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The developers who made their living off of id engines in the 90s and 00s

Your favorite idtech slam dunkers?


  • Total voters
    90

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
I've been going through a number of these recently, and I think it's keen how id indirectly supported a mini-industry of American devs. The line-up:

Raven
Middleton, Wisconsin
idtech games: Heretic, Hexen, Hexen II, Heretic II, Soldier of Fortune, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, Soldier of Fortune II, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Quake 4, Wolfenstein (2009)

The most prolific of the bunch by far. Unfortunately I always thought they were mediocre at best; some of these would have been good if not some for some critical flaw holding them back; I remember Heretic II being about as good as a third person action game could get on an id engine, but it was still an engine unsuited for third person action gameplay. Soldier of Fortune had some irritating snipers-who-can-see-through-thick-fog-you-can't levels. Elite Force did a great job of feeling like an episode of Voyager, but it relied a bit too much on enemy waves transporting in (proto-Dragon Age II). Jedi Outcast had unintuitive level design and all the bad cliches of early/mid-00s gimmicks (escort, stealth, timed, and zero-g "underwater" missions). Still a shame they're a Call of Duty farm now.

Rogue/Nerve
Dallas, Texas
idtech games: Strife, Quake: Dissolution of Eternity, Quake II: Ground Zero, American McGee's Alice, Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil

Alice is the only one I've played of these. Liked the art style and the music, but the gameplay suffers from similar issues Heretic II did (the combat is also not as polished feeling).

Hipnotic/Ritual
Dallas, Texas
idtech games: Quake: Scourge of Armagon, SiN, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Star Trek: Elite Force II

My favorite of the bunch. Yes, they were totally stuck in teenage boy territory (to their credit, they did mature a bit for Elite Force II, but they still couldn't resist including their trademark giant cyborgs, giant mutants, and barely dressed babes). Yes, Elite Force II was worse than its predecessor thanks in large part to having too many obnoxious minigames, escort missions, and time limits. Yes, their other games have some annoying sections that keep them from becoming classic. However, they were ambitious (Sin's multiple paths, the number of animations Heavy Metal's main character has, Elite Force II's two romances), had consistently intuitive level design (unlike Raven), always delivered great graphics, and employed Zak Belica, one of the finest video game music composers.

Xatrix/Gray Matter Interactive
Los Angeles, California
idtech games: Quake II: The Reckoning, Kingpin, Return to Castle Wolfenstein

I only played RtCW which started out good, but quickly devolved into hitscan and bullet sponge and occasional mandatory stealth section irritation. I was so disappointed by the experience that I didn't bother with Kingpin, which has a reputation for being overly-difficult jank. They would be the worst if not for

Ion Storm Dallas
Dallas, Texas obviously
idtech games: Daikatana, Anachronox

Daikatana's disappointment is legendary. Anachronox has a reputation for slow combat and "funny" dialogue but I never saw any of the latter in the hour of the machinima I watched. A company that only justified its existence with its Austin branch, who worked with Unreal.

Post your own thoughts and arguments about these companies and their games. Even though they were medicore, I miss 'em and the thing they had going.
 

Bigg Boss

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
I chose Raven since they got the most playtime from me and my friends. Heretic was great and all but it was Hexen II that got a ton of love from us due to LAN matches at school. That was after Quake got removed from the computers due to Satanic imagery. Then we moved on to the Jedi Academy games which were really popular due to the prequels coming out around then.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
they're a Call of Duty farm now
Damn. I used to love Raven some decades ago. Up to Quake 4 I had played all their games(the x-men ones were quite fun to play with friends) and I though Quake 4 was their last game. So I went to their wikipedia page and holy shit, they only make CoD now, that is so sad. :negative:
 

cretin

Magister
Douchebag!
Joined
Apr 20, 2019
Messages
1,347
Most of those games aren't very good, not in retrospect and not even for their time. I have to pick Raven, because Jedi Knight Outcast was a fucking great game.
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
Voted for all of them because each dev made at least one great game.
Raven - I like Heretic 2 and SoF1 a lot, didn't care about Heretic and Hexen (missed them when i was a kid), Star Trek and Star Wars games were alright. Hated SoF2.
Rogue/Nerve - I love Alice. Ground Zero and Doom 3 RoE were decent expansions. Hated Dissolution of Eternity, haven't properly played Strife to judge.
Hipnotic/Ritual - Scourge of Armagon was a great expansion. Sin was alright, though i liked Emergence more (don't @ me). Heavy Metal was a mixed bag, Alice handled janky thirdperson combat better imo. Elite Force 2 is ok.
Xatrix/Gray Matter - RTCW is one of my favorite FPSs, The Reckoning was better than a decent Ground Zero (and both of them were better than a base game). Didn't care for Kingpin, it was indeed too janky and hard.
Ion Storm - hey, it's a perfectly valid option. Daikatana maybe bombed back then, but it's an alright shooter (especially with unofficial patch which reduces annoyance factor about dumb AI companions). And Anachronox is great.

I think you can add Valve (since HL1 runs on a forked Quake 1 engine), and Infinity Ward (KC).
 

octavius

Arcane
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Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,182
Location
Bjørgvin
Raven was always derivative, but competent, and made solid games, but never masterpieces or novel work. Overall I liked Raven.
Don't know about the others.
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
I only played RtCW which started out good, but quickly devolved into hitscan and bullet sponge and occasional mandatory stealth section irritation. I was so disappointed by the experience that I didn't bother with Kingpin, which has a reputation for being overly-difficult jank. They would be the worst if not for
I fully agree about RtCW, I think it merely had a theme that wasn't realized very well. But Kingpin is really worth playing for the first hub and only for that part. It has a nice mixture of hostile and non-hostile dealings with NPCs, quests, and a sense that you're just making ends meet with the weapons and money you have. The rest of the game is a pretty tedious straightforward shooter. The last area in the down town is somewhat interesting visually. I suppose it's worth noting that Viktor Antonov worked as an artist on this game, just before moving on to Half-Life 2.


Heretic and the first Hexen were indeed very atmospheric, but Raven just couldn't seem to get the flow of the combat right, especially when they're compared to Doom. Hexen's weapons are more interesting because of all their special attack patterns and elaborate animations, but the combat still comes down to rather tedious repetition. Such a nice sense of exploration, though.

I tried to play Soldier of Fortune recently and though I originally liked it for the gore and violence, it seems to be a pretty dully shooter, actually. The level design is especially lacking as it amounts to an assortment of perpendicularly arranged corridors with only a few distinctive areas here and there—this is especially evident when watching a speed-run. I played the sequel several years ago and the gore system seemed less impressive, perhaps because it was more elaborate and as such it was harder to cause serious injury, and the gameplay a lot of the time was just awful.

As such, though I haven't played Ritual's later games, I think that company comes out on top for just how good Sin was.
 

ZagorTeNej

Arcane
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
1,980
Xatrix/Gray Matter Interactive
Los Angeles, California
idtech games: Quake II: The Reckoning, Kingpin, Return to Castle Wolfenstein

I only played RtCW which started out good, but quickly devolved into hitscan and bullet sponge and occasional mandatory stealth section irritation. I was so disappointed by the experience that I didn't bother with Kingpin, which has a reputation for being overly-difficult jank.

Recently replayed RtCW on Death Incarnate, there's no bullet sponge if you don't count bosses/mini-bosses. At any point of the game you can absolutely mow down other enemies with the arsenal available at the moment. Hitscan is there but your weapons are hitscan too and enemies reaction times and aim are not approaching unfair levels, it's very much playable albeit challenging.

Mandatory stealth sections are brief (IIRC two levels in total) but that criticism is valid. Forced stealth sections (with automatic failure in case of an alarm) in an otherwise non-stealth game rarely turn out to be anything but irritating in my experience.

As for Kingpin, the only major flaw of the game are in fact the bullet spongy enemies. Otherwise, the game is great. Guns are very satisfying to use, the game mixes up adventure elements, the atmosphere is amazing, the visual design is excellent and the game very easily still holds up today.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
I think you can add Valve (since HL1 runs on a forked Quake 1 engine), and Infinity Ward (KC).

Added IW since they certainly have been making a living off that engine, but Valve makes a living off of Steam, they ascended in a different way. Additionally, they're the opposite of slam dunkers. Putting them on the list would also be unfair to the others, bit of a no-contest.

Recently replayed RtCW on Death Incarnate, there's no bullet sponge if you don't count bosses/mini-bosses.
It took a lot of bullets to take down those undead enemies in my experience.
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
Putting them on the list would also be unfair to the others, bit of a no-contest.
Raven are destroying others anyway.
It took a lot of bullets to take down those undead enemies in my experience.
they can be easily kill them with explosives. During a second encounter (in the last chapter) you can just use flamethrower to knock them down, and then one-shot them with any other weapon.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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they can be easily kill them with explosives. During a second encounter (in the last chapter) you can just use flamethrower to knock them down, and then one-shot them with any other weapon.
I see. I recall trying to throw grenades at them, but being unable to actually hit them with them. :negative:
 

Fishy

Savant
Joined
Jan 24, 2019
Messages
398
Location
Ireland
Raven by far here. Never cared for Heretic, but Hexen with its melee class was awesome. Soldier of Fortune had some of the punchiest gunplay ever and hilarious localised damage and dismemberment animations. Not to mention you get to say hi to Saddam Hussein, like, face to face, not 2m apart. :P

And then there's also Elite Force, which, even though it's poor in its ultra-violence take on Star Trek, is a competent shooter with a fantastic Virtual Voyager mode added in the expansion to freely derp aboard the ship. And the main game design as an episode with opening drama, Voyager series intro, game, then epilogue and ending credits was on point. That intro is still engraved in my memory as one of the best ever. It's a simple gimmick, but I didn't expect it and it blew me away at the time when after the Tuvok putdown the screen faded to black and that familiar music started.
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
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Oct 12, 2010
Messages
1,871,734
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Always had a soft spot for Strife.

Not a perfect game by any means, but very ahead of its time for what they intended.
 

U-8D8

Savant
Joined
May 2, 2018
Messages
168
Raven

The most prolific of the bunch by far. Unfortunately I always thought they were mediocre at best-
QfmskKt.png
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
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Developer
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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I've been going through a number of these recently, and I think it's keen how id indirectly supported a mini-industry of American devs. The line-up:

Raven
Middleton, Wisconsin
idtech games: Heretic, Hexen, Hexen II, Heretic II, Soldier of Fortune, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, Soldier of Fortune II, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Quake 4, Wolfenstein (2009)

The most prolific of the bunch by far. Unfortunately I always thought they were mediocre at best; some of these would have been good if not some for some critical flaw holding them back
giphy.gif


I don't know how could anyone choose anything else than Raven. That linup there is just one classic after another. SoF? Jedi Knight games, Hexen? Even the new games like Quake 4 and Wolfenstein were incline in a sea of shitty modern shooters.
 

ZagorTeNej

Arcane
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
1,980
It took a lot of bullets to take down those undead enemies in my experience.

Run up to them and shoot them in the head and yes, explosives. They're standing still when doing their ghost attack which makes them easy target for grenades which are excellent in RtCW because you can cook them.

Either way, they fall down relatively easily as basically everything does in RtCW. The danger from enemies in that game comes from the hurt they can dish upon you not their durability.

During a second encounter (in the last chapter) you can just use flamethrower to knock them down, and then one-shot them with any other weapon.

Or you could just shred them with Venom at that point.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
The Reckoning was better than a decent Ground Zero (and both of them were better than a base game).

By the way, can you elaborate on this? I didn't dislike Quake 2, but the people who hate it cite the weapons and how easy it is to exploit the enemies if you wish. How do the expansions fix that?

There were just two of them

I'm irate about it because in the first one, the last guy got into a permanent alert status and I ended up either needing to cheat or restart the level to complete it, not sure which.
 

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