unpopular retro opinions

[SealSpace]

Duke Nukem may be the most iconic Apogee/3D Realms game (Duke 3D at least) and character, but I think he's kinda overrated. He's good and cool, but not exactly the best.

 

Blake Stone, Rise of the Triad, and Shadow Warrior are all way better and more awesome games and characters from Apogee/3D Realms than Duke Nukem 3D and those three together represent the absolute best and greatest peak of what Apogee/3D Realms has to offer, in terms of FPS games at least. 

 

Especially Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and Planet Strike (the latter even moreso). 

 

Tl;dr: Blake Stone, RoTT, and Shadow Warrior are all better games and characters than Duke Nukem.

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by SealSpace

[heliumlamb]

nintendo's best consoles are STILL their 8-bit ones (the ones that have either a 6502 or z80 in there)

[yakfak]

with the exception that you can't play strange journey or soul hackers on the nes giggle

[heliumlamb]

Just now, yakfak said:

with the exception that you can't play strange journey or soul hackers on the nes giggle

you can't play bangai-o spirits on it as well!
 

i genuinely forgot that the DS even exists, and that i have had a copy of strange journey. ninty's always been strong when it comes to handhelds, but the DMG-01 is something else, 80ish hr battery life with the sound off (in exchange for the screen).

the switch however? like 75% of my library is arcade ports

[SealSpace]

Forgot to add that I also think Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold/Planet Strike, Rise of the Triad: Dark War/Extreme RoTT, and Shadow Warrior (classic, with or without expansion packs) are not only all much more fun and better games than Duke Nukem 3D, but also seem way cooler and more awesome than possibly the entire Duke Nukem franchise itself combined overall. 

 

And those three games deserve to have a much deeper and more expanded stories and lore than Duke 3D and all of his franchise's games. Especially Blake Stone. 

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by SealSpace

[taufan99]

34 minutes ago, SealSpace said:

And those three games deserve to have a much deeper and more expanded stories and lore than Duke 3D and all of his franchise's games.

Pretty sure Shadow Warrior got rebooted in 2013 and has since received quite some lore, with three main games as of this year.

[PsychEyeball]

42 minutes ago, SealSpace said:

Forgot to add that I also think Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold/Planet Strike, Rise of the Triad: Dark War/Extreme RoTT, and Shadow Warrior (classic, with or without expansion packs) are not only all much more fun and better games than Duke Nukem 3D, but also seem way cooler and more awesome than possibly the entire Duke Nukem franchise itself combined overall. 

 

And those three games deserve to have a much deeper and more expanded stories and lore than Duke 3D and all of his franchise's games. Especially Blake Stone. 

 

Rise of the Triad and Blake Stone are fine games, but I feel they suffer a bit from Wolfenstein-itis, aka they have way too many levels and not enough variety in the gameplay to warrant the high level count. But then again, the Wolfenstein 3D engine is mostly to blame for this, there's only so many good possible permutations of tiles and objects you can have in these games.

 

Shadow Warrior 1997 is just plain weird for me. I can't say I was a huge fan of Lo Wang and the game's balance was really wacky. I started having a much better time in it when I stopped trying to be a ninja and just blew up everything with explosives. I recognize the game is amazing on a technical level for a Build engine, but I still enjoy Duke's environments more. Despite the primitive tech, Duke feels like it had the most believable world (as long as you discard the wackiness of levels like Bank Roll).

 

But I'll give you credit for one thing. Duke 3D's gameplay feels very sluggish nowadays and has not aged the best. My favorite Build engine game will always remain Blood. 

[sincity2100]

I have a Hot Take

 

I think that Pepsi Man is a Great Game, it had an Original Concept, Decent Music and Graphic, really cool Gameplay, WatchMojo just put this game into the list of worst PS1 Games because WatchMojo gets their facts wrong at a lot of times..

[DannyMan]

Had the development of HacX 2: 3D continued, it would share the same fate of Duke Nukem Forever like poor reception.

[SealSpace]

1 hour ago, taufan99 said:

Pretty sure Shadow Warrior got rebooted in 2013 and has since received quite some lore, with three main games as of this year.

But not Blake Stone. 

 

Whom I care about the most out of the three. Blake Stone is def the most underrated of the three games by far as well.

Blake Stone really deserves to showcase more stories and expand its setting and lore. 

Edited December 21, 2022 by SealSpace

[SealSpace]

2 hours ago, PsychEyeball said:

Rise of the Triad and Blake Stone are fine games, but I feel they suffer a bit from Wolfenstein-itis, aka they have way too many levels and not enough variety in the gameplay to warrant the high level count. But then again, the Wolfenstein 3D engine is mostly to blame for this, there's only so many good possible permutations of tiles and objects you can have in these games.

 

Shadow Warrior 1997 is just plain weird for me. I can't say I was a huge fan of Lo Wang and the game's balance was really wacky. I started having a much better time in it when I stopped trying to be a ninja and just blew up everything with explosives. I recognize the game is amazing on a technical level for a Build engine, but I still enjoy Duke's environments more. Despite the primitive tech, Duke feels like it had the most believable world (as long as you discard the wackiness of levels like Bank Roll).

 

But I'll give you credit for one thing. Duke 3D's gameplay feels very sluggish nowadays and has not aged the best. My favorite Build engine game will always remain Blood. 

Another reason I said I like those three games better is because I enjoy their story and characters and the lore surrounding them more than anything from Duke. And I honestly find Blake, IP Freely and the HUNT gang, and Lo Wang to all be more fascinating and interesting characters than Duke. From whatever little I've played, seen, and heard of Duke's content, I think Duke gets a bit too more exposure and saturation, especially compared to other Apogee/3D Realms heroes and characters. 

 

Duke 3D is pretty decent and can be fun and engaging to play through for the first time, but gets a bit stale and repetitive after a while. 

 

Aliens of Gold should have had a bit more variety in gameplay to compliment its high map count, yes. But I still find its spritework, environments, and art/aesthetic in general to be a lot more awesome, colorful, vibrant, and arguably diverse and impressive in some aspects than Wolf3d and Duke Nukem 3D's. I mean for its credit, both AoG (and C7) have had more innovative features and modifications to the vanilla engine of Wolf3d and SoD themselves. And were a lot more creative and a bit more complex than Wolf3d and SoD too. 

 

Planet Strike should have had more maps (and a bit more varied ones too), but what would have made that game at least somewhere close to truly perfect in my opinion would be a bit more diverse regular enemy variety with more diverse attack and behavior (like a completely invisible enemy that's only visible when it attacks you or is hit or dead like C7's Enirams), one more greater-scope final boss, one more ultimate weapon (akin to Corridor 7's Alien Disintegrator, but still different enough to stand out or at least introduce a special and more weaponized version of the Fission Detonator to instantly clear out rooms of enemies upon its explosion, especially ones that never stop respawning, would have been more ideal against groups of High Energy Plasma Aliens in AoG), and actually gone the way of Corridor 7 by actually implementing animdefs (animated wall textures) either via color cycling or more full-blown animations, especially with more surreal and alien styles like what C7 did in the later alien-converted maps (same for Aliens of Gold) and several other features like armor, transparent walls (like glass windows), and multiple ammo types. And a great deal more expanded lore. Something they could all easily put as brand new content in a updated remaster or as a stand-alone add-on or expansion pack.

 

Oh and for the record as I already stated multiple posts ago, I still unironically think Corridor 7 itself (both the Floppy and CD versions) is a much more fun and enjoyable game to play through over and over than Duke Nukem 3D and has way better music/soundtrack too. 

Edited December 21, 2022 by SealSpace
Added (Same for Aliens of God) for the C7 animdefs portion of my post... and meant to say "I mean for its credit, both AoG (and C7)" instead "it means for its credit, both AoG and C7" and added "and impressive" next to "arguably diverse", etc.

[heliumlamb]

the best shooting game(s) for sega's NAOMI was(were) not devloped by treasure

[SealSpace]

Also 

On 12/21/2022 at 1:17 PM, PsychEyeball said:

Rise of the Triad and Blake Stone are fine games, but I feel they suffer a bit from Wolfenstein-itis, aka they have way too many levels and not enough variety in the gameplay to warrant the high level count. But then again, the Wolfenstein 3D engine is mostly to blame for this, there's only so many good possible permutations of tiles and objects you can have in these games.

 

Shadow Warrior 1997 is just plain weird for me. I can't say I was a huge fan of Lo Wang and the game's balance was really wacky. I started having a much better time in it when I stopped trying to be a ninja and just blew up everything with explosives. I recognize the game is amazing on a technical level for a Build engine, but I still enjoy Duke's environments more. Despite the primitive tech, Duke feels like it had the most believable world (as long as you discard the wackiness of levels like Bank Roll).

 

But I'll give you credit for one thing. Duke 3D's gameplay feels very sluggish nowadays and has not aged the best. My favorite Build engine game will always remain Blood. 

Also Blood is much

better than Duke 3D, but I think that game is also a tad overrated too.

 

Shadow Warrior is the better and best Build engine game. 

Edited December 23, 2022 by SealSpace

[Rudolph]

Die Hard on the NES is actually a good game. Flawed for sure, but vastly superior to most video games based on popular movies.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Rudolph

[heliumlamb]

On 12/21/2022 at 3:53 PM, heliumlamb said:

the best shooting game(s) for sega's NAOMI was(were) not devloped by treasure

related: as far as Shooting Games go, dimahoo did the "color switching" mechanic like 2000x better

[Cynical]

On 12/21/2022 at 3:53 PM, heliumlamb said:

the best shooting game(s) for sega's NAOMI was(were) not devloped by treasure

Border Down!!!  <3 <3 <3

[Wyrmwood]

On 12/21/2022 at 11:38 AM, heliumlamb said:

you can't play bangai-o spirits on it as well!
 

i genuinely forgot that the DS even exists, and that i have had a copy of strange journey. ninty's always been strong when it comes to handhelds, but the DMG-01 is something else, 80ish hr battery life with the sound off (in exchange for the screen).

the switch however? like 75% of my library is arcade ports

 

The only consoles I own are all Nintendo handheld systems, got my nice pink GBA for if the sun's out (still the only good system for outdoors on hot days, made sure to get the non back lit version), got my DS with er, 400 or so games on a memory card for carrying around in my pocket and my Switch for playing on the couch or bed. Just like my kids I love them all equally.

 

The Switch actually has a good bit of every genre on it on my opinion, I swore I'd never buy a modern console but I'm glad I caved and bought a Switch-lite.

[SealSpace]

Despite Blood being the otherwise far superior Build engine game to Redneck Rampage: 

 

Leonard is actually still a way funnier and more entertaining Build engine game hero than Caleb and the redneck humor and setting of his game is kinda more amusing and interesting than Blood's dark fantasy/horror humor and setting overall. 

Edited December 25, 2022 by SealSpace

[Geniraul]

Quake III Arena is the best game from the Quake series.

[Panzermann11]

Texture filtering in first-person shooters is fine in 3D games such as Quake.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Optimus]

I just realized Duke Nukem 3D music is better than Doom. It's underappreciated. It has more atmosphere.

[Terrcraft]

Early ps3/xbox 360/wii games before 2009-10 are retro to me.

[hybridial]

Okay, here is one for the Thief fans on the forum. I am currently replaying Thief Gold for the first time in a long time. As a watcher of Civvie11's channel I have also been watching his videos on the games. Now I am aware, as very much covered in the relevant video that the Thieves Guild level added into Thief Gold is oft maligned. Thinking back to the time I originally played the game, I did not remember disliking it. The other day I played that mission, and it took almost 90 minutes, which was almost half the total play time it took to complete the first six missions of the game.

 

And that time at least so far, was by far the most enjoyment I have had out of the game. The first two missions are fine, I pretty much hate Down in the Bone Hoard, The Sword is intentionally obtuse and convoluted and I don't love it but it's a key point in the story, and currently I am playing The Haunted Cathedral and from what I remember, the namesake set piece of that level that you get to at the end is really cool, but the rest of the level is just more slogging of what I remembered the game did badly. Pretty much any time the level was full of monsters rather than guards; you can kill them, the game doesn't penalise you for killing them and you probably should because it makes your life easier, but holy fuck it's not fun.

 

The Thieves Guild mission on the other hand? That was just 90 rocksolid minutes of playing Thief. None of the criticisms I've heard slung at it stick. Is it hard to navigate? No I had much more problems navigating the bone hoard. Doesn't rely too much on sewer sections? Not really, there's essentially two relatively mid-sized segments that count as the sewers, and they operate as a hub between the two main objectives. The level is really 3 to 4 good thief maps stitched together. I just took my time and enjoyed systematically knocking everybody out, is not always how I play stealth games but sometimes I find it very satisfying, and I actually feel that the design of the level is really good because there was always plenty of ways to take out at groups of guards; compared to The Sword where there was so much tiling around the objective that all the moss arrows in the world wouldn't be enough, so I just grabbed it and ran. And was the Vase that hard to find? No, you find an appropriate note that basically tells you where to find it. And it's not hidden any more egregiously the numerous other secrets in the game; and frankly in terms of the meta we're dealing with a situation where your objective should be well hidden.

 

Now I've only played Thief II up until the bank job, and I very much intend to rectify that situation and complete that game. It probably has better levels than the Thieves Guild. But I found that to be an extremely enjoyable if overly long level. I'm also no expert, this is just my second time playing the game properly. I would not recommend to anybody to skip this level like as is so often done; it will do a lot to give you an engaging intrigue laden experience where you're most in spirit of what the game is actually called. 

 

Meanwhile I'm probably going to restart The Haunted Cathedral, give myself back the gold I had and just buy all the health potions because fuck this level. I can't believe that they would actually start one of these levels without giving you any! They're the only levels where you genuinely need them to ease the pain that playing them represents.

 

And I am not looking forward to the last two levels from what I remember of them. This is a game with an amazing setting, characters and story; and some of the game is really good and some of it is a trial.

Edited February 17, 2023 by hybridial

[sincity2100]

I don't think that Ocarina of Time was that amazing, I played this game before and it was revolutionary but it had some flaws and cryptic progression at the end that it pissed me off so badly..

 

Castlevania Symphony of the Night to me is a Mixed bag, on one hand I really loved exploring the actual castle and I had a lot of fun in this game, but the inverted castle was a nightmare to me with those medusa heads, they were annoying as hell, and exploring the inverted castle was a slog to get through..

 

And Pepsi Man is a Great Game..

Edited February 17, 2023 by sincity2100

[Ozcar]

Sonic mania is good game but man, that game is overrated, mainly because of that fans of classic sonic.

Sonic advance > Sonic mania. (Not offense sonic mania, i like that games tho).

Sonic mania ost is good tho.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Ozcar

[Biz!]

the goldsrc half life games & their expansion pack aged better than half life 2, hl2 ep1, but not hl2 ep2.

 

You have no idea how much I hated aux power and loved ep2's flashlight & sprint system compared to hl2 keeping them in the same powersource.

[Ozcar]

34 minutes ago, Biz! said:

the goldsrc half life games & their expansion pack aged better than half life 2, hl2 ep1, but not hl2 ep2.

 

You have no idea how much I hated aux power and loved ep2's flashlight & sprint system compared to hl2 keeping them in the same powersource.

Talking about half life, i wish they made hecu less bullet sponge, that my only complain of half life 1, still love the game tho.

[heliumlamb]

if you think mouselook is mandatory for enjoyment of looking glass's pinnacle of maximalist interface, the infallable 1994 real-time dungeon crawler, system shock, you will probably not survive the (chat gee pee tee three-powered) Femdom Dungeon-ing Of The Earth

Edited February 28, 2023 by heliumlamb
format

[Chow Yun Thin]

5 hours ago, Ozcar said:

Talking about half life, i wish they made hecu less bullet sponge, that my only complain of half life 1, still love the game tho.

You can edit the skill.cfg to reduce their health for a given difficulty, X Y Z being whatever number you want.

• sk_hgrunt_health1 X for low difficulty
• sk_hgrunt_health2 Y for mid difficulty
• sk_hgrunt_health3 Z for high difficulty

Make sure when you save it to Notepad that it is skill.cfg and not skill.cfg.txt. I don't remember where to put skill.cfg in the Steam HL folder, though. I don't think entering the command in the console will change it immediately, maybe after reloading the map?

[MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai]

11 hours ago, Biz! said:

the goldsrc half life games & their expansion pack aged better than half life 2, hl2 ep1, but not hl2 ep2.

 

You have no idea how much I hated aux power and loved ep2's flashlight & sprint system compared to hl2 keeping them in the same powersource.

I would recommend half life 2 mmod which not only drasticaly improves the gunplay, but also gives you option to separately use flashlight from suit power for Half Life 2 and Episode 1