What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
-
noiseredux
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 38148
- Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:09 pm
- Contact:
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
Started playing Half-Life 2 again from the beginning on pc this time. Forgot just how awesome it is.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
Holds up so well.noiseredux wrote:Started playing Half-Life 2 again from the beginning on pc this time. Forgot just how awesome it is.
I am on the last chapter of Killzone Shadowfall, man it is a bit of a slog.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
I honestly haven't heard much talk about this one... was it just not up to par with 2-3 or something?emwearz wrote:Holds up so well.noiseredux wrote:Started playing Half-Life 2 again from the beginning on pc this time. Forgot just how awesome it is.
I am on the last chapter of Killzone Shadowfall, man it is a bit of a slog.
Not my favorite games by a long shot, but those two were definitely solid I thought.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
Nah it is leaps and bounds behind 2.
It is all just so 'generic' and boring. It is pretty and that is about all.
It is all just so 'generic' and boring. It is pretty and that is about all.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
Guess I'll just stick with Wolfenstein once I get a PS4.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
I've been playing a lot of Terra Nova lately. This game is definitely a lost classic. It was made by Looking Glass and came out after System Shock, so there's still a lot of influences UI-wise from SS.
The game is a squad-based FPS that's heavily influenced by Starship Troopers (the novel). You do your missions inside a battle suit that supplies all your information, and you have things like jump jets that can be used to leap over walls and buildings. One MFD lets you cycle between weapons, check your detailed status, launch a drone for scouting, or activate a supplementary suit function (which can be selected at loadout time). The other MFD is for ordering your squad and checking on their status. You get a small map of the area that can be expanded into your full view, and you can also switch all the MFDs into cameras for a 360 degree view around you. Your main view can be zoomed in and out and has night vision available.
Control-wise you'll definitely notice the SS influence; your movement keys are WADX for forward/backward/turn, ZC for strafe, S is walk forward (instead of run), RFV are look up/down/reset. Your mouse is used exclusively for manipulating suit functions, right click to target buildings or enemies, and left click to fire at your cursor. When you target you get some limited auto aim; you still have to have your cursor in the vicinity of your target. Your suit and enemy infantry have regenerating armor that protect your health. This is a very slow regeneration, not the modern style of "immediately go to full after a few seconds of not being hit), and it's based on damage coming from the front/back/left/right.
Your squad is picked at the beginning of a mission, and your squadmates have a variety of specializations. Some of these specializations give them special equipment, such as demolitions and repair. Everyone but weapons specialization get special commands. The game encourages you to switch up your squadmates through a randomization system where people in your squad might already be out on a different mission when you're setting things up.
There's a decent variety in the missions. I've done stealth recon, smash a base, convey defend/capture, sweep and clear, and escape. A few missions you'll end up failing for story reasons, but you never see it coming.
The game also uses a lot of live action cutscenes to move the story forward.
It's an old DOS game, so you'll need to set up Dosbox to run it, but you don't need to stress about figuring out the settings; I snagged a random config I had from another game for it.
The game is a squad-based FPS that's heavily influenced by Starship Troopers (the novel). You do your missions inside a battle suit that supplies all your information, and you have things like jump jets that can be used to leap over walls and buildings. One MFD lets you cycle between weapons, check your detailed status, launch a drone for scouting, or activate a supplementary suit function (which can be selected at loadout time). The other MFD is for ordering your squad and checking on their status. You get a small map of the area that can be expanded into your full view, and you can also switch all the MFDs into cameras for a 360 degree view around you. Your main view can be zoomed in and out and has night vision available.
Control-wise you'll definitely notice the SS influence; your movement keys are WADX for forward/backward/turn, ZC for strafe, S is walk forward (instead of run), RFV are look up/down/reset. Your mouse is used exclusively for manipulating suit functions, right click to target buildings or enemies, and left click to fire at your cursor. When you target you get some limited auto aim; you still have to have your cursor in the vicinity of your target. Your suit and enemy infantry have regenerating armor that protect your health. This is a very slow regeneration, not the modern style of "immediately go to full after a few seconds of not being hit), and it's based on damage coming from the front/back/left/right.
Your squad is picked at the beginning of a mission, and your squadmates have a variety of specializations. Some of these specializations give them special equipment, such as demolitions and repair. Everyone but weapons specialization get special commands. The game encourages you to switch up your squadmates through a randomization system where people in your squad might already be out on a different mission when you're setting things up.
There's a decent variety in the missions. I've done stealth recon, smash a base, convey defend/capture, sweep and clear, and escape. A few missions you'll end up failing for story reasons, but you never see it coming.
The game also uses a lot of live action cutscenes to move the story forward.
It's an old DOS game, so you'll need to set up Dosbox to run it, but you don't need to stress about figuring out the settings; I snagged a random config I had from another game for it.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
You're never alone, Popo. Not in this squad.
Kind of reminds me of games like Ghen War or Uprising X.
Kind of reminds me of games like Ghen War or Uprising X.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
More FPS to add to the pile I'll eventually get to, but for $5 each at Goodwill and boxed I couldn't pass them up.
Xeogred wrote:The obvious answer is that it's time for the Dreamcast 2.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
I've also been playing more System Shock lately (and a quick dip into System Shock 2). System Shock is a mix of really well executed ideas and the remnants of early FPS design that bring it down. And the control scheme is a mess, though that's easily fixed with the mouselook mod; it turns it into something like System Shock 2's interface, which works.
The usage of the crew logs to move the story and objectives forward is superb. You get very minimal objectives directed at you: hey, SHODAN is going crazy, you should probably do something about it. The rest come organically as you pick up the logs. First I find out that SHODAN is chargin her lazer, then I discover it could be stopped if I can bring up the shields and turn off the safety locks, and finally I find out how to bring up the shields. It feels like I'm discovering how to go forward, rather than being told. It's also all interspersed with a bunch of logs that either give hints about enemies, describe caches of equipment, or just add fluff to the universe.
The cyberspace is in that category of neat idea but falls down completely in execution. The decision to use mostly wireframes for the walls is only slightly less terrible than Red Alarm on the Virtual Boy only because there are multiple colors, so sometimes you can figure out wall vs. hole.
The big thing that really hurts the game is the combat. Everything has hitscan weaponry and very high reflexes, while your weapons tend to the survival horror end of implementation, so usually it takes several shots to kill enemies, not to mention needing to worry about ammo concerns. Unlike in Doom there isn't really any room to maneuver around, so you can't even try to dodge their aim like you can in Doom. And this is before devs had learned to put in random jitter for enemies with hitscan weapons so that you aren't just raped by a perfect computer. This ends up making for a lot of very plodding exploration, as you can very easily lose a lot of health very quickly. The only thing that mitigates this is if you can get the regeneration bay up and running so that you can grind your way through some of the tougher enemies.
Oh, and one final complaint about the combat: regenerating mobs. They suck down your ammo and can suck down your health on later decks because of the aforementioned unforgiving combat.
From my brief touch into System Shock 2 it was interesting to see how things have changed for the better and which have carried on or got worse. The interface is much better, as I mentioned. But now instead of using logs to figure out your objectives you have the omnipresent voice in your head. It's a bit of a disappointment after the super immersion of System Shock. And the combat so far seems to be plagued with the same problems; turrets react extremely quickly and take off tons of health, while cameras are unforgiving in their detection. If you don't see a camera and take it out immediately you'll have an alarm fire and call in a ton of mobs to try and whittle you down.
The usage of the crew logs to move the story and objectives forward is superb. You get very minimal objectives directed at you: hey, SHODAN is going crazy, you should probably do something about it. The rest come organically as you pick up the logs. First I find out that SHODAN is chargin her lazer, then I discover it could be stopped if I can bring up the shields and turn off the safety locks, and finally I find out how to bring up the shields. It feels like I'm discovering how to go forward, rather than being told. It's also all interspersed with a bunch of logs that either give hints about enemies, describe caches of equipment, or just add fluff to the universe.
The cyberspace is in that category of neat idea but falls down completely in execution. The decision to use mostly wireframes for the walls is only slightly less terrible than Red Alarm on the Virtual Boy only because there are multiple colors, so sometimes you can figure out wall vs. hole.
The big thing that really hurts the game is the combat. Everything has hitscan weaponry and very high reflexes, while your weapons tend to the survival horror end of implementation, so usually it takes several shots to kill enemies, not to mention needing to worry about ammo concerns. Unlike in Doom there isn't really any room to maneuver around, so you can't even try to dodge their aim like you can in Doom. And this is before devs had learned to put in random jitter for enemies with hitscan weapons so that you aren't just raped by a perfect computer. This ends up making for a lot of very plodding exploration, as you can very easily lose a lot of health very quickly. The only thing that mitigates this is if you can get the regeneration bay up and running so that you can grind your way through some of the tougher enemies.
Oh, and one final complaint about the combat: regenerating mobs. They suck down your ammo and can suck down your health on later decks because of the aforementioned unforgiving combat.
From my brief touch into System Shock 2 it was interesting to see how things have changed for the better and which have carried on or got worse. The interface is much better, as I mentioned. But now instead of using logs to figure out your objectives you have the omnipresent voice in your head. It's a bit of a disappointment after the super immersion of System Shock. And the combat so far seems to be plagued with the same problems; turrets react extremely quickly and take off tons of health, while cameras are unforgiving in their detection. If you don't see a camera and take it out immediately you'll have an alarm fire and call in a ton of mobs to try and whittle you down.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
Re: What single player FPS campaign are you playing?
I'm up to deck 5 in System Shock. The game has been much more generous with giving me early access to healing bays, so I don't have to worry about health conservation and worrying about bullshit hitscan enemies so much. I also have snagged the laser rapier, and I think this is going to serve me for the rest of the game. It does an impressive level of damage, and it works well in the tight confines of the station. The only times I've had to switch to a gun has been areas where enemies sit on a ledge out of reach.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.