Man, fuck Doom 4, fuck id software and fuck Carmack!
How about a nice cup of Hexen III, Strife 2 or maybe Blood II?
Fixed.
Remember, DraQ prefers Unreal 1 to Quake2 because of its superior erm, everything.
Fixed.
And yes, it includes storytelling. Especially that part of storytelling that deals with powerful enemies actually being dangerous instead of being retarded tincans you can easily and without any risk kill with "flashlight" (if you're patient enough), while doing
the entire time and holding the gun with your dick.
Also, unlike Unreal, Quake2 had good level design
Lolno.
At best it had some good level layouts (then again, so did Unreal), but level design isn't just layouts. Unreal levels were distinct, memorable, full of character and distinctive areas. Q2 levels were dull metal boxes with a lot of dull metal boxes stacked inside.
and weapons that didn't blow chunks (in both senses).
I can give you that Unreal weapons were a bit underpowered. OTOH they were original and interesting to use. Q2's were standard FPS arsenal complete with shotgun that would hit enemies behind you if it had any more spread - at least the basic shotgun in DOOM could still hit shit outside of melee.
Enemies were a lot cooler.
Lolno. A bunch of variants of cybernetic cripples with brain damage to match doesn't make an interesting, diverse, nor challenging opponents.
Certainly not cool ones either.
Increased challenge isn't automatically tied to increased enjoyment.
*Some* challenge, OTOH, is.
A semi-competent player without glaring disabilities could go half way through Q2 with godmode on without noticing that something is amiss.
Challenge can also contribute to coolness of enemies providing it - in this regard Q2 wasn't anything but cybernetic retard execution simulator.
Also, pathfinding in FPS is overrated. It isn't the magical holy grail that makes a game more fun by itself.
It is when the alternative is enemies getting stuck on doors 2 out of 3 times.
Visuals != Gameplay. You really are focused on visuals a lot. I am focused on enemy attack timings and patterns
Which were largely the same and completely predictable.
Doubly ironic considering your recent dismissal of actual gameplay elements as quoted above.
In Unreal you couldn't save/load in co-op because it had none.
Odd, I must have played some other game in coop, thinking it was Unreal all the time.
Indeed, you couldn't save or load, but the coop was in and worked just fine. There were even precautions in level design for occasions where some set pieces might cut players off in coop.
P.S.
Is this the point where we start calling each other names and from which I start referring to you as "shithonage"?
My apologies if we're not there yet.
Remember, DraQ prefers Unreal 1 to Quake2 because of its superior erm, storytelling, methods. He's an odd fella, this DraQ.
No, it's general consensus that Unreal is simply the better game. It wiped the floor with Quake 2 when it came out.
Then shot it repeatedly in the head, threw it out of window, shat on its remains and set them on fire.
DooM is just a random mess with no goal, no structure, nothing that it can excel at. That was cool back then in the 90s, but not today. Besides, the whole premise of DooM is a paradox. It wants to be scary, but at the same time it allows you to wield near omnipotent power with ridiculously powerful weapons.
That's a bit uncharitable to Doom, because at least it tries to maintain the tone and environmental progression (from relatively normal man made environments to to trippy, fleshy WTF bashed with technology and demonic imagery, with gutsky stretching overhead).
I also liked the episode "maps" in 1.
Still, it's a game about shooting demons and going to hell to shoot more of them because teleportation - it might as well have been titled DOOMB.
Oh sweet Jesus, we actually have people that believe this? Codex has become a parody of itself.
Why, because I'd totally
to a game with (old, pre Q2) ID gameplay + level design, and Tom Hall written story and background?
Because I think such a game would totally shit all over Doom/Quake we know?
It just would.
Or maybe you think Hall would somehow break the gameplay by giving Carmack story cooties or something?
I liked both games and i think Q2 gets way too much flak, mostly from atmosphere fags. From a gameplay and level design perspective, it was the last truly good game they made.
Disagreed on gameplay front. It was just weak with enemies being utterly predictable, slow to react, slow to aim, dealing low damage and being way to sparse to compensate that with sheer numbers.
It wasn't bad, but it definitely wasn't great either. It was a very polished game that was actually completely mediocre at its core. The flak is mostly to counter the undue esteem it's held in.
In fact, in a way, i think ID software gets criticized too much. It seems a lot of people really never understood what they were actually doing. Their design principle seemed to be polish before content, but people merely judged them when the latter was lacking, ignoring all the work that went into making the game or the engine feel so right in the first place.
Polished turd it's still a turd. Rough gem is still a gem.
Q2 might not be bad enough to actually be called a turd, but the principle applies just the same - a polished, let's say, ordinary stone, is still not a gem, not even a rough one.
Not really, it's not a well designed game. In fact it's the complete opposite of those Carmack/Romero games: sloppily designed, unchallenging and repetitive shlock in the gameplay department
That puts it on even ground with Q2 SP (AKA: Ennui and Executions: Electric Retard Edition). And then it completely destroys it by at least succeeding epically on storyfag front and providing diverse locales as player progresses.
Weaponry - I admit I prefer Q2, because they feel really good (shotguns and railgun forever). In Unreal, even rocket launcher feels a little bit weak. Instead of turning enemies into gibs they just move.
OTOH the weaponry was much more interesting to use in Unreal and its relative weakness could be easily fixed by as much as just globally scaling damage dealt by 1.5, while Q2 arsenal is just stock FPS guns (TM).
Also, some potentially interesting weapons in Q2 were deprived distinctness by lack of situational factors that would truly make them shine or suck. Take chaingun - one thing it did extremely right was sheer rate of fire, but in actual gameplay it was reduced to being a DPS beast - there were no hordes of weak mooks you could mow down with it to feel the power, while really strong enemies didn't have any sort of armor mechanics going for them that would render it less effective and favour lower ROF, heavier hitting weapons, so you could basically mince two tanks at once before any of them could open fire by simply BRRRAAAP!ing them with unquaded chaingun. You didn't even get much pain chance variation that made all the difference in DOOM.
It was also the problem with Unreal (partially due to relatively high HP/damage quotient), but to a lesser degree because the enemy behaviour and movement mattered more and there were some damage type resistances in play, while in Q2 the only enemy that heavily encouraged some types of weaponry over others was Icarus that could actually dodge slow moving projectiles, other than that you could even explode fliers with GL without much effort for lulz and ammo conservation.
Since first System Shock didn't achieve that much deserved recognition it was really something new for many gamers. Half Life pushed FPS genre in somehow similar direction, although it had more scripted elements. Weaponry wasn't very big, but I never felt there is something I don't need. It hadn't such variety in location desings like Unreal, merely because of the Mesa complex, but the modified Q1 engine did well, even with some semi opened areas. Half Life always surprised me with some new obstacles or elements of the story, it never felt like the Valve team needed to repeat it. It was like having Lego blocks, building diffrent things that made me go "wow" at the first playthrough. Unreal had text translator, which helped to build the background of the story, Half Life told it's story through some events/characters, and last but not least G. Freeman.
Even Sin, an underdog of it's times was more interesting and had many interesting things to offer and minor C&C which gave player acess to some additional levels.
I still replay all of the mentioned games, but let's face it - there is a reason why after some time Id guys made Quake 3 which had no single player campaign.
Although arsenal in HL was big and diverse. Sometimes games with very diverse weapons or enemies paradoxically feel less diverse because you stop considering all the weapons or enemies as belonging in the same category and then the individual categories start looking empty-ish.
(And SIN was pretty gud too, the worst parts were graphics, kinaesthetics and rocket launcher.)
If the story isn't good, you shouldn't bother with it at all. Trying to please every one and play it safe is the absolute worst thing in corporate, mass produced entertainment. Music, movies, games, you name it, it'll ruin it. Hide the negatives, accentuate the positives. Go all out. If you're making a mindless shooter, it should have chainsaws, gore, rocket jumping, wall jumping, high movement speed, surreal and cool levels (medieval castles, a pyramid floathing in space, it doesn't need to make sense in anyway, style over substance) and Death, Morbid Angel and Pestilence blasting in the soundtrack.
I can't fully agree. Some story or backstory can go a long way keeping the tone consistent and establishing strong, individual character of the game avoiding the pitfall of tiresome kitchensink feel.
At the very least a story, even derpy one, is glue holding your game together.
Some story or backstory doesn't necessarily imply adherence to RL logic. Unreal had much higher story content than either Q1 or Doom, yet it remained a game about running around dodging rockets, with castles in the sky and lava filled underground lairs in addition to spaceships and decaying temples.
As for Anachronox it was awesome because it introduced something new to the world. Q2 didn't.
No matter how awful the derpy JPG combat was, it was more than worth powering through (though I interpreted it a bit as a deconstruction) to experience the content.
Q2 provided neither very good gameplay nor very good content.
