Mike
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yeah it should be a separate month. I really like the game but also think the criticisms of the level design are very fair.
I believe it’s just some of the entries or even just DLC? They weren’t the creators of the series and I wish they weren’t stuck in the CoD world. Not every game of theirs worked for me but at least they were always trying new things
Yep, that’s basically how I feel about it too so I have nothing interesting to add really. I like it quite a bit but not as much as everyone else in the adventure game community seems to because I think it has some pacing issues.
Probably buy the game through GOG (or use a disc if you own one) and then play it with ScummVM or DREAMM.
DREAMM is an emulator made by Lucasarts alumni Aaron Giles and is a little more focused on providing accurate emulation of Lucasarts games, like using the same menus instead of ScummVM having their own menus pop up. It’s really neat and worth checking out even if you don’t use it for this game
https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/It’s really interesting but I wouldn’t say better. I just recorded a Let’s Play of it where I played it through the Macenwolf port
https://youtu.be/yvTZi2XGOqwLike TigerQuoll said, the assets are high-res and there’s two new weapons (Flamethrower, Rocket Launcher) which add a little variety, even if they’re weirdly designed. It’s also a little confusing that the demo version is called First Encounter, the retail release is called Second Encounter, and the actual port of the original game is called the Third Encounter. The original commercial release of the game is the levels from the SNES release, and then due to demand they eventually brought over the levels from the original game. Another issue is that the enemies are always forward facing, so you never really see them patrolling or looking in other directions.
I definitely prefer the original version but the Mac version isn’t bad and I’d recommend it if you’ve played Wolf3D a ton of times and want a new take on it.
I think Hovertank is part of that too.
They have to get to Catacomb 3D someday! There’s only so many FPS for DOS, even if it takes them another 10-15 years lol
I’ve played Blake Stone recently using the BStone source port and it’s pretty neat! It’s got some nice features that didn’t appear in either Doom of Wolf3D like NPCs that could help you and vending machines to buy power ups from. It’s not perfect and coming out right before Doom didn’t help it, but I think it would be a fun game for the club
Yeah, I remember enjoying Catacomb Abyss too. There’s also CatacombGL if you want a source port to make the game feel a tiny bit more modern
https://github.com/ArnoAnsems/CatacombGLYeah, I guess I should revisit the original now. I’m doing ok with the difficulty but did notice that the AI seemed to be more aggressive than I had remembered from these games. I guess the tradeoff is that the game is much easier for me to control and play due to all the stuff KeeperFx adds
Yeah, I’m having a good time revisiting the game too. It’s really satisfying building my dungeon and slowly expanding. The combat is less satisfying for me. Specific combinations of creatures not getting along is a clever idea at first but feels really tedious after a while.
Yeah, I’m definitely mixed on the game but it’s a really interesting experience. I think it goes on for too long but the FPS/adventure game combo is fascinating and I’m surprised there hasn’t been any indie devs that have attempted to make a spiritual sequel with all the other retro looking fps we’ve seen over the last few years.
I’ll have to check this out if it fixes how zoomed in the game is. I think it’s a huge flaw with Jazz so anything that takes care of that would be nice
EDIT: Being able to zoom out does make the game much better but is there really no way to turn off that graphics filter? Because oof, it looks really bad
I haven’t played them all but I liked the ones I played. One I really like and would recommend to everyone, but is only on Steam, is Snail Trek. It’s a very good modern version of the Sierra style adventure game that has some fun deaths (it reloads you to right before you dying), no softlocks, and a really good parser that suggests words as you type too
I try to play these every year around the holiday season along with the one for Jazz 2
I haven’t played Speedball 1 or the Xenon games but The Chaos Engine 1 is faaaaar better than the sequel
Am I allowed to plug my own podcast? Sometimes on the Adventure Game Club (yes I basically copied this club) we talk about DOS games. Tijn has been on a few episodes, Pix was on to talk about Realms of the Haunting, and both DGC hosts were on to talk about The Forgotten City, which is not a DOS game.
Just started using it tonight and it’s so good. I know mapping everything is part of the gameplay but I don’t think I would have the time to get through the game this month if this didn’t exist and if I’m having more fun using the tool then I don’t think it’s a problem. I didn’t know about the Might & Magic one though, I’ll have to check that out.
I really enjoy it and even picked up the soundtrack on vinyl when that came out a year or two ago. I really wish we could have had Doom 3 with the completed NIN soundtrack and effects too
That reminds me that I have this official X-Men total conversion. You basically walk around killing clones of x-men and it would absolutely never get made today. The only reason this exists is because Marvel was about to go bankrupt and was so desperate for money that they licensed out everything. Sometimes it worked (the x-men and spider-man films) and sometimes it didn’t (this game). It’s pretty awful but fascinating that it exists
https://www.mobygames.com/game/x-men-the-ravages-of-apocalypse
I’m surprised that I seem to like it most people here. I had a great time playing through it. I think the last episode is a little boring but it felt great to have the really powerful last for the last couple levels.
It probably helps that I haven’t actually played that many shmups and don’t have much to compare it to. I remember really liking Tyrian but don’t actually remember anything from it so I guess I should play that next!
Also yeah, never feel bad about sharing positive or negative opinions on a game. That’s the whole point of this club 🙂
What, no one is going to play the black and white Macintosh version?
https://www.mobygames.com/game/macintosh/space-quest-chapter-i-the-sarien-encounter/screenshots
I’d really love occasional episodes highlighting modern DOS games. It would be a nice way to help give indie games more exposure.
I would enjoy this a lot. It’s a relatively obscure game, the FMV is a lot of fun to watch, and I think the adventure game/FPS hybrid works pretty well.
You have to be extremely close to the chasm and then walk all the way down. It’s a very small bridge and you would never know to try this and even if you guessed it there’s roughly a 90% chance it wouldn’t work when you tried it.
Even though I like the game a little more than you, I can’t really disagree with any of your points. It’s frustrating having to deal with so many hit scan enemies in open areas.
What’s weird is that I enjoyed my playthrough of the game from 10 years ago a lot more. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been spoiled by the recent retro FPS revival but this playthrough has been rougher. It still has a lot of charm that keeps me playing the game.
Yeah, I still mostly like the game overall but the thing that’s aged very poorly for me is the level design. It’s very blah and it’s easy to get lost because there’s nothing really distinctive about any of the rooms.
I’m also not the biggest fan of most of the enemies using guns. One of the things that I like about Doom is that most of the enemies fire projectiles you can dodge. In RotT I’m often just using my machine gun to shoot at guys from across a level and slowly picking them off so I don’t lose health. It really hurts the pacing of the game when I have to do it. The game is at its best when you have special weapons or powerups in smaller rooms.
Yes, Gearbox owns the rights to Duke Nukem now, which I guess is why the earlier Duke games have been delisted from digital stores?
It is, but it’s also really buggy. And there’s a lot of platform jumping later on and I really dislike it.
Which is unfortunate because I feel l like the game actually feels pretty good in the first couple of levels but you really start to notice the flaws pretty quickly and it feels like a chore to play.
The weird thing about this game is that while I don’t think it’s very good, it ended up being a pretty important game to the recent retro fps revival, because a lot of those people went on to work on far better games or start their own studios, like New Blood who made Dusk and Amid Evil.
I don’t enjoy the remake but it’s interesting because it’s kind of the precursor to the retro FPS revival that we have today. People who worked on it went on to work on other, better FPS like Dusk.
My understanding is that the production of the game was kind of a mess and it’s a minor miracle that it came out at all. The game has a lot of platform jumping that I don’t enjoy and I don’t think the level design in general is that good, but it has its moments.
Agreed with everyone else. I prefer the original graphics but I think the commentary mode, hint system, and bonus concept art are nice touches and with it providing the options to switch to the original game, it doesn’t feel like the original game is being erased.
I’m not sure. I think with it being so cartoonish, they decided to go with the character that fit the new art style the most?
I know Razor and one or two other characters were originally planned but were cut. I think Razor would have been a neat character to play as again.
Oh weird, I assumed it was a Dr. Seuss reference as well.
I would also say that the fat jokes maybe haven’t aged super great but there’s not too many of them.
I think people got most of the jokes I like. I’m also a fan of Bernard putting in so many quarters that the dryer goes on for 200 years and conveniently ends when Laverne walks in the room.
Really excited for this month. DotT is one of my favorite adventure games but I’ve never played through the remastered version with the commmentary mode on so that will be fun.
Ok, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one frustrated by the downhill skiing. Is there a way to jump? Otherwise it seems like you’re just going to fail if you don’t go down the right path?
The ski jumping is definitely a lot more interesting.
But I’ve always had a hard time with this series. Even Skate or Die on the NES, which seemed to be a pretty big game, always felt like a mixed bag of minigames to me too.
Thanks for the patch. I might try that one out if that’s considered the superior version?
I happen to have a copy of the Windows version of the first game. Should I upload an iso of it to the Internet Archive? It sounds like it’s not being preserved anywhere.
I picked up the rerelease on Steam based on Shattered’s post and yeah, it’s fine. You can tell they updated the menus and made them look more boring, and that it’s a mobile port, but if someone was thinking about playing the game but didn’t want to get into DOSBox, I would be fine with telling them to pick up the rerelease.
Just completed the game. I think the game is guilty of the shareware episode being the best, but I enjoyed it. I really disliked the instant death traps towards the end of the third episode but I thought it was interesting how they kept changing formats each episode.
I think this game is kinda neat. I’m not good at it because I need to be able to see the entire table when playing pinball, but the music in some of those tables is so good!
