What single player FPS campaign are you playing?

[marurun]

So, I took a brief break from Doom and decided to go back and resume Shadow Warrior. Still impressed with how Flying Hog brought that game back to life.

[MrPopo]

Is Heretic II worthwhile? I can't bring myself to care for Heretic, it's just Doom leftovers.

Never played Hexen though, which I think is weirder and more melee based or something.

Hexen is a lot of fun and very different from the Doom experience (whereas Heretic was a Doom reskin with some fun items). You pick one of three characters which determines your movement speed, toughness, and weapon selection. Every character gets four weapons. The first is your infinite ammo weapon; I don't call it an emergency weapon because you'll frequently have to pull them out to conserve ammo. The second uses blue mana, the third uses green mana (and is generally stronger), and the fourth is your ultimate weapon which uses both. The warrior doesn't even get a ranged weapon until his third weapon. The mage is the only one who has a ranged weapon as his infinite ammo weapon (but his blue is weird to compensate).

The game is also hub based, so there's a lot of going between levels to flip switches and find keys to eventually open your way up to the end of the hub (and a boss fight in every one after the first).

[Gunstar Green]

Yeah, I found Hexen to be a little more engrossing than Heretic. More thought was put into making it a unique game than just slapping a fantasy mod onto Doom.

[Ack]

I actually really love Heretic...

[MrPopo]

Heretic's fun, but I don't think it's out of line to call it reskinned Doom. The biggest addition is the item system.

[Exhuminator]

Heretic's fun, but I don't think it's out of line to call it reskinned Doom. The biggest addition is the item system.

Inventory was nice, but the biggest addition was the ability to look up and down. Both of these had already been done before in Ultima Underworld tbh. However, the inclusion of gibs when you died certain ways was new.

IIRC I beat all the Hexen games years ago. I think I beat them all, kind of hard to remember now. Oh but I bet I'm the only person here who's played these Heretic / Hexen ripoffs:

You're not missing anything.

[Gunstar Green]

I actually really love Heretic...

I don't dislike Heretic. Being fantasy Doom isn't a bad thing. Hexen just distinguished itself a little more.

[Xeogred]

I'm on E2M5 on Quake 1 and I think it's finally clicked. Definitely digging it, but it feels like I can only play short sessions because it's pretty hard to me. I'm playing on whatever the middle difficulty is. It's 10x more twitchy than Unreal for sure, I guess it's comparable to Doom's frantic style but it being true 3D makes it completely different.

I can't get a handle on the chainsaw/grenade launcher guys and it feels like pure luck taking down those white lightning monster things. Some might think this is crazy but I honestly wonder if I could do a little better with a controller, lol. I have Xpadder so maybe I'll try making a profile for it.

I really dig the aesthetics a lot though. This, Jedi Knight, and Thief 1 have such a cool and strange look with the low res textures. It's very cool. We need a Doom 4 demake in this style.

Just like Doom, I find myself liking the sci-fi stages more but they seem to be the minority, like Hell usually making up a lot of levels in Doom WADs.

It's weird how dramatic the change is with Quake 2 and the sequels, with the cyborg Strogg stuff going on. Quake 1 feels way different and weirder in an awesome way.

[MrPopo]

The only reason Quake 2 was Quake 2 is that the name they wanted to use was determined late in the process to already be taken. But the atmosphere seems to have resonated with people more than Quake's so that's why it got a couple of other games in the same universe (Q4 and Enemy Territory).

The blue lightning guys from Quake are total dicks. The general solution is to use your most murdertastic weapon ASAP. If you get really lucky you will face on in an arena where you can keep their shots out of line of sight and spam grenades at them.

[Gunstar Green]

I can't get a handle on the chainsaw/grenade launcher guys and it feels like pure luck taking down those white lightning monster things.

The trick for dealing with the Ogres is to get into Melee range then back off when they wind up with the chainsaw. Don't go too far or they'll pop you with grenades. You've kind of got to play Yo-Yo with them, hopping in and out of melee range so they'll chainsaw thin air until they die.

The Shamblers are bastards. Spray and pray.

Quake and Doom have a slightly different ethos when it comes to enemy design. Doom will throw a crap load of enemies at you that are pretty easy to wipe out, where as Quake will throw a few enemies at you who are bullet sponges with powerful attacks that you have to dance with for a while. I always felt like Quake was the harder game because of this.