I just played Quake 2

[shihonage]

Crysis was the best FPS of 2004

 

[Lord Rocket]

OLD ARGUMENTS:

I like how his Romanian child bride is his mousepad.

Apparently they're divorced now.

DraQ the SG and SSG in Q1 occupy v. different niches, as the SG is probably the best ranged weapon in the game (low damage but it's easy to hit with due to the fact it's hitscan, useful if you have the luxury of time and space. See also: chaingun in Doom). The SSG is quite shitty in real terms.
Also, if you're using the SSG in Doom at range you are a spaz; it's essentially a close-range rocket launcher and should be used as such. Even a stinkus player such as myself (who, believe it or not, is a keyboard-only player even at this late date) shouldn't be wasting too many pellets. Shihonage also bought up it's utility as a crowd dispersal tool. The SG doesn't have the damage output to compete in the former role and it doesn't have the spread or pellet output (again) to excel in the latter, esp. once D2's new enemies are factored in.
The SSG can also more consistently pain enemies. It's much better than the SG in nearly all roles.

Lyric Suite Q2's gameplay and it's flaws have been dissected by the antis and found wanting. If you don't understand the points made perhaps you should read the posts again?

HL would be a rad game if not for all the scripting. Most of the weapons are enjoyable to use (if a little weak at the lower tiers) and the enemies are usually challenging to fight. Fuck that intro.

 

[Destroid]

The SSG in Q2 does way more DPS than the Q1 version.

 

[Morgoth]

Crysis was the best FPS of 2004

I think he meant Far Cry.

Crytek, Crysis, CryEngine....it's easy to confuse it at times.

 

[DraQ]

Shihonnage actually covered most points I would make, major one being the level of linearity. Someone (sea I think?) tried to lay down the essential features of FPS, and missed IMO the most essential one: level design. But, there can be no level design in a linear shooter (and by linear I mean each level being a straight line - I know some people will try to be funny with "but Doom is linear because you cannot go back to previous levels!"), by definition. Because each level is, well, a line. I'd argue that Q2 had pretty good level design (though in terms of this kind of structure I prefer Hexen's), even if its art style was very uninspired and didn't help enough to make each location look distinct. HL has an edge with enemies being much more distinct from each other, and took better advantage of enemy placement (especially within its constrictive linearity). But I will take open, multiple-objective hub any day over "please follow the yellow line".

Except you rarely had any openness in Q2 hubs in form of concurrent objectives. It's slightly better in terms of alternative routes.

I think you're being hyperbolic here. Sure it's not great, it has plenty of problems (and you've gone enough at length about them that I don't think I need to point any of them out), but it's not bad enough to say "it sucks horribly".

I'm not. I don't mean it in a sense "painful to play, cannot be enjoyed", but the fact is that if the only real risk in an FPS, apart from mistiming a jump and falling into lava/slime/lazor grid, is spacing out so hard that you don't notice enemies (made harder by the fact they make distinct idle sounds), then don't notice that they have noticed you (loudly announcing this fact), then don't notice them preparing to aim at you (possibly field stripping their weapons, judging from the amount of time it takes, or at least consulting their implanted on-chip manuals), don't notice them firing, then repeat the mistake 2 or 3 times over, then this FPS has a big fucking problem - namely that it's a sucky shooter.

Yes, Q2 combat can technically be enjoyed, but only as mindless execution simulator rather proper shooter - you walk up to an electric a cybernetic retard, shoot him in the head and watch him twitching on the floor in a bloody heap. Then you repeat.
In the end you're just slaughtering hapless mooks and it would make little difference to gameplay if instead of trying to attack you they'd just run around screaming "OMG" and "ONOZ".

And sure, enemy AI in Q2 has its share of problems, but it's not as if HL's are perfect and great (we've had this discussion in another thread).

In general? No, it's not perfect and great. Compared to Q2? It is perfect and great. Enemies shoot fast (apart from Vortigaunts, but they need to charge up), can hit you and navigate well. Marines also have an effective anti-popamole mechanics - they throw you 'nades. Alien Grunts fire homing projectiles, making effective use of cover problematic against them.

Plus there is the matter of context:
In Q2, pretty much every enemy is an engineered warrior and killing machine, with implanted weapons, armour plating, presumably some tactical aids. They should be hard to kill and able to murder your ass efortlessly.
In fact the reason I like Medic in Q2 is that it's the only thing in the entire game that reminds you that you're fighting deadly cyborgs rather than shooting up a cosplay convention of retards - he can rebuild them. Plus it's easily the least humanoid of biped stroggs.

In HL most of the enemies are animals. Not ultra-tough mutants from Strogg deathworld, animals. Inhabitants of presumably "normal", if very alien to us, world.

HL houndeyes, for example, are not jarring because they are easily killed (unless there are very many of them, and you have almost nothing to shoot them with - like at the beginning of "Questionable Ethics" if you don't have spare satchel charge) and pose little challenge - they are Xen's equivalent of canine pack hunters, behave accordingly, and are about as easy to kill as you'd expect of an animal of their size.

Q2 guards, OTOH, make no sense - so they are cyborgized humans + nice little armor + fire-arm (shitty pun fully intended)? So why are they much easier to kill than regular humans while also lacking any superior shooting characteristics? Guards would work as enemies if they were visibly hastily thrown together - you take a captive intact or dying human, plug him up with cybernetics and send back the way he came from, hell, medics could have an additional function of converting captives/bodies in the field into guards using advanced process known in 3D graphics as reskinning. Unfortunately guards as they are present don't seem to be hastily thrown together, they have their own custom, nicely finished armour, helmets, tailored weapon implants and so on. They don't look as hastily cyborgized half-corpses, they are finished, polished humans++. Except they succumb to bad case of gaping holes if you look at them hard enough.

Hell, at least guards aim fast enough to be able to actually shoot at you once in a while before you kill them horribly, but what about gunners? I mean, armour plating your entire body (*clicky*), forfeiting pair of versatile hands and replacing them with a machinegun and a grenade launcher has to be worth it, right? An implanted weapon can surely be fired faster and more accurately than lousy, manually operated firearm, while armour plating and secondary cybernetic life support and failsafe systems mean that you can keep coming at some poor, fully organic earthling without even flinching as he unloads SSG in your chest, and then murder him horribly.

Oh, except it seems that your 1337 implanted machinegun takes much longer to open than ordinary firearm operated with fucking hands takes to be aimed and fired, while your armour isn't good enough to prevent you from being folded in half by an SSG blast, or even stunned by a burst of bullets, so a puny earthling can just walk up to you as you try to arm your fire-arm (durr hurr), pump you in the gut, then pump you again as you try to get up again.

Shit, maybe at least tanks have some increased combat potential? I mean, they have shitload of plating, MG, blaster AND triple barelled rocket launcher on their shoulder - that should make them walking nightmares, right? Wrong, they are so slow it all barely counts. Sure, they have enough durability to withstand impressive full several seconds of sustained chaingun *BRRRRAPP!*, too bad several seconds is also about the time it takes them to start shooting something or deploy and aim their rocket launcher.

Ok, so instead of fighting cybernetic menace from space that attacked us, we were invaded by electric cybernetic retards, and decided to come to their place and fuck them up. Ok, it's a farce, but at least consistent one. Except how can retarded stroggs take prisoners if they are evidently this inept? Are we retards too? Captive marines certainly do make retard noises.

The thing about stroggs is that they are completely non-menacing. They are not the kind of enemy you can fear or at least respect. They are insignificant speedbumps scattered around boring-as-fuck levels with admittedly nice layout. They fail completely at they role of something that facilitates core mechanics of a shooter - firefights. Q2 isn't about killing and not getting killed. Q2 is about navigating monotonous, but fairly complex environments. Strogg serve about the same role as wall textures there - spicing the journey up a bit. Alas they fulfil their role about as well as Q2 wall textures.

Meanwhile the only things that are truly jarring in HL are headcrabs. They are alien parasites perfectly adapted to zombifying humans, but not infecting any indigneous lifeforms. Wut. Though even with headcrabs there is possible explanation - humans were entering Xen and taking samples, some humans were then taken as samples by the aliens. Given how most alien tech in HL is at least partially organic it's not impossible that they were engineered as anti-human weapon. Notice that unlike producing cyborgs from limited resource - Stroggs invade worlds specifically to take prisoners as valuable resource, while breeding small, fully organic parasite can be done cheaply and at mass scale. HL headcrabs don't have to be effective to be a feasible weapon, Guards are fucking waste of precious resource.

Sure it's better in HL, but again, it's not good enough to suppor the entire game when there's nothing but repetitive corridor after corridor to go through.

Well "repetitive" describes Q2 much better than HL, plus I'd say that combat has much better chance of supporting an entire shooter in absence of good level layout, than level layout in absence of good combat.

Also, HL features a decent collection of both wildly different and differently behaving enemies (who can actually kill you fairly easily and have effective countermeasures against obvious tactics), and diverse, fun to shoot weapons filling different roles. Shit, gauss gun alone was far more fun than the entire Q2 arsenal.

To sum it up:

HL features interesting, diverse, purpose and situation specific weapons supporting multiple approaches and playstyles, diverse enemies that are actually dangerous and interesting to fight, diverse enemy behaviour, meaningful ammo management, meaningful health management, and additional mechanics, goals like saving allies that can open optional locations with much needed health/ammo/armour or at least support you with firepower or healing.

Q2 features none of that.

Problem, gameplayfags?


Also, you're praising Q2 levels and slagging HL ones much more than they deserve.

And HL automatically loses a huge chunk of points for Xen (yeah, I know you like Xen, but if I wanted platforming I'd play a platformer - and there's a reason I don't play those).

The worst platforming section in HL isn't Xen, but Residue Processing, which could indeed be cut from the game almost in its entirety without harming it.

Plus, Q2 also has some platforming sections - shorter, but possibly even more annoying.

I think you give the CG too much credit. Sure if you have full ammo it's ridiculously overpowered - but it also eats through your entire ammo VERY quickly, and while there's a lot of ammo around, there isn't enough to rely on it all the time.

Sure, but there are relatively few tanks and bosses in game, and even fewer can't be effectively popamoled. It's not like CG is good for anything else while MG doesn't use up that much ammo and is quickly superseded in most tasks by other weapons (SSG, GL, RL, RG, HB), remaining only an effective anti-guard weapon (it can keep them from shooting you which is a minor nuissance) with good general fallback potential if you get jumped by something stronger (translation, can stunlock and slaughter gunners without problems).

I'm not excusing the design, but it's just not an automatic I WIN button (the enemy design, OTOH, is).

And combined with enemy design? Any enemy you can't splatter immediately is rendered pointless by CG, and you can usually amp it up with quad too -> bosses and strong enemies in Q2 pose no threat because there is nothing to spend powerups on and Makron/Jorg + CG + quad + invulnerability = awfully dead boss awfully fast with awfully little effort (selecting CG, popping powerups, walking up to boss, holding fire).

Q1 "here and now" powerups could be contained much more effectively, Hexen's items that could be not just carried but carried in large numbers were actually balanced.

Oh come on. That's like saying Doom is strongly storyfag because you have a sensible train of objectives, ie find keys to unlock doors to push end level switch.

You're confusing game's bare mechanics (activators, doors, keys) - basically game syntax, with their meaning - semantics.

The only trace of storyfaggotry in Doom is Phobos->Deimos->Hell progression of skyboxes and level themes. Other than that you're just visiting randomly mashed up sequence of fairly randomly named maps with varying amounts of nukage pools. Doom's Hangar isn't a hangar, nor is its Military Base a military base. Ironically, the only exception would be city-themed maps in D2, in spite of D2 mostly dropping the pretence altogether.

Now, in Q2 activators/doors/keys are dressed up as meaningful objects and you're given clearly defined high-level objectives you work towards. You traverse clearly defined (if horribly bland) chain of locations with clearly defined purposes. Moreover, objectives affect each other, for example you shut down reactor powering planetary defenses (by first draining its coolant, then clogging it up with waste), then blow up planetary defense themselves, which in turn allows earth forces to conduct airstrikes.

HL storyfag = endless UNSKIPPABLE introduction that goes on for MANY MINUTES, a whole bunch of unskippable cutscenes* all over the game where you have to listen to people rambling on before they open a door for you, etc.

They usually ramble while walking and rarely for more than a few s.
Other than that while I recall a lot of scripting in HL, I recall few scenes where you had to sit on your ass watching.

Xen needs to die in a fire.
DIE DIE DIE

Still better than entire Q2, sorry.

OLD ARGUMENTS:
DraQ the SG and SSG in Q1 occupy v. different niches, as the SG is probably the best ranged weapon in the game (low damage but it's easy to hit with due to the fact it's hitscan, useful if you have the luxury of time and space).

But it's mostly irrelevant in SP - it's not like Q1 enemies can dodge nails.

See also: chaingun in Doom.

CG in doom can slaughter roomfuls of weak mooks really fast, plus it can stunlock stronger but soft enemies like cacodemons.
It's an useful weapon in its own right, not just a cheese sniper rifle.

The SSG is quite shitty in real terms.

Well it packs enough oomph to down weakest enemies reliably at close range. SG doesn't.

Also, if you're using the SSG in Doom at range you are a spaz;

I don't and that's why I use it so fucking rarely.

Shihonage also bought up it's utility as a crowd dispersal tool. The SG doesn't have the damage output to compete in the former role and it doesn't have the spread or pellet output (again) to excel in the latter, esp. once D2's new enemies are factored in.

I explained it already - as a crowd dispersal tool SSG doesn't perform well, because it (realistically) spreads the shot vertically, hitting floors and ceilings, while SG (unrealistically) doesn't. SG can also be used at larger range of distances, shoots slightly faster, noms less shells and I can't recall enemies in D2 that would go down in one SSG blast but not one SG blast apart from pinkies.

 

[Oriental European]

Still better than entire Q2, sorry.

Ugh.

 

[CreamyBlood]

I recently installed Q2 to get the software version working for a neighbor (some old guy in his fifties, I'm at least several years younger) using a shit computer and had a blast. Just got him a better computer and now it runs on OGL.

Anyways, I got sucked into it while testing and thought the levels used a lot of hubbing and backtracking. They also took advantage of the ZED axis. Textures are definately repetitive and could be confusing to an old fart. Quite nice for it's time. The intro scene borrows heavily from Heinlien and Q4 and the intro from Escape to Butcher Bay and sixty million other modern sci-fi's and I like it.

Not sure what his next stop is going to be, don't think he found the crouch key yet, I was thinking NOLF but have him distracted by Painkiller at the moment, it's more his speed.


I'm looking forward to this DraQ video where he wipes three levels in a row on 'medium'. Should be good for a chuckle. I think Q2 is a riot yet I'm prejudiced, I like the soundtrack as well. And it's just plain ol' good shootin'!

If you are fed up with FRAPS (it's never worked for me this past decade) I will suggest Bandicam to you, it works great for me but will take up a lot of HD space:

http://www.bandicam.com/downloads/

Just a song (I hear the kids are all into dubstep or mash ups these days):

 

[DraQ]

BTW: You guys know that I haven't mentioned no armour, right?

For starters there are places where armour is literally stuck in your way (outer base even, where jacket is blocking way to shotgun), there are also places where you're forced to take a big drop, for example when entering pumping stations or on some level transitions. Without armour that alone would put a big dent in HPs*.

Or is forcibly dropping player from great heights so he can progress meaningful way to add difficulty now?

*) I can't seem to exploit jump-land bug properly in current version.

 

[villain of the story]

I have only read the first page and it's obvious this turned into a Quake 2 fans vs. haters thing so I didn't read. All I've got to say is this:

QUAKE > QUAKE 2 in everyway possible.




Falling back on axe and having to get up close and personal with beasts beats pew-pewing them from afar with water gun the blaster.

Shotgun is ok.

Super shotgun is SHIT.
Machine Gun is SHIT.
Chain Gun is SHITtier. It completely fails to pack the same level of awesome of Doom Chaingun.

Rocket Launcher is ok.
Grenade Launcher is ok.

Raygun = one of the faggiest inventions of first person shooters. I hate this piece of shit weapon every time it resurfaces in some game. It's just so shit. Concept of a highly deadly weapon that takes high precision is cool. Raygun is not cool. It's just utter piece of shit. Looks like shit. Sounds like shit. Animation is also shit. The only nice thing about it is that spiral particle effect.

The only weapon that made me feel good about using it was Hyper Blaster. Now that was some serious shit.

 

[madbringer]

It's Railgun, not Raygun (what the fuck), and it's perfect in every way. One of the best and most iconic weapons ever conceived in any fps, easily.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS IF THERE IS A WAY SOMEONE CAN BE A BIGGER CUNT THAN SKYWAY THIS THREAD WILL FIND IT

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS TRY TO THINK THAT THIS THREAD HAS DECENT ANALYSIS OF GAMES BUT IT IS BARELY ABOVE GAMEFAGS FANBOY SHIT

I FEEL SAD THAT EDWARD R MURROWS GAME COMMENTARY SHARES THE SAME FORUM AS THIS PMS INSPIRED NONSENSE

 

[Oriental European]

Raygun

OH SHIT SON WHAT ARE YOU DOING

Concept of a highly deadly weapon that takes high precision is cool.

Only is singleplayer, it can fuck up mp balance really good. God i hate ztn3tourney1.
Also, Xonotic 0.6 is out, now with Gmod-like Sandbox and Ukrainian translation... by me .

 

[villain of the story]

Raygun, railgun, whatever. It's utter shit either way. Yes, iconic in a shitty way. It paved the way for years of uninspired WIN button weapons for years, with occasional tries to come up with even douchier super weapons, like the shitty singularity generator from Q4 and its analogues from other games, all of which negate the fun in using simpler and awesomer weapons which are the meat and bone of FPSs.

 

[madbringer]

Geez, that's a lot of hate to lay down on a weapon from a game. The concept of a sniper rifle existed long before Arnie starred in Eraser, and the Q2 devs got so inspired by a musclebound meathead shooting BLUE LAZORS THRU WALLZ that they decided to put the weapon in their game. All it is is a futuristic pew pew gun, high precision, high damage, long reload time. If you want to blame any gun for "paving the way for years of uninspired WIN butt weapon for years", i'd blame Doom's very own BFG9000, that shoots green orbs of area of effect death, not a fucking sniper rifle.

 

[DraQ]

Geez, that's a lot of hate to lay down on a weapon from a game. The concept of a sniper rifle existed long before Arnie starred in Eraser, and the Q2 devs got so inspired by a musclebound meathead shooting BLUE LAZORS THRU WALLZ that they decided to put the weapon in their game. All it is is a futuristic pew pew gun, high precision, high damage, long reload time. If you want to blame any gun for "paving the way for years of uninspired WIN butt weapon for years", i'd blame Doom's very own BFG9000, that shoots green orbs of area of effect death, not a fucking sniper rifle.

Well, they failed utterly on the "THRU WALLS" front - unlike HL gauss.

As for the imba, fully stocked Q2 RG can shoot 100 times, BFG 6 times, complete with loud warm-up period.

Probably the only interesting weapons in Q2 are HB and CG, because they at least attempted something new with spinup/cooldown periods.

 

[madbringer]

Well, they failed utterly on the "THRU WALLS" front - unlike HL gauss.

I'd guess it was a purely technical choice, implementing something like that would mean tons of spent manpower on a more or less trivial mechanic. And i don't mean just designing materials that the projectile can go through, i mean re-balancing the entire game around a gun that can do that. It does shoot through models, at least.

As for the imba, fully stocked Q2 RG can shoot 100 times, BFG 6 times, complete with loud warm-up period.

Yeah, but you won't instantly mow down a horde of lesser monsters with the Railgun. Limited ammo is neccessary for a gun of BFG's power magnitude. Some games do their Doomsday Scenario weapons better than others, for example i particularly like the Nuke from Turok 2. Now that's something that can fuck shit up. If you want excessive, you might as well go all the way.

 

[villain of the story]

I've forgotten Gauss Gun. That was fun to use, felt right and shots looked impressive. And it was good because it required actively charging to benefit from full potential.

 

[DraQ]

Well, they failed utterly on the "THRU WALLS" front - unlike HL gauss.

I'd guess it was a purely technical choice, implementing something like that would mean tons of spent manpower on a more or less trivial mechanic.

Not really, just not stopping checking for further intersects after intersecting with geometry, with possible refinement being calculating distance travelled within walls and stopping trace after certain threshold is exceeded.

Besides, I'm not exactly seeing much manpower spent when looking at Q2. Maybe death anims took a lot of effort, but other things don't seem polished in the least - weapons have no FPP muzzle flash, AI is derpy, ammo/power ratio is all over the scale, hell, it's a game where glass explodes in a fireball after you shoot it with an MG.

And i don't mean just designing materials that the projectile can go through, i mean re-balancing the entire game around a gun that can do that.

It might be a valid complaint if they actually balanced the game at least once.

Yeah, but you won't instantly mow down a horde of lesser monsters with the Railgun.

I will however instantly fuck-up any target I desire, possibly more if they are lined up.

In SP it additionally stuns most targets for longer than it takes to follow up with second shot meaning that it's slow RoF isn't a factor in combat, while in MP I just guess it's massively imba because of how powerful it is.

Also, RG in Q2 doesn't require much precision - models have only roughly calculated, large hitboxes and there is no locational damage. If you can see it, hitting it with RG is trivial.
Compare it with Unreal's sniper rifle, which, despite similarly crude collision requires aiming for approximate head area. Compare it with HL, where hitboxes are almost model-exact, there are locational damage multiplier and some enemies are partially protected with armour with hefty DT, meaning that you need to have a really good aim to effectively use stuff like magnum.
Plus, HL also features a much better railgun (gauss gun) that shoots through walls and stuff, and actually lets you feel the power.

villain of the story
RL in Q2 sucks. It has fairly limited damage, low projectile speed and explosions that don't look like explosions but more like a puddle of gasoline igniting. They would be more suited for stuff like Blood's napalm launcher, if Blood used early and primitive 3D models instead of sprites.

Nice reloading animation, though.

*wanders into thread* I liked the Railgun in Red Faction *wanders out again*

Well, it did shoot through the walls, had a lot of power, special visor and was fun to use.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

What surprised me the most when trying Quake 2 again after years and years was how fast-paced the game is. They sure don't make them like that anymore. I tried Kingpin as well and you moved just as fast, so much that it actually disconcerted me at times. Looks like the consolization of shooters had many ramifications.

 

[DraQ]

What surprised me the most when trying Quake 2 again after years and years was how fast-paced the game is.

It is? I mean you can move fairly fast, and (some) enemies can as well (which was the norm in those times, and still happens in PC-exclusives - see sprinting in STALKER), but there is little speed component to the gameplay itself.

Q2 also has some very cumbersome character physics - playing HL, a game known for having substantial inertia and clumsiness applied to the player's character, actually makes you surprised at how agile can your movement be after playing Q2.

And let's not get into Q2 implementation of ladders.

 

[Destroid]

It's not like HL or HL2 have good ladders.

 

[DraQ]

It's not like HL or HL2 have good ladders.

They have ladders that can be descended starting from top.
That's a big plus when it comes to ladders.


Edit:

Also, regarding Q2 vs HL1 - I've just played both on hard (finished Q2 few days ago and HL yesterday).

In Q2 I died exactly once to enemy fire, in warehouse hub, because I started spacing out and getting shot at took me completely by surprise (as in "I got startled and didn't know what the fuck was happening"). Prior to that moment I haven't reloaded once, after it I started fooling around and experimenting, so reloads were frequent in order to experiment with gameplay situations, but I never dropped below, I think 80HP and only got killed by jumping into holes (filled with lava, lasers, nukage, hazardous machinery or space), tripping into the holes or getting crushed by elevators.

In HL I won't even try to count or try to guess whether I got killed more often by the environment or enemies.
Yes, HL is a bit too platform-like for my liking, but at least it's honestly challenging and not a snoozefest.

HL pwn's Q2 on gameplay, atmosphere, visuals, AI and story fronts so hard that it isn't even funny.
Somehow Valve s able of transmuting completely derpy initial ideas - like armoured testicle spider or Ivan the space biker into pure gold.

I honestly don't know how, but I'm grateful for the results.

 

[Destroid]

Does this man look like he has time for ladders?

 

[CorpseZeb]

I still think, that all discussion derailed a bit into more o less derpy, more or less eloQuent elaborates about personal favorites style of playing FPP, instead cold and emotionless look at the design of maps. Evaluation of design, in sake of... erm... evolution of design (e.g role of alternate routes, HL has few of them, Q2 has, IIRC, a substantial more, HL maps are rather simply connected each together, with zero backtracking (not counting a beginning here) while Q2 hubs are more complicated and backtrack-friendly etc.).

Ps. Or, I'm totally clueless...?