D often gets praised for it's interactivity, AMC TC inherited everything that the Duke had to offer and added some more, but I'll leave you discover it on you own.
Optional mission from the first episode is the first time when you get to drive a tank.
AMC TC rewards exploration. As I've said before you can find new weapons, upgrades, research projects and other things during your adventures, most of them aren't thrown directly into your face, so you have to be paying attention to spot them, the authors were kind enough to add some shiny lights to the important objects. The levels contain a good number of secrets, though the authors didn't go crazy here and I'm thankful for that. All of them are marked in some way, so you don't have to bang in every wall like an idiot hoping for it open, additionally all members of the AMC squad are equipped with PDA that you can use to view your current goals, status, special ammunition, items and scan your surroundings. The scanner can give you some major hints about location of the secrets, but you have to stand still to use it and it has limited range. During the very first mission you unlock a MIA gun that temporarily removes a targeted enemy from the game, hitting certain enemies with that thing will unlock new research projects. Get used to exploiting that gun, because a lot of upgrades are tied to it, a friendly tip - don't try to use it on robots, it doesn't work.
The shooting itself does not disappoint either, guns feel and sound good. You can headshot any organic enemy in the game to deal additional damage, headshots are not only effective but also fun, they are imporant part of the mod so make sure to disable auto aim. To my surprise and despite it's massive size the arsenal is actually well balanced, although there are some clear favourites, almost any gun can be put to good use, the number of crappy weapons is very very small. My only complaint is that authors were either afraid or not creative enough to try and do something original, so you're stuck using mostly generic and unimaginative weapons, even Sang and Merlijn don't do anything cool. I've seen mods like
GMOTA,
Hex Arcana,
Walpurgis or even
Schism for Doom featuring magic and melee that is 10 times more exciting than anything that AMC TC can offer, heck even vanilla Heretic is better at this. Jedrik from
WGRealms 2 alone has more interesting things up his sleve than both Sang, who gets 4 spells that do exactly the same thing only their colors are different, and Merlijn who gets to swing his pieces of iron and that's it. Come on, put in some effort.
The enemy roster is very varied as well and the authors did not repeat the mistake of the Amid Evil developers, so enemies that you've encountered earlier can reappear later in the game. The aliens from Duke Nukem 3D are still here, but they've gained in their numbers, for example, the usual trooper now comes in 8 different variations in comparison to 2 from vanilla Duke. A good portion of enemies (may be even all of them, I'm not sure) were taken from other games, there are cultists from Blood, demons from Doom, some enemies from Shadow Warrior and others, similarly to Duke's aliens they come with new sybtypes. Hostiles from different universes aren't usually put together, so the artstyles don't clash, that is unless you navigate other worlds and dimensions where the reality gets distorted, there you can encounter some weird shit. What I'm trying to say is that the enemies were placed into levels to fit the environment and the plot rather than purely gameplay.
Hi guys, today we're going to play exorcism.
As for the story, it's gradual and not straightforward. You probably wouldn't really understand a thing (at least I didn't) up until the end of the second episode at least, but then the game basically unfolds it's cards and everything comes together. The game's lore is based on many mods that were released before AMC TC or during it's development process, I can't explain it to you since I'm not knowledgeable about Duke's modding scene. But anyway, the story goes like this:
- AMC squad does it's usual stuff and tries to protect the Earth and other planets;
- The beyonders exist and they are coming;
- Various evil dudes form cults, gangs and organisation to prepare for the arrival of the beyonders, because those things are so strong that they can wipe out the entire planets;
- Some magic fellas from WGRealms 2 help AMC squad and tell them that they need to stop the beyonders or they will literally destroy the entire galaxy;
- AMC squad tries to collect every bit of info about the beyonders to stop them.
That's a very very compressed paraphrase of the in-game events, of course, you will learn more when you start playing. Not all information is presented to you directly, you will have to read notes, dialogues and complete optional missions if you want to learn everything. As I've said before the story is not yet finished and the mod is supposed to have 2 more episodes, so we'll see how it goes from here.
Lastly, before we get to the downsides, I want to mention that even though the maps are huge and very detailed, the mod runs very well even on my ancient toaster. There was some rare lag in certain places, but overall was fine.
A terrifying beyonder is attacking... Boo!
I've been postponing this moment, I might've even given you impression that this mod is really good, but it's time to talk about that barrel I've mentioned earler and well... As the saying in Russia goes, for every spoon of honey there's an entire barrel of shit awaiting it's moment to fill that spoon. And the barrel's moment has arrived, I'm about to dump it straight on you, are you ready? Let's go:
- The combat is fucking retarded. Why? Reason number one is that the fucking hitscanners are everywhere, seriously, they make up like half the enemy roster in this mod;
- Lethality is very high for both enemies and the player, may be it's me but it feels like pig cops deal significantly more damage and they fire faster too. In general rushing in unprepared will get you killed quickly. But as I've said it works both ways, your guns are so amazing that you can dispatch even stronger enemies in seconds, even the bosses live up to 30 seconds at max, due to headshot system and special ammunition even low tier guns become deadly;
- The enemies can spot you from great ranges and since they're hitscan fuckers, well, I'm sure you're familiar with how chaingunners from Doom function. By the way, chaingunners are also present in this mod and the authors added one little trick to their attacks, can you guess what do they do now? They keep firing in your direction even if you're out of their line of sight... AHAHAHA! I hope you like that joke as much as I do, granted they don't do it infinitely and stop after 7-10 seconds;
- I heard you guys didn't like popamoling enemies in Ion Maiden, prepare yourself for AMC TC, because you will doing it here often;
- Projectiles are very fast in general, and projectile enemies are very chaotic. Some can't do anything to you as long as you're moving, even if their projectiles are homing. Some of the projectiles are so fast that you literally can't avoid getting hit if you're close enough to the enemy, even if you're strafing at top speeds. Some projectiles can be avoided by ducking or jumping, but not the others. A good number of projectiles are poorly visible, have fun with monsters that lead their shots;
- Characters can dodge roll sideways and backwards, but doing so causes the screen to roll too, which is greatly disorienting in combat, a research project to remove this visual effect is available but you can only get it during the very last mission in the third episode, what the fuck?! Why the fuck can't the dodge be good from the beggining? And since most of the enemies are hitscanners the usefulness of this ability is greatly diminished;
- AI is incredibly dumb, not unsual for such games, but it doen't earn the mod any positive points;
- Almost no enemies telegraph their attacks: fast homing rockets, MJ12 troops unloading a grenade barrage in your face, flashbang grenades, hitscan shit and a lot of other stuff comes out instantly in your face with no warning;
- Bosses are, how they say in MMOs, "tank and spank" material. Most of the time you can strafe and easily avoid their dangerous attacks or just peek around obstacles and safely whittle them down like you do with other enemies in the mod, of course most of them are loaded with hitscan attacks, because it's such a brilliant fucking idea to slap hitscan on a high health enemy. For some of them authors at least attempted to implement something decent, like different phases and telegraphed attacks that you have to dodge. The most retarded boss fights happens at the end of the third episode, the guy you have to kill spams flashbangs non-stop (remember they come out with no warning), utilizes purely hitscan attacks, has frontal shield that stop bullets and there are no objects in the area, so you can't hide from him, and the boss constantly teleports right next to you, it means that realistically you can't avoid getting hit. Such a brilliant fucking design, somebody applaud to the guy who made that encounter;
- Some enemies have retarded mechanics. Berserks - the melee demons, become invincible if you don't use "high damage per one shot" type of weapons, they also gain such a massive speed boost that it becomes impossible to outrun them. Ogres - one of the melee enemies, stop in a place and raise their shield if you damage them, this doesn't actually protect them from being damaged, which results in them being effectively stunlocked if you focus your attacks on them, what's even the point of such enemy? MJ12 assasssins can go completely invisible, you are very unlikely to detect them by sound (I honestly can't even remember if their movement actually produces sound), so the only way to spot them is to either blind fire everywhere or bump right into them. Paradigm elders can camouflage themselves and leave behind decoy to confuse you, it's not hard to spot them, but when they are camouflaged they can not be harmed by anything except splash damage and hurting them doesn't destealth them, they will reveal themselves if you come close enough, but they shoot highly damaging projectiles with big splash radius and if you come close you're guaranteed to eat some of them, who the fuck designed this?!
Garmid - one of the few peaceful areas in the mod.
You might say: "Hold your horses there, pal. You said that the mod was trivial, but all I see is you complaining enemies and mechanics". Don't worry I'm getting there, we aren't done yet. I'm going to exclude the following points out of the list, because I find them to be too big.
There are 5 skill levels in the mod: easy, normal, expert, professional and armageddon. The lead developer recommends first timers to play the mod on normal. Remember when I was explaining enemy defences to you? On normal skill you can damage armored and supernatual enemies with any weapon, but the damage will be reduced, on higher difficulties you actually have to use correct equipment or your attacks will be useless, that's the main reason why the dude recommends people to stick to normal. Dealing with such enemies requires a bit of a meta knowledge, but I had no troubles starting the game on expert. On professional difficulty your crosshair gets disabled, you also won't be able to see the amount of bullets left in your magazine, the authors say that it is supposed to make guns with sights and laser pointers more important, but in the end it just tips the balance heavily in favor of more accurate guns. Obviously, you can't kill enemies if you are not hitting them and thanks to the headshots precise weapons never lose damage race, there is simply no point in using powerful but inaccurate guns. Armageddon is a joke difficulty, it doubles the damage you take, considering that majority of enemies in this game are hitscanners and the damage they deal is high enough as it is, well, you can guess how it plays out - peek around a corner and lose 150 points of health/armor in a second. I have no idea how are you supposed to play this mode without energy shield - late game research, which gives you regenerating shield, you either exploit it or you can enjoy getting chipped to death by hitscanners that attack instantly. I finished the first episode on armageddon, played some levels from the second one and all I can say that it's just not worth it, it's retarded and not fun.
Now it's time to talk about Merlijn, yes poor guy has it so bad that I'm going to dedicate the entire paragraph of text to him. In short, he sucks because authors have no idea how to make melee combat work in an FPS game and what melee oriented characters are supposed to have in their kit to be able to keep up with everybody else. Let's see:
- A lot of enemies in the mod are hitscanners, that means you are constantly taking damage, even if it's minor. And even if there were no hitscanners at all, a melee oriented character takes way more risks, therefore he usually takes more damage, what does it mean? Firstly, such character needs to be compensated for that, secondly, he needs something no normalize the increased damage he takes, in other words he needs to sustain himself by the means of life leech, regeneration or something else. Does Merlijn have that? NO!;
- Talking about compensation, if some thing takes more risks to do, than it is supposed to have higher reward, it is a simple principle that even kindergarten kids understand. In a mod like AMC it should translate into a more destructive arsenal, but Merlijn's weapons are hands down the worst in the game. He gets outdamaged by pretty much anyone in the game, even Mikko with his generally weaker guns laughs at him, he can't cleave multiple enemies with his melee attacks (i.e. he has no AOE outside of grenades, mines and cannon, well he has a sword spin, but it's useless) and his attacks don't pierce defenses naturally, he needs additional equipment for that;
- Have you ever played or seen somebody play a fighting game or just a game oriented around melee combat? Do you know what happens when one of the characters get hit? He gets locked into an animation also known as hit recovery or hitstun. Do you understand why does it exist? It's so that fights don't turn into a shitshow, can you imagine what would've happened if characters were allowed to fight back freely while being hit? It would turn the combat into an unbalanced, button mashing fucking mess. I'm sure that you've already understood what I want to say, yes in this mod, hitting enemies with melee attacks does not inflict hit stun. So any enemy in the game keeps hitting you back for tons of damage, while you're hacking at it, that is especially funny with pig cops armed with auto shotguns, they just destroy you. There's a game called Kung-Fu Master that was released in 1984 for the arcade machines, and it's widely considered to be the first beat'em'up game ever made and you what? That game had hitstun. I don't know what kind of person you have to be to allow such mistake to happen, I simply have no words. It's the prime reason why melee doesn't work in this game, all characters in the mod can do some kung-fu stuff: slide kicks, flying kicks, roundhouse kicks, dropkicks, they can punch, fight with katanas, knives and shovels... Forget all of that, it would've been nice to be able to use that, but you simply can't. Oh, what's even more insulting is that there's one particualr type of enemy in the mod called lost, it's basically a ghost. They attack in melee and if they hit you, you can't attack fow a while, so lost have better melee attacks than any character in this game;
- And lastly melee orientied characters have to able to force melee combat, it's usually done through giving them better, in comparison to others, mobility or things that force others into melee range. What can Merlijn do? Well, anything that every other character can: sprint, dodge roll and slide. So no super jumps, no dashes, no teleports - no extra mobility, no hookshots or harpoon to drag enemies into melee range, nothing.
As you can see it's a total shitshow, only a completely clueless person could've allowed this to happen. To be honest, Merlijn wasn't left completely naked, along with Mikko he has the second biggest healthpool in the game (although he uses medium armor for some reason) and he has a shield that absorbs damage from frontal attacks. However, the shield can be broken, it has it's own separate healthpool, for Merlijn ammo pick ups for certain weapons are replaced with items that replenish his shield healthpool instead, but the fucking thing still breaks super fast due to the abundance of hitscanners and the damage they inflict. Despite all of that you can still be largely sucessful with Merlijn, because the game is so easy. And it's about time for me to explain why.
The spider momma is a unique boss in AMC TC, she can launch nukes now.
I've been hinting some difficulty related stuff previously, but now it's time for me to clarify:
- As I've said before, you arsenal is deadly. You know how in doom or quake, or other FPS games the mappers can limit your killing power by not giving you powerful weapons and ammo or limiting their quantity? It doesn't really work in AMC TC, even low tier guns deal heavy damage, especially if you can score some headshots. Then there are general weapons, remember how you can gear your character up before starting a mission? Those additional items you can bring with you are very helpful, most of the general weapons are actually really good in this game, they can even utilize special ammunition, you can order a supply airdrop if you like, but it's really an overkill, as being able to bring guns, armor and inventory items with you is already pretty busted. And of course, high tier weapons just nuke everything in your sight;
- Overabundance of supplies in general, the game is very generous with health, armor, weapons, ammo and other stuff. It feeds you trucks with stronger guns and ammo for them. You almost never have to manage your ammo and inventory, you can just use whatever and it will work;
- The levels weren't constructed around tight combat. Again, it's a pretty comon thing in FPS games to limit player's movement options, in Doom for example, it's done via geometry and monster abilities: archviles require you to break line of sight, arachnotrons don't allow you to change strafing direction, mancubus attacks cover wide areas etc. The mappers may cut you off from escaping encounters by locking doors or raising walls, or doing something else. This never happens in AMC TC, at least not enough to matter, you always have vast spaces to move freely, you always can run away from fights to heal and pick up additional ammo, you always can hide behind obstacles and peek and shoot enemies from safety. The authors never try and experiment with the encounters, they don't try to create synergy between enemies, they don't create geometry that would help enemies to better utilize their abilities, they don't try to pressure the player, they just throw some enemies in your direction and that's it. It doesn't help that the enemy roster in the mod is pretty crap and I've already explained why;
- As I've said earlier AI is dumb, especially melee enemies, most of them just wander around without trying to kill you. Enemies just move in your direction ignoring the surroundings, this gets them stuck in the walls, pits, doors or other things, this makes them easy targets, especially for the explosives;
- Despite being huge, the levels feature very small numbers of enemies. I hope you can see the full picture now: your weapons are incredible, you are oversuppplied on items, you are never put in tight combat situations, enemies are stupid and there is only a small number of them even on armageddon difficulty, which is supposed to include max amount of enemies. The worst offender is "Micky begins" mission from the third episode, which features some of the most open and largest environments in the mod, which are also largely devoid of enemies, so you end up runniong around vast but empty spaces.
I think that the description above if well detailed and there's no need for further explanation. It's just really sad when you hear a good music that pumps you up for the action, but there's barely anybody to shoot at, and even if there are the combat is way too easy. I find vehicle section to be the epitome of trivial combat, they put you inside a tank or a big mech with kickass weapons, but then you just move in a straight line and murder enemies that can't really kill you, it's literally braindead combat, just stop thinking and hold down your fire button. But to be frank, there's a section with a hover tank, which actually has enough enemies to pose a threat, so you have to move survive, that is until you discover that vehicles regenerate health while you are not piloting them, huh. After that all difficulty gets thrown out of the window. As for the armageddon difficulty, well I guess it was a cheap attempt to solve oversupply issue. The developers were probably thinking that doubling monster damage would prevent player from sitting at 200 health and armor nearly 100% of time, especially if they have energy shield equipped. It could've worked if you had a well deisgned enemy roster and not some shit with a massive influx of hitscanners. If you want to have the maximum amount of enemies without double damage bullshit, then I can show a little trick to help you out. Open AMC_MAIN.CON file inside CODE folder with any text edittor, search for the word armageddon, you should find a piece of code that doubles the damage that the player receives, delete that piece of code and you're set.
Just look at all that empty space.
As for the bugs, there aren't a lot of them, but those there are present can be pretty annoying:
- If you try to attack enemies, that haven't yet noticed you, from too far away the attack won't register;
- For some characters using ammo vending machine at the shooting range will freeze the game;
- Sometimes projectiles go right through enemies;
- Vehicles regenerate health while you are not piloting them, not sure if this is a bug;
- Up until recently there was a pretty hilarious bug with flechette shells, they were dealing enormous damage to the armored enemies, they would 2 shot any armored boss and one shot any other armored enemy, it got fixed a couple of weeks ago;
- Shooting enemies with certain shotguns can make your entire stock of shotgun ammo disappear, a very rare bug, I've only encountered it once or twice;
- Some transparent walls that are supposed to stop bullets still let some of them go through;
- Teleporting enemies can get stuck in the air, attacking them won't inflict any damage unless you come close and give a nudge;
- Weapon upgrades can get nullified during mission involving multiple characters, very annoying.
That's what I've personally encountered and was able to recall, there could be more of them out there.
Before we get to the next part I have to mention UI, I guess you can understand why I called it shitty.
- Inconsistency. For example, for some characters the equipped artifact is shown on the screen, but not for the others;
- Overlapping icons and numbers;
- Poor choice and mix of graphics in general, especially for various armor types, it took me some time to understand what did those colored lines mean;
- Takes too much space and scaling is not available.
If you have no idea how to make something good, why not just copy the others? Like, the sourceports for Doom feature a very clean and minimalistic UI that looks good, Blood has a decent interface if the player needs more on screen information, interestingly enough one of the side characters, that you only get to play once, uses UI that is directly copypasted from Blood and it looks way better than anything that the authors came up with.
There are actually more than 10 playable characters in the mod. There is a mission where you can play as a cultist from Blood and one for Bombshell from Duke Nukem games. There are actually more, but all of them are way less refined than the main characters, may be they will be worked on int he future.
Now, before we get to the conclusion I would like to mention some other things that I couldn't fit anywhere else.
Some areas are unnecessarily dark, for the first time you will encounter this during the last mission of the first episode. What's more annoying is that they contain hitscanners that see you very well and you don't even have night vision googles. Then the cultist mission is almost pitch black save for a couple of areas. Just why the fuck would you do that?!
Talking about the maps, Zaxtor (the author, not the character) has contributed two worst maps in the entire mod. The first one is called "Jungle Base", it requires you to get through a confusing jungle, navigate a base and destroy it. The first part is filled with obnoxious platforming, you have to make a lot of jumps onto tiny platforms, making just a single mistake means restarting a whole segment and due to the layout of the map you might struggle to figure out the way to return to the start and end up in some other part of the map instead. So just save before every jump. It's terrible for the first timers, but pretty tolerable after that, at least the visuals are pretty. The base itself is worse, it mainly consists of long and boring hallways filled with hitscanners, just to troll you the author deliberately cuts out short ways to the objectives when you have to return to some place you've been before, there's also some more of the obnoxious platforming towards the end of the map if you didn't have enough of it during the jungle phase.
Then there's a level called "Jungle Pyramid", whatever you do, don't play this map. Jungle Base might've been pretty bad, but overall it was passable, Jungle Pyramid is nothing but shit, there's literally not a single good thing about that map apart from a boss battle in the end, which is pretty ok. It's a fucking abomination of a level design that should've never been made, TNT Evilution wipes it's stinky, shit stained, AIDS ridden ass with the disgusting filth that Jungle Pyramid map is. Shit visuals, shit combat, shit puzzles, shit layout, due to the updated render (initially the mod was using software, now it runs on OpenGL) some parts of the map don't even function properly anymore. This fucking map is nothing but a mess, avoid it at all costs.
Additionally these 2 maps feature the worst dialogue and voice acting in the entire mod, of course, they were made by the Zaxtor himself, I hope you like listening to somebody trying to make his voice sound deep and brutal while he's choking on his own snivels. Zaxtor the characters has a big issue of having 0 character or personality, he's just a cheap furry parody of Duke Nukem devoid of all the charm (Merlijn has this problem too, but not to a such extent), now imagine Zaxtor writing a dialogue between two such characters and voicing them both by himself, oh dear. The dialogues have no emotion or character in them, just monotonous mumbling accompanied by the music playing loudly in comparison to the speech, so you can't even hear what the fuck they are talking to. I've said it before, the voice acting in the mod is fucking terribe in general and Zaxtor isn't unique in this regard (the police chief from "Arsia Mons Colony" is fucking atrocious too), but it's just that in Zaxtor's case everything bad adds up and makes for even worse impressions.
The puzzles are fucking genius, you are directly told what you need to do, there are no clues, no hints, no riddles, you are just outright told to: jump 3 times, squat 7 times, fart 3 times, lick your finger, stick the thumb up your ass, jerk off in the corner and jeeze all over your stupid face. It's even worse in Jungle Pyramid where the solution is literally written on the wall and some puzzles require pure guessing. I haven't played things that were purposefully made bad, but Jungle Pyramid is the worst level I've ever seen in an FPS game. Just a complete travesty of game design, it wouldn't surprise me if some people have stopped playing the mod after stumbling upon these maps.
I just wanted to show what sort of puzzles you will encounter...
WHY NOT JUST OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR IF YOU ALREADY GAVE ME A SOLUTION, WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT IF I DON'T HAVE TO FIGURE OUT ANYTHING?!
Alright, moving on now. During the last mission in the third episode you will encounter the beyonders face to face and that encounter is very disappointing. They are a big deal in the mod's plot: during the first episode you see some advanced tech involving beyonders and get a bit of info about their powers; in the second episode you see some more of that tech and discover that even a single beyonder can summon armies of hell demons, drive a big number of people insane and has enough power to completely wipe out a massive space base, also the big bad guys are aware of the beyonders and are planning something, there's even a nightmare sequence where you see a world where all life was destroyed by the beyonders; in the third episode you get to the planet that has been annihilated by them and later you finally get to see them in action. What's so scary about them? Well, they can float, slowly. You can't kill them (I've tried), they have a strong long range attack that is only avoidable if you break line of sight with them, and that's about it. No cool visuals, no scary sounds, in fact they don't produce sounds at all, they are slow and aren't even that agressive. Very immersion breaking to present something that is supposed to be terrifying in such a lackluster way.
And lastly I wanted to say a few words about equipment. During the game you can acquire a number of artifacts that provide unique bonuses, but the problem is that the artifacts are weak and the bonuses are pretty lame. I guess the authors didn't want to make already hilariously strong characters even more overpowered, but it led to the artifacts being boring and unsatisfying to use. Then there's a weapon upgrade reset that I've mentioned earlier, the lead developer of the mod said that it was done in order to help them balance out power progression of the player. If the player got to keep their weapon upgrades then they would've had to gradually increase the difficulty of each following episode, that argument could've made sense if not for research projects and unlockable weapons. Some characters get boosts to their health, EDF soldiers become so strong that they can win any fight while you are busy poking your nose somewhere in the corner, you get some guns that clearly outperform their counterparts that you had in early game, there are energy shields that massively increases your survivability, then there are general weapons and alternative ammunition that you can always bring with yourself to boost your firepower and it doesn't stop there. Doesn't all of that makes the player stronger in a long term, doesn't it require the following episodes to be harder, hmmm?
We've been through hell...
I still greatly enjoyed the mod despite all of it's downsides. The varied and stunning visuals, the good music and level deisgn and a decent story were enough to keep me entertained, I just wish that the other aspects of the mod were brought to the same level as these, especially the combat.
I think that the authors understood very well what Duke Nukem 3D was about - exploring pretty levels that came with a good deal of special effects and interactivity, while the combat was not the main focus of the show and was severely lagging behind. Allow me to quote something from Doom thread:
So I've been playing some Build Engine stuff recently. I remember some guy saying that you can't really create any unique encounters with Duke Nukem 3D enemy roster, their purpose is to look cool and die with some fancy visuals. This is what I've experienced pretty much, there's no real drive to the combat like in Doom or Quake, you won't be maneuvering around hundreds of enemies using their bodies to hide from chaingunner fire or revenenat rockets, you won't go through crazy shit like archvile carousel from sunlust or mancubian candidate from valiant, or solve enemy puzzles like in cyberdreams, you won't be getting that sick Quake movement and it's weapon switching combos either, that's all because the Build Engine games weren't designed to support that. That applies to all games from the mighty trinity: Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood. So you end up going through levels enjoying pretty visuals while doing some trivial combat from time to time, I guess you can say that cinematic shooters really started with Build Engine games, even before Half Life came out.
Duke 3D started the
of game designers not understanding how to make good enemies. Difficulty ends up comes from lots of hitscanners with too much HP that just surprise you and shoot. Chaingun guys in Doom 2 were hated for this reason but at least they were very fragile, easy to stun and useful for triggering infighting.
I'm not objecting to the fact that hitscanners exist, but rather that a lot of devs clearly completely fail to understand how to use them. Take Duke3D for example:
All non-hitscan enemies: a complete joke that are effortless to kill and only rarely manage to harm the player unless by a surprise hit in the back. This includes really unique, awesome looking enemies like Octabrain and Assault Commanders.
Enforcer: Takes off half your health before you look at them. Also has ZERO pain chance, despite pain chance being the obvious thing you should be giving hitscanners.
Battlelord: Takes off 3x your health in under a second, unless you are lucky and it uses its non-hitscan attack which is non-threatening
Every boss other than Battlelord: complete joke that you'll probably never take damage from.
It's like no-one spent even a modicum of time understanding how Doom worked or how to balance their own game. It seems like Doom was either an inspired or accidental genius on the first try. I can't think of a successor to Doom that has a similar level of every monster feeling balanced, unique, and impactful.
It's also noteworthy that very few games take the same route as Doom to difficulty: NO HP CHANGES. NO DPS CHANGES. JUST GIVE ME MORE SHIT TO KILL. Instead we see the lazy "just give everything 50% damage on easy and 200% damage on hard".
Mikko Sandt - one of the developers of the mod,
in his SIGIL review said that he could never get into Doom usermap scene, because the abundance of monsters makes the gameplay feel tedious to him. Well Mr.Sandt, in your works I have encountered the opposite extreme of this - vast, but empty spaces devoid of action, do you not feel the desire to murder hundreds of bad guys, while running at crazy speeds and juggling through your amazing arsenal? At least that's what I personally expect from the gameplay of oldschool shooters, what about you?
Additionally I've seen
some very ignorant criticism of Doom on Duke4net forums (shit triggrered me so hard that I needed 2 days to cool down). I have no idea if the authors share the same thoughts about it, but looking at how AMC TC plays out I can guess that they kind of do, which is utterly fucking pathetic if it's true.
And that's about all I wanted to say about this mod, have fun everyone.
https://www.moddb.com/games/the-amc-tc <----- Download the mod
https://amctc.fandom.com/wiki/AMC_TC_Wiki <----- Mod's wiki
https://www.youtube.com/user/snoopyfoster6/videos <----- Youtube channel of some guy that makes trailers for the mod, they're well done and I'm going to insert of them below
Even had an underwater floor and hell-flames outside all the windows.
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[Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.]
