by Dr. Shadowborg » Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:30 pm
Quake isn't really that hard on hard, I can (and did) beat all four episodes using only the keyboard without using cheats. My biggest complaint was that they made the cell pickups too rare, end result was I hardly ever used the lightning gun.
When I do play vanilla quake find myself playing the first episode far more than any of the other episodes. (what can I say? The First episode was pretty well constructed after all.)
Zerstorer DM...Never played it.
Travail I have yet to actually finish due to it being a bit too much of an endurance fest. (as in, it tries too hard to be Marcher most of the time)
I've played Nehahra, haven't seen the movie. Nehahra tries too hard to be epic, and as such gets on my nerves.
Unreal is a game that actually got it's theme formula right but fell a little short on it's monsters (low variety) and weapons (absurdly weak minigun, lack of the quadshot, unwillingness to make some of the weapons be the total bonecrushers they should have been). It's still quite beautiful visually even today though. It's really a pity Unreal 2 turned out the way it did, with some proper work done it could have really turned out well. (So well in fact, that it could have easily become the Duke3D of it's era. Alas, it's all in the past now.)
Half-Life is okay, but far too linear to really keep me coming back. It's like an interactive movie.
Quake 2's lack of variety and what I find to be generally poor design makes it horribly boring to play for any extended period of time. This is a game that I can't really blame anybody for not finishing. It probably is a very good representative of Carmack's "games are porn" design philosophy.
Quake 3 ARENA...Isn't really very fun when compared against Unreal Tournament. It overdoes it with colorfulness. The engine is somewhat cool though. Pity they never actually made the REAL Quake 3. STV:EF and ST:EF2 really showed what the engine was capable of.
Quake 4 I've not played, then again, given how it involves Stroggs AGAIN...I'll pass.
Doom 1...I like it more than Doom 2. Doom 2 feels more draining to play past a certain point. It also lacks the "you are here" intermission screen that I found to be awesome. Doom 2 does have some good additional monsters and SSG though.
Doom 3...I respect it for it's attempt to condense and re-envision Doom 1. Unfortunatly it's a failure as a game. Don't get me wrong, I've played it and it's okay, but it fails at being very fun. It just plain tries to take itself too seriously. Oh and it had way too much of the "Behold our awesome lighting effects! So awesome that we've turned out all the lights and made it so that you have to use a flashlight to see with! Also we've made it a switchfest between your flashlight and gun! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Heretic is good, though kinda brutal at times.
Hexen...eh. I've played it and finished it with all three characters, it's okay but I tend to get bored with it.
I've never finished Hexen 2 due to getting bored with it almost immediately.
My goals with my OpenSmash project is to create a kickass fun (and free) game that can be a spiritual successor to all those old classics of the 90's.