betabox

I wonder if this means the cut levels may be restored.

Was going to point this out. Pause the video as the soulsphere is being picked up and the armor is briefly seen.

Not just on a timed interval. Monsters spawn in literally around the puzzle solving in Hexen, whether it's from progress made on a puzzle or making a wrong choice in a few occasions. It's pretty much characteristic of the game.

These are my go-to tactics across E1 -E6. The pitchfork with circlestrafing can wreck nearly all enemy types except cultists and hell hounds, without you taking any damage. Although the hell hounds can still be cheesed with it. Even the first and third episode bosses (or just stay crawling up close to them altogether). But obviously don't overdo it due to the time it takes and how repetitive it'll get. But it's perfect for saving on certain ammo. Zombies - pitchfork circlestrafe on up to 4 (although you're untouchable against any sized crowd of them). Dynamite against 3 or more for effectiveness and for it to be fun. Bloated butcher - Pitchfork circlestrafing also makes them harmless. But use as li ttle as either 2 flare shots or 3-4 spray rounds each. Or for crowds, alt fire spray can or flare; or any explosive. Cultists - 1 flare each (or 1 flare + 1 shotgun or few machine gun rounds on the dynamite ones) to be sneaky. Against up to a few when close by, machine gun or shotgun alt fire (or primary fired quickly). Dynamite around corners or on crowds (switch out for the remote detonator on occasion for Duke3D style pipebomb fun), napalm launcher on distant crowds. If there's just one around the corner, I also really like either hte alt fire shotgun, rapid primary shotgun (should just take 2 shots), or simply the machine gun. The voodoo doll is an insanely effective sniper rifle that hits them as long as they're in view; each hit stuns them for a few seconds, making them run away. This is immeasurably useful against both far away cultist enemies that can easily chip away at your health and you can't, and when they're underwater. Spiders, hands, mini calebs - shotgun or machine gun; they go down in 1 to 2 shotgun rounds each (usually 1 for the hands). Dynamite on a crowd. But they're completely harmless when you're even just a few inches off the ground from them. Gargoyle - pitchfork circlestrafe mainly to save ammo (mostly applies to e1). 1 direct shot with the napalm launcher each. Or as little as 1 dynamite direct hit to one, or toss into a crowd. The tesla cannon and voodoo doll make quick work of them too. Hell hounds - 4 measly tesla rounds. Pods - shotgun alt fire up close. Or just dynamite. Phantasms - 4 alt shotgun blasts. It's easy to isolate individual ones out of crowds for this. Even these enemies are completely harmless to circlestrafing. And yeah, you can pitchfork them very easily this way. Cheogh (e1) - napalm and dynamite from a distance, followed by circlestrafing with bullet weapons right up close. For the stone gargoyles, circle strafe with tesla or voodoo up close to drop them real quick. Or cheese all of them out by staying crouched. When you're up close to them, they just try scratching you like the regular gargoyle does. Shial (e2) - dynamite and napalm. Or bullet weapon alt fire on her and the mother spider variants. Tesla cannon up close shreds the mother spiders up. Cerberus - Tesla cannon or voodoo doll circlestrafing up close to waste them pretty easily. Or crouch up close to cheese them out and make them completely harmless. Tchernobog - guns akimbo with any of napalm cannon, tesla cannon or shotgun. Although single tesla napalm pelting are still really good. Or voodoo doll from a distance for complete safety. Beasts - take on 1 at a time. Stay far away at all times and make them chase you around the perimeter. Use mainly the voodoo and tesla. The machine gun and shotgun primary can supplement them; use short bursts of fire. Do not use explosives as they push them right up to you. For their cultist 1st phase, just follow the usual Cultist strategy, or you can lob a couple napalm to drop each one quickly

Absolutely, the idea is to instinctively throw dynamite around most corners, or simply peer around them just enough to get an idea of what's there. The game provides you plenty of dynamite in the levels. They're not always around every single corner. A lot of the times, you have to deal with them from far away. It's usually a distance where they can easily snipe you out or their dynamite can reach you, but you might have a hard time returning the favor. The easiest thing in these cases (and again, there are a lot), is to serve up one flare shot per enemy you can see and get out of their view, it will kill them. It has full range and even kind of clicks onto enemies if a couple of inches off target. Another thing you can do is use the tommy gun alt fire around corners or at ambushes in general and it makes quick work of them while minimizing the damage you take. You won't know which corners have ambushes, but there are ways to deal with that. For example, the enemies tend to run towards you when you're out of their sight. So what you can do is slightly step out of a corner, alert any enemies that are there, immediately retreat and even keep a small distance (since they by instinct will probably toss dynamite in your direction), and just let them run into your line of fire. It can be the bullet weapons or something like primary fire dynamite around the corner and they'll thoughtlessly run into it. This only applies to cultists. Every other enemy type are much more feasible to tackle head-on, even when they're in groups.

The biggest issue Blood has to being more accessible to enjoy is probably the cultist type enemies. Their near-instant reaction time to mow you down that requires the same to stop them. This was the biggest issue for me, but once I figured out different strategies and got used to taking them on, the game became much less unfair and much, much more enjoyable. I stick with Well Done difficulty, and it has definitely become my favorite of the original 3 main Build games. Caleb's lines, the sound design, the visuals and atmosphere and the combat. On the last one, I really like how involved and dynamic the game's arsenal is with respect to the different enemy types. And I have the best, least frustrating time when I put that to good use. Pretty much every weapon has a really good ability to fold one or more enemy types, while being standard or even highly wasteful on others. It's pretty uncommon, you'd think the damage system works on some simple, linear design but it doesn't. There is a really neat, effective and satisfying strategy to taking down every enemy type in the game. As was already mentioned, the play style is quite different to the Doom-engine based games and even Duke 3D. If it's not something you can get used to, then yeah you're not going to have a good time with the game. It is what it is. The way I deal with cultists is taking them down out of sight as much as possible. A single flair round kills most cultist types except the dynamite ones, so I tag one or more cultists in the area and just stay out of their sight until they're gone, no stress. It's especially good for the ones situated very far or higher ground. The game gives you tons of flair rounds, too. I also lob dynamite around corners; the alt fire really, really comes in handy. That usually deals with them nearby (it's also good against groups of them, or ones situation higher or lower from your ground level). If it doesn't, I have either the shotgun with finger on alt fire or machine gun out waiting for them to meet me around the corner; I also use either of these in the same way if I alerted any of them, just hide and wait for them to come to me so I can surprise attack them. The cultists tend to stop attacking and retreat for a bit when you hit them with shotgun or machine gun fire. In fact, they tend to remain stunned by the machine gun.

X6 is not genuinely hard (save for the Extreme difficulty it has, but everybody talks about the game in general). The difficulty is only artificial and the game as a whole is tedious, both of which lead to it becoming boring and repetitive to play through. None of it's helped by the fact that it's full of ideas and concepts that may have been good as that: on paper. But they fell flat in execution. I'd say X5 has more genuine difficulty than it though, and at that, I have a harder time getting through several parts of it than X6.

Most of the time when E3 builds reach the public online, they're a case of that build being repurposed for other trade shows or conventions. So, several copies had been made and distributed, and one or more eventually reached public hands. That's usually how HP and its community members get E3 prototypes out; at least a few layers removed.

I wouldn't doubt or question if it's possible, that user is not likely to be making it up. Lots of things like this slip by without most people noticing. I mean, they said someone originally explained how to get the difficulty in PSX Doom. That bit seems to have never left the discord channel it was discussed in, for example.

Surprised he complained about Doom II having too many enemies and ambushes when that accurately describes the D64 Lost Levels. They're straight up trap and ambush central.

I'm curious what would be an appropriate estimate for all WADs (and PK3s and other formats, I guess) ever put up online. Obviously impossible to make even a decently accurate estimate, as it would need to account for anything ever released across forums, personal sites and so on. Also including the fact a significant amount have been lost to dead links and sites, etc. I wonder if the number in that regard would approach 100 000.

The pre-smartphone days of mobile games was a hell of a time. FWIW, platforms like J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, RIM (Blackberry), etc had LOTS of official games, as both conversions/ports and original titles. They came from all the big companies too, like Capcom and Konami, and were releases across North America, Europe, Japan. The latter got tons of exclusives that pretty much nobody knows about. It's pretty disappointing how undocumented this aspect of gaming is, and that it's just impossible to do nowadays as those games are permanently lost over time. But you can consider all of these games to be obscure, since they hardly got any publicity and next to nobody ever talked about them. Good luck finding any decent, reliable information on even 10% of all such games ever released back in the day (again, only counting official releases).

Start by getting through the regular campaigns, as in finishing them. Extreme ROTT is better approached when you actually have a feel for what the core game mechanics are like. Another major concept about the expansion is that it plays heavily on the idea of letting your eyes deceive you. It presents you with seemingly mean or unfair scenarios that maximize the struggle, while stashing away utter challenge breakers nearby that just amount to the same level of secret hunting that any other campaign entails. Not to say that Extreme ROTT is really great or greatly designed. IMO, it isn't, at least not to the level as Hunt Begins and especially Hunt Continues. But its difficulty is mostly misjudged and highly exaggerated. Other than a small number of levels that can be counted with one hand (out of its 40+), the rest is very doable. Even Hunt Continues has its own little touch of EROTT to a couple levels and you know what, unlike EROTT, there are no secrets or tricks to cut you much slack in those. Again, if you can get through the main campaigns, you can handle it. Just don't approach it like those others, for the most part, where you're just gunning down enemies while looking for keys, switches, etc in a really mazy construct with a lower degree of caution. The level progression is very much unlike that; sometimes the switch or key is nearby or otherwise in plain sight of where you need to get to next. Instead, just take a moment to look at the challenge presented, and figure out how to get through it with what's provided to you in the map (items, weapons, etc.). Here's a casual playthrough of Extreme ROTT on Crezzy Man difficulty (highest), and with only saving at the start of each stage. Not at all saying to play it like that, but it just shows how feasible it actually is. You'll have a much easier time on the lower difficulties and saving more often. If you're stuck at any part, you can see how to get through using it (levels are timestamped in the description). This was played in Ludicrous Edition, where a lot of things for it were fixed and otherwise changed. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmeqZiAFQzihkvM5RgMCPB5KJb3MvPG75

Weird I'm only seeing the Quickbooks threads. Like over 30 of them by now. But some of you are seeing the Coinbase, American Airlines, Binance (sic).

What's the account verification like on this forum nowadays? I'm curious how they get approved, since several clearly got through, which resulted in this.