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Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

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Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#71

Post by Dirlewanger »

odessacubbage wrote: post #48
TtEdN7jwT wrote: post #18

What I like about 90s shooters is how little fuss there is to get to the action. Doom, you launch it and can be killing things within 15 seconds. With modern shooters, it loading, loading, game selection, lobby, connecting, loading, cutscene, weapon selection, tutorial, realizing you need to grind to get better weapons, pay for better weapons, mission objectives, notified there's an update, enter your credentials, re…

this is one of the main things drew me into fighting games. the best of everything they have to offer is concentrated into a 90 second round. you don't have to sit through 10 minute corridor sequences or grind to the endgame to actually do something cool, you can play a first to five over your lunch break and walk away completely satisfied with the experience. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLHOEfsWmGM

Since the mid 2000s when all the suits who've never played a video game in their lives started taking over AAA game companies, they've had this weird obsession to make games as "cinematic" as they can. To match movies as much as they can. Now that I think about it, it's probably an inferiority complex (don't really know why either since video games have been surpassing movies in raw sales for years now). Hopefully with the success of Doom 2016, we'll continue to see reinvigorated focus on what mamakesde video games so great in the first place: the game play.

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#72

Post by mecha_love »

fps_doug wrote: post #2

Just the other day I was wondering whether these old games were just so much fun because I was much younger and it was simply something new and exciting to me, or whether there's something else to it. You know, sometimes less is more, if the game world is just about detailed enough that you can make out what things are supposed to be, you have to let the creative part of your brain do much more work to fill in the bl…

I think how the game plays is very important. Counter Strike 1.6, Minecraft, Wolfenstein etc. These games had a lot to offer as an experience, almost an arcadeish feeling. With CS:GO or the new COD games there is just so much to take in it just takes away the arcade feeling and makes it more of a movie experience rather than a game

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#73

Post by klmadfejno »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #68
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried Unreal Editor a few years ago. The engine is really impressive, there's a ton of assets, high res textures, it's easy to create a natural looking terrain, but then bringing it to life is hard work and takes skills. Everything I built looked clunky, out of place, lacked details, lighting seemed off, it was rubbish. Minecraft fixes this problem. Everyone can build good looking stuff. A lot of this is probably…

> I don't care much about high quality graphics, but I don't think I agree with your hypotheses about lower quality being better for imagination though. It's just another sort of uncanny valley. Hmh, not sure. I agree on lighting being very important, but RTX-Quake looked just weird too. But imagination probably plays a role in games like doom where enemies are barely more than a couple pixels. It's like horror movie…

I'm only watching the trailer but I think RTX Quake looks pretty good with the glaring exception of big polygonal visual effects. The explosions in particular don't work.

Certainly ray traced lighting isn't going to be good if the logic of what makes, blocks, and transparently passes light doesn't look good.

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#74

Post by Loughla »

dx87 wrote: post #49
b0rsuk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hypothesis is that many game designers have actually forgotten what makes a game fun. Games have become a cargo cult of sorts. Games have character levels, level ups and skill trees but why exactly? Does it make Project Warlock more fun? Certain game traits are replicated without thought. In my opinion games won't "grow up" as a medium if game designers let others shame them into implementing stuff that doesn't ma…

I don't think it's cargo culting, as much as it's a generation of gamers who were raised with the expectation of a "progression system". I remember back when EA was ridiculed for their statement about "giving a players a sense of pride and accomplishment" regarding requiring a long grind (or big payment) to unlock the most powerful characters in a Star Wars game. I've seen people beg developers to give them something…

>I think developers know how to make fun games, but I don't think most players want fun games because they've been conditioned to want addiction simulators with meaningless rewards.

I have spent the last two or three years trying to find a fun android and/or console game (outside of some switch games), and I've never been able to put my finger on why the games in the app store, and many, many PC games are just not fun. But this is it.

They're not fun, they're a targeted level up system designed to be just hard enough to keep you from breezing through (until you die two or three times and can watch an ad to get a bigger gun), with level progression just slow enough to make you want to pay for experience.

They're not fun. Commander Keen and Leisure Suit Larry and Doom and Deathtrack and Hexen and The Lost Vikings and System Shock 2 and those kind of games were fun. I thought it might just be because I'm 35-45 years old and am being very 'get off my lawn' about it.

But that's not it. Those games were designed to sell because they were fun. New games, especially mobile games, are designed to be free and addicting enough to get you to spend real money.

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#75

Post by klmadfejno »

pizza234 wrote: post #20
stared wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there is a lack of information, our imagination works. It is taken to the extreme with roguelikes (with ASCII graphics) such as ADOM. Even now, Jupiter Hell (the successor of DoomRL) is less attractive for me because of its polished graphics. But I think that there is another aspect - polishing gameplay & pace. Contemporary shooters often have too many cutscenes, too many things to add to the story (and equipmen…

Which games do you use as reference for "Contemporary shooters", and did you actually play them? A pattern I see each time there are discussions about games, is to compare games in the past, actually played, with contemporary games, as observed in reviews or youtube videos (which, additionally, biases towards AAA-games, since they have more coverage). To answer the parent: > Just the other day I was wondering whether…

>Which games do you use as reference for "Contemporary shooters", and did you actually play them?

> A pattern I see each time there are discussions about games, is to compare games in the past, actually played, with contemporary games, as observed in reviews or youtube videos (which, additionally, biases towards AAA-games, since they have more coverage).

+1 to that. A lot of AAA games are designed with every moment being a handcrafted experience. That is, some sort of scripted thing is happening that couldn't happen organically by normal mechanics. Older AAA titles tended to just produce a solid set of mechanics and just let them speak for themselves.

But there's plenty of good stuff that still leans into that approach.

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#76

Post by Shared404 »

torginus wrote: post #45
fps_doug wrote: post #2

Just the other day I was wondering whether these old games were just so much fun because I was much younger and it was simply something new and exciting to me, or whether there's something else to it. You know, sometimes less is more, if the game world is just about detailed enough that you can make out what things are supposed to be, you have to let the creative part of your brain do much more work to fill in the bl…

I have so much to write on this, sorry if it comes off as incoherent rambling. The gist of it is I think the 90s really were a special time in computer gaming, and it's not just nostalgia you're feeling. I'll try to list what came to mind. - Just like the 60s-70s in music, product people had no concept of what a marketable game looked like, and were willing to fund much more riskier ideas. - Video game team sizes and…

> This killed of multiple PC genres on console, the RTS most prominent among them.

I don't know. I'm not big into RTS games, but one of my favorite XB360 games was Supreme Commander 2, which definitely falls under RTS.

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#77

Post by [deleted] »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #71
odessacubbage wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is one of the main things drew me into fighting games. the best of everything they have to offer is concentrated into a 90 second round. you don't have to sit through 10 minute corridor sequences or grind to the endgame to actually do something cool, you can play a first to five over your lunch break and walk away completely satisfied with the experience. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLHOEfsWmGM

Since the mid 2000s when all the suits who've never played a video game in their lives started taking over AAA game companies, they've had this weird obsession to make games as "cinematic" as they can. To match movies as much as they can. Now that I think about it, it's probably an inferiority complex (don't really know why either since video games have been surpassing movies in raw sales for years now). Hopefully wi…

[deleted]

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#78

Post by leetcrew »

mecha_love wrote: post #72
fps_doug wrote: post #2

Just the other day I was wondering whether these old games were just so much fun because I was much younger and it was simply something new and exciting to me, or whether there's something else to it. You know, sometimes less is more, if the game world is just about detailed enough that you can make out what things are supposed to be, you have to let the creative part of your brain do much more work to fill in the bl…

I think how the game plays is very important. Counter Strike 1.6, Minecraft, Wolfenstein etc. These games had a lot to offer as an experience, almost an arcadeish feeling. With CS:GO or the new COD games there is just so much to take in it just takes away the arcade feeling and makes it more of a movie experience rather than a game

whenever I go back and play 1.6, I'm always amazed at how crisp and direct the controls feel. it's hard to describe the feeling precisely, but modern fps games (even csgo to an extent) just seem clunky in comparison. it's almost like the feeling you get when you forget to turn off vsync. not sure if this is just my nostalgia kicking in or if there's a technical reason for this.

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#79

Post by Shared404 »

everdrive wrote: post #59
me_me_me wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doom scary creepy game? People flipped out when Doom 3 ended up being low light horror game and not a fast paced shooter. Heck the lore of the Doom is that the protagonist is the 'Doom of demonkind'. Its the game where you are not locked in room with demons but they are locked in room with you. > you're an unkillable demigod that's basically dunking on armies of demons That is the 100% the core idea of Doom lore. Tld…

If you were a child in the 90s, Doom was very scary. I'm not sure if a modern child could be scared by it. >That is the 100% the core idea of Doom lore. That was created specifically in 2016 Doom. Prior to that, Doom didn't really have much of a story.

> I'm not sure if a modern child could be scared by it.

I grew up on N64/Gamecube/XB360, and can confirm that Doom was not scary the first time I played it (about 10 years old).

Re: Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

#80

Post by leetcrew »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking specifically about FPS games, after the heyday of games like Quake and Unreal, a new generation of FPS games came up, iirc starting with Half-Life (focusing more on story, platforming than shooting), then moving on to Medal of Honor and Call of Duty (realistic shooters); the more 'arcade' shooters fell out of grace, and probably more when other game categories became big in e-sports. But, then Id started to…

> It's a weird one because the gameplay of that one seems to be focused on kiting. Kiting works artistically with rocket launchers! From the older days, it's one of the big reasons teenage me preferred Unreal Tournament over Quake III Arena. In the former, the rockets had a nice exhaust plume and were slow enough that if you were strafing while shooting, you got to see a nice view of a missile in flight[0]. In Q3A, t…

did you play tribes back in the day? spinfusor + skiing would definitely have suited your aesthetic.
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