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Modern "retro" FPS corner  "For some more general discussion, news etc. in one place"

User is offline   Aristotle Gumball 

  • banned!

#211

View PostMorpheus Kitami, on 14 August 2020 - 06:10 PM, said:

The way that the video was setting it up reminded me of Hotel Romanstein for Wolf, but that's clearly something quite different.
On another note, why is it that all these games inspired by Wolfenstein look so freaking weird? Not necessarily bad, just out of place with itself.


Looks very mediocre to me, but what do I know. And yeah, very idiosyncratic graphics in a bad way IMO.

This post has been edited by Cartaphallus: 15 August 2020 - 05:50 AM

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User is online   NightFright 

  • The Truth is in here

#212

Citadel probably ain't worth 12 bucks, but for anything like 25-50% off I guess it'll be almost a no-brainer.

This post has been edited by NightFright: 15 August 2020 - 07:44 AM

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User is offline   Player Lin 

#213

Lot of platforming without manual saves? No, thanks. :)
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User is online   NightFright 

  • The Truth is in here

#214

The ROTT remake was the same. That's why I fired it into the corner at some point. Barely playable.

This post has been edited by NightFright: 16 August 2020 - 11:43 AM

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User is offline   Player Lin 

#215

View PostNightFright, on 16 August 2020 - 11:42 AM, said:

The ROTT remake was the same. That's why I fired it into the corner at some point. Barely playable.


I never finished RotT 2013...and it affected me about playing many of check-point saving based games...tend to give up if I found that frustration just too much.:o

I actually try and played The Citadel demo(via Steam)...but I always run out ammo, and the con of using melee attack weapon is if your enemies will blow you up then you'll die easily...maybe I forgot something...like finding weapon 2 before I found weapons 3 without lot of ammo. EDIT : Restart the game again, yeah... I somehow never got weapon 2 on my first try...didn't spawn or something(didn't talked NPCs and/or select ACT(Episode) in the HUB section may caused that? not sure), now I like the game...at least played E1M1 and E1M2 both are fine without lot of platforming...but well, I missed quick save/manual save so I may still not buy full game after I ever completed ACT/Episode 1(unless on sale or something, who knows...it sure weird but I'm fine with that)

It still has some fun to me (played some minutes, maybe I will play more of the demo if I have more time...), everything in the game just exploded with lot of gibs...even player character herself(?).

Sometimes I just can't help and use the "kill self" command to suicide if stuck or in very bad situation that let you want to restart the level or back to hub, then I noticed the problem is, nothing unique about gibs from player character if killed, unlike enemies, so that's weird to me, but then again RotT 1995 did this too, gibbed player characters still shared gib sprites from human enemies.

Okay, I know I'm weird but...just for curious...:)


This post has been edited by Player Lin: 17 August 2020 - 10:36 AM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#216

I finally caved and decided to watch some reviews of Citadel (I generally stay away because I don't much care for the mixing of the annie-maes and the shooty bang-bangs). First thing to note, I will give it this. It actually sort of does have a bit more unified geometry. It still has varying heights, but instead of being tile-based like Wolfenstein, it seems to be built more out of blocks, similar to minecraft actually. I actually think that gives it a visual edge over games like Project Warlock because it does actually pick something uniform, just more of a reinterpretation of it via blocks. The overuse of the single color is definitely a problem though, as is the very limited texture set.

Beyond that the game being one giant roflstomp certainly doesn't appeal to me. Apparently it does have some atmosphere, the music in particular, and I admit there is something to be said for the faces of the slain enemies. As said, it's almost definitely someone's guro fetish at play, alongside some of the enemy designs. But with that in mind... it's kind of hard to explain. I think there's actuallly some merit to that, weird fetishism aside. In these shooters you almost never see the faces on their corpses. I feel like, if used well, you can create a genuinely haunting atmosphere with the dead faces of the slain. I don't want to get into the territory of games like Spec Ops The Line, definitely not, but if you take that aspect, mix it with a foreboding and almost tragic atmosphere, I think you can make something. Something like how in Doom a lot of the zombies you face are at least supposed to be former friends, or how in Duke you get levels like Incubator with women trapped in pods or tied down, already impregnated and there's nothing you can do about it. Both of these are instances of a very grim atmosphere that I think a lot of other games of the era sort of miss. Even Quake, for all its Lovecraft-inspired worlds, enemies and plot, still lacks the sense of helplessness Doom and Duke gave in even those small parts.

I feel like the severed heads with shown faces and expressions, if it were used better, could very easily recapture that same sense of helplessness. Take it to the forefront, even, especially with the enemy designs and soundtrack. Maybe I'm lamenting that it's not something it wasn't supposed to be in the first place. But I do miss that helplessness, and this game seemed to have all the elements to resurrect it and just didn't assemble it that way. A pity.
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#217

Why do you say guro fetish? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking what makes you think that. Judging by what I've seen and you describe, it just seems like a dark game, misery porn perhaps, but not gorn. At least not anymore than any of its inspirations. As we've learned from the Doomworld thread, its not necessarily true that a guy making misery porn has a guro fetish.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#218

View PostMorpheus Kitami, on 17 August 2020 - 07:49 PM, said:

Why do you say guro fetish? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking what makes you think that. Judging by what I've seen and you describe, it just seems like a dark game, misery porn perhaps, but not gorn. At least not anymore than any of its inspirations. As we've learned from the Doomworld thread, its not necessarily true that a guy making misery porn has a guro fetish.


Call it past experience. On a previous forum I used to frequent, there was this one guy who was really into guro. he tended to post (non-explicit) guro a lot. Got himself banned more than once for it. From what I saw, it looked a lot like what's in Citadel.

In fairness I did say almost definitely. Whether it is or not doesn't matter all that much, but I will say it doesn't appear to be presented as much more than guro. That is it doesn't seem to be there for any particular reason, as it doesn't really capitalize on the dark tones it presents. That is my bigger issue. It has all the right pieces to emphasize one of the unsung aspects of these games, but just doesn't quite get there and it makes me sad. It comes so frustratingly close but falls short.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 17 August 2020 - 08:01 PM

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#219

View PostNinety-Six, on 17 August 2020 - 08:00 PM, said:

Call it past experience. On a previous forum I used to frequent, there was this one guy who was really into guro. he tended to post (non-explicit) guro a lot. Got himself banned more than once for it. From what I saw, it looked a lot like what's in Citadel.

In fairness I did say almost definitely. Whether it is or not doesn't matter all that much, but I will say it doesn't appear to be presented as much more than guro. That is it doesn't seem to be there for any particular reason, as it doesn't really capitalize on the dark tones it presents. That is my bigger issue. It has all the right pieces to emphasize one of the unsung aspects of these games, but just doesn't quite get there and it makes me sad. It comes so frustratingly close but falls short.

Fair enough. I've seen enough people talk about the works of TV producer Dan Schneider to know there's a feeling you just can't shake off.
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User is offline   Jimmy 

  • Let's go Brandon!

#220

I just watched Icarus Lives' video earlier today, yeah there's definitely an unspoken sexual component to the game that makes it strange to partake in, just like some 80s slasher movies.
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User is offline   Player Lin 

#221

Considering the author publicly set the game is R-18G(grotesque/violent contents), so I would not surprised about non-explicit guro fetish in the game...

Not sure if this count as "cultural difference"? :)

The author also did talked about the background setting of Citadel universe but sadly my Japanese sucks, I can read something but can't sure what actual means so whatever, just pretend I never said that.

EDIT: I did saw some of the game author's tweeter posts said something like "Just please don't care too much about the game setting or weird things, I made that game for fun and they should be fun." But I'm not sure my poor Japanese fails me or not...


This post has been edited by Player Lin: 18 August 2020 - 08:11 AM

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User is online   NightFright 

  • The Truth is in here

#222

Would you guys rank Citadel below or above Project Warlock based on what you have actively played? I played Warlock until the end, but I still don't remember how I managed. It was quite repetitive. Those are the kind of games you can play in sessions of like 60-90 mins max before you have enough of it.
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#223

View PostJimmy, on 17 August 2020 - 09:06 PM, said:

I just watched Icarus Lives' video earlier today, yeah there's definitely an unspoken sexual component to the game that makes it strange to partake in, just like some 80s slasher movies.

Icarus Lives said:

Looking at the lower half of a face, with an unmistakable ahagao tongue sticking out.

Yeah, the lower half in question seems to be cut off perfectly below the nose. I don't know if that's physically possible from shooting someone. I apologize for doubting you at all, Ninety-Six.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#224

Well, as I said, it's not really the fetishistic component itself I'm disappointed by. It can be there or not; it makes no difference to me. I'm just disappointed that an opportunity was missed for the sake of it, rather than having both in harmony. There's really no reason why it couldn't keep the guro fetish appeal but then simultaneously use it to really sharpen the atmosphere and tone in a way that's only ever been lightly brushed upon in the past. Hell if anything, that whole "horrifically corrupted and disfigured waifu" angle may be something that would have a uniquely strong advantage for it.

The fact that it doesn't just makes it sting all the more.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#225

View PostNightFright, on 18 August 2020 - 11:11 AM, said:

Would you guys rank Citadel below or above Project Warlock based on what you have actively played? I played Warlock until the end, but I still don't remember how I managed. It was quite repetitive. Those are the kind of games you can play in sessions of like 60-90 mins max before you have enough of it.


I haven't played Citadel so I can't speak from anything other than what I've seen, no doubt influenced by the opinions expressed during those showcases. I would probably rank it as one of the lower FPSes of this style (both retro-inspired and actually retro).

As for Warlock, I rather enjoyed it actually. Artistically it could be a bit of a mess with its somewhat random color palette (Granted, Wolfenstein had a pretty random palette too, but it was at least consistent throughout. Warlock goes for each episode having a unique look, which is cool and all and I respect it, but there was a lot of clashing colors and it forms sort of a colorful mess in my memory. That's another thing I'll give points towards Citadel for. The aesthetic was a complete whole, for better or worse). I did quite enjoy the combat, though. It could be a bit simplistic but when it got dicy the game started to come alive. The magic spells were mostly useless outside of two of them but focus on the guns and you'll have a fairly good time. Still, it could be a bit easy though. The addition of a one-life hardcore mode was welcome as I'm the weird sort of person that loves that kind of thing.

Though again, take my opinion with a grain of salt. As I said, I haven't played Citadel, and moreover, I actually didn't have much of a choice but to play it in 60-90 minute bursts. I enjoy the game but it is definitely very poorly optimized. I was playing on my friend's computer and that thing got hot.

The music is top-tier at least. I might buy the game for myself before I have the hardware to play it just so that I can download the soundtrack.
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#226

View PostNinety-Six, on 19 August 2020 - 07:53 AM, said:

I Artistically it could be a bit of a mess with its somewhat random color palette (Granted, Wolfenstein had a pretty random palette too, but it was at least consistent throughout. Warlock goes for each episode having a unique look, which is cool and all and I respect it, but there was a lot of clashing colors and it forms sort of a colorful mess in my memory.

I had the impression that Project Warlock is trying to imitate a palette lower than 256 colours, which I personally did not like very much. There are some excellent 32 or 16 colour games out there, and in fact PW looks rather good, but still not enough to evoke any kind of nostalgic feeling in me.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#227

View PostMrFlibble, on 20 August 2020 - 08:43 AM, said:

I had the impression that Project Warlock is trying to imitate a palette lower than 256 colours, which I personally did not like very much. There are some excellent 32 or 16 colour games out there, and in fact PW looks rather good, but still not enough to evoke any kind of nostalgic feeling in me.


I think part of it is the point lights. They are usually really out of place, and clash strongly with the other visuals. Sometimes it works, such as in the antarctic chapter. But usually the lights just clash with everything around them. I think the only exception to this was the Industrial chapter, but the tradeoff was it being 80% gray.
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User is offline   Fauch 

#228

I'm surprised, of all the new retro FPS, it's a pretty average looking one that people are talking about. I could guess it's because of the girls, but at first glance that detail is not obvious, certainly less blatant than your average hentai game. What I noticed is a palette that reminded me of exophobia, another retro FPS that was quite popular on facebook indie groups, so maybe people like blocky FPS with only red and blue colors.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#229

I think another reason why it's getting such attention is that it's probably the first major (agreed upon) letdown.
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User is offline   Fauch 

#230

Interesting. Going to make my game shittier then. It worked for Dusk, David said he tried to make stuff look as bad as possible lol.
I think more letdowns have to be expected, many of the recent demos have quite a way to go before being on the same level as new blood or 3D realms games (Viscerafest being the closest imo), though of course, some of them are early in development. Also some of the more promising ones have no demo yet, as far as I know.
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User is offline   Player Lin 

#231

I never tried Dusk at all, looks nothing I want to try...(unlike Citadel, and I don't care about the so called "letdown")

But still, if more people talking about the game, whatever good or bad then it already succeeded, in some degree.

:)
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User is offline   Sanek 

#232

After a quick look at the whole OSR and boomer shooters thing, I came to conclusion that the whole gaming community who plays the "retro" shooters can be divided into three categories:


1. Guys who played the old shooters but stopped playing time-consuming games in general a long time ago. They're boomers now. They're buying these "retro" shooters right now because it looks like just like the games they played when they were young (it's not) and they adore every single one of these "retro" titles.

2. Young guys who just play it because retro is trendy right now.

3. Guys like us, who play old games since it's release or decades before the whole boomers/retro shooters thing started. Who still make user maps and play the game for what it is, not because it's old or fit into the current trend. I am the part of this category, and I feel that this group is more critical of the new games than the other groups.


I like the idea of retro shooters, but the more new games I see the more I become disgusted with the whole thing. None of these games looks or plays or feels like the games of the 90s. Old games is all about great characters, atmosphere and supberb level layout - not about excessive blood that's covering the screen, hordes of monsters and pixelated mess intstead of a real artwork. The moment I see that the enitre room's covered with blood after you shot a single enemy - I close the tab and never look at the game again.
Perhaps Ion Fury is the only game that's worth playing of this new subgenre (I didn't bought Wrath yet).
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User is offline   Jimmy 

  • Let's go Brandon!

#233

It's marketing and repackaging something that was at one time organic and creative and on the edge of society.

70's punk VS 90's punk
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User is offline   Aristotle Gumball 

  • banned!

#234

Part of the problem is these new titles are being made by one or two people. Only so much time and resources, so your focus usually is directed either at the visuals or gameplay. But even then you're compromising on quality and depth since in the 90s you had several artists and programmers, not just one person for each aspect of the game. Newer engines also make it easier to have flashy visual effects, like big explosions of blood, but content creation is still as time consuming as ever. I figured that we'd get maybe 2-3 truly good products out of this retro craze before it died out.
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User is online   NightFright 

  • The Truth is in here

#235

I think it's because games just used to be more creative and immersive back in the days. With the limited resources available to devs, amazing titles were created.

Anyway, with all those remakes, remasters and what not, one thing is forgotten: You can't bring back the past. I played the shit out of games like Blood 2 or Sin back in the days and if I look at them today, I could never understand how I ever even touched them. Remasters are nice, but in the end it's the same game. You won't feel any more they way you did back then if you play such stuff now.

As with other titles that try to imitate the classics, like Wrath or Graven, it depends on what they are aiming for. Anything not trying to be a 1:1 clone of something that already existed may be interesting. That's also why Iron Fury worked. It's not another Duke3D with beefed engine, even though there are some puns here and there (which are OK).
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User is offline   cybdmn 

#236

View PostSanek, on 09 September 2020 - 11:32 AM, said:

I like the idea of retro shooters, but the more new games I see the more I become disgusted with the whole thing. None of these games looks or plays or feels like the games of the 90s. Old games is all about great characters, atmosphere and supberb level layout - not about excessive blood that's covering the screen, hordes of monsters and pixelated mess intstead of a real artwork. The moment I see that the enitre room's covered with blood after you shot a single enemy - I close the tab and never look at the game again.
Perhaps Ion Fury is the only game that's worth playing of this new subgenre (I didn't bought Wrath yet).



Many of these "retro shooters" don't even play like 90ies games. Often they seem to imitate the gameplay of Serious Sam, which is a 00-arena-shooter, that spawned his own clones like Will Rock or Painkiller.
Oh, and you should consider trying Wrath, it is one of the better ones of these retro shooters.

Graven looks interesting too, hopefully they don't mess it up. When Fred described it as Heretic-Hexen-Something-with-RPG-Anything i thought, that they hopefully don't try to make the game really to what he described. The gameplay video showed some really solid stuff. Something like Heretic II in first person perspective.
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User is offline   oasiz 

  • Dr. Effector

#237

View PostNightFright, on 09 September 2020 - 01:07 PM, said:

I think it's because games just used to be more creative and immersive back in the days. With the limited resources available to devs, amazing titles were created.


What many forget is that back then tech was seen as a limitation.
Developers would have a vision and it would be crammed in to the limitations of the system, engine and staff output.
It was more about "How can we do this", programming and games were the canvas just like movies and music are.
Listening to old interviews you will find out that many good games which people mimic always started with an ambitious ideas that might even flat out ignore what a video game should or should not be, this resulted in some hit & miss solutions, but there is a reason why Duke3D was groundbreaking compared to all the other doom clones you had, it didn't have to be doom, just learn what works and what doesn't from it.

I feel many retro games get too caught on trying to directly cherry pick features to replicate from products of the past instead of augmenting their own stuff with them.
This results in many picks being low hanging fruits and it's like the tiresome 80s "synthwave" stuff where people picked few cliches and doubled down on it, kinda saying that 80s music was all about darker purple neon gridline patterns and thick sawtooth.

Another problem with cherrypicks is that the execution is usually just lazy, not respecting why something looked or sounded a certain way, It's like those VHS filter things that simply just apply unfocus and call it a day when there are a ton of more things under the hood that result in a quite different effect than you'd get with that.
They come off as just quick win crowdpleaser exploitation when not done properly.
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User is offline   ck3D 

#238

View Postoasiz, on 10 September 2020 - 03:14 AM, said:

What many forget is that back then tech was seen as a limitation.
Developers would have a vision and it would be crammed in to the limitations of the system, engine and staff output.
It was more about "How can we do this", programming and games were the canvas just like movies and music are.
Listening to old interviews you will find out that many good games which people mimic always started with an ambitious ideas that might even flat out ignore what a video game should or should not be, this resulted in some hit & miss solutions, but there is a reason why Duke3D was groundbreaking compared to all the other doom clones you had, it didn't have to be doom, just learn what works and what doesn't from it.

I feel many retro games get too caught on trying to directly cherry pick features to replicate from products of the past instead of augmenting their own stuff with them.
This results in many picks being low hanging fruits and it's like the tiresome 80s "synthwave" stuff where people picked few cliches and doubled down on it, kinda saying that 80s music was all about darker purple neon gridline patterns and thick sawtooth.

Another problem with cherrypicks is that the execution is usually just lazy, not respecting why something looked or sounded a certain way, It's like those VHS filter things that simply just apply unfocus and call it a day when there are a ton of more things under the hood that result in a quite different effect than you'd get with that.
They come off as just quick win crowdpleaser exploitation when not done properly.


This is one of the best posts I've ever read on here, I'm with this 100%. Applies to more than just video games too, like Jimmy pointed out earlier with music, it's a general art thing. Fashion notoriously comes in twenty-year cycles due to each generation rediscovering models of the past, but more often than not what you get out of those re-hashes is reinterpretation based on form and not substance (as more often than not those models grew old and tired for a reason in the first place, staying fixated when society naturally evolved past them). Generally speaking too, I feel like it's a lot more primary - and thus naturally tempting for people - to observe what's been done by others and try and repeat what worked there and then (like some derivation of survival instinct triggered by our mirror neurons), occasionally jettisoning context out of the equation, than it is to actually pause to embrace your visions and use your imagination to come up with something that's at least interesting because it's unique. Probably has to do with the individual's ability to handle their demons - some will just endure the pain, some will choose to act like a prism and convert it into beautiful things.

This post has been edited by ck3D: 10 September 2020 - 04:15 AM

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User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#239

Just by virtue of the cherry-picking existing at all though, it becomes a new style or a new genre. Perhaps the problem is just in the labelling of "80s Synthwave" or "Retro-style Shooter". I see it as just "you know, I really liked this one aspect/these few aspects of that genre/era/style and I would like to focus and capitalize on them" and then it becomes popular because people agree. You're on to something. This is how music evolved from jazz, to blues, to rock, to heavy metal, to djent and beyond. Some people might believe it is retro because of the labelling but that's not the case. It's kind of a hodge-podge/mish-mash/frankenstein of old and new. The labelling convention is really the only issue because it's not really authentic and it's misleading for people who don't know any better or who weren't there in the past or for people who just don't remember. It's new with a little bit of old guiding the outline. I think the unfortunate labelling is worth the content and the popularity, though. We all get to enjoy it for that reason.

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 10 September 2020 - 04:47 AM

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User is offline   ck3D 

#240

Yes totally, this type of constant reinterpretation of everything humans have ever materialized is key to cultural evolution too, in a sense every civilization with its own unique codes will also end up repeating their own patterns that they have developed and gradually stop just relying on pure imagination as more and more of those patterns turn out to be successful, subject is complex. The updating of old fashions to more current realities is a pretty fascinating concept in general, but in a way it's also representative of new generations picking up their ancestors' clues gathered by their own exploration of the world, and expanding upon (or just exploiting) what they perceive as still valid in them. I don't criticize it, it's just funny how we're wired. Again I'm pretty tempted to naively assume it's a derivation of survival instinct in a sophisticated society.

This post has been edited by ck3D: 10 September 2020 - 05:07 AM

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