Perfect Dark (N64) - best FPS ever?
Since we're talking about Half-Life 2 on this board, I thought I'd mention Perfect Dark, the best first person shooter ever. Don't believe me? Hardly surprising since most people never got to see it, since it was only released on the "kiddie's machine" N64, at the end of that consoles life, and required a failry rare and expension memory add-on pak to fully work. A real shame, as it really is superb.
Rare (who wrote the game, formerly known to us as Ultimate: Play the Game) really did add almost everything you could ever want in a first person shooter - I mean, the list of features that PD had that are seldom if ever seen anywhere else includes:
- the ability to disarm an oponent, so even if they have a grenade launcher or a machine gun and you're unarmed, you can steal it from them; you just have to get close enough to punch them and snatch the weapon from them. It's not easy to do, but it does add a new level of fun to the game, especially against your mates when playing multiplayer!,
- the ability to shoot a weapon from out of an enemie's hands,
- the ability to pause the game and select a new weapon (as opposed to scrolling through the menu of weapons whilst the game is playing, and getting killed whilst trying to select your chosen weapon),
- the ability to pause multiplayer and be given a comprehensive guide to the score, including how many times you've killed a particular player, and how often they've killed you, along with the score of every player,
- the ability to define teams in multiplayer *exactly*
how you want (you can have up to four teams in Capture the Case, and up to eight in every other mode, whilst most games nowadays only let you have two teams, plus they usually alocate the players to the teams, whereas in PD you have absolute control over who goes where, regardless of the numbers), and also the ability to play all game modes as either team play or every man for himself,
- the ability to choose what weapons to use in multiplayer, and where to put them,
- the ability to define the playing attributes of the computer controlled bots (though nowadays most games don't even have bots...), including their skill, playing style (thirteen different styles) and skin (their appearance),
- the ability to choose the speed of the multiplayer game, from fast, slow and normal, and also a Matrix style mode where the game slows down according to the action,
- the ability to select One Hit Kill mode for multiplayer, and various other useful options,
- the ability to choose how many bots to use, and not be dictated by the map or the game type (some games only allow you to use given number of players or bots for a given map or gametype),
- the ability to save the multiplayer game setups, so you don't have to re-enter the options every time you start the game,
- the ability to save your game statistics, and build on them from gaming session to gaming session,
- the ability to set the multiplayer limitations to your own choice, including infinite,
- the ability to choose your own music in multiplayer,
- the ability to force each player's character to appear in their team's colour, so you know what team they are on,
- the ability to choose from a decent number of different multiplayer skins (PD has sixty-odd, plus you can mix and match the heads with the bodies),
- the ability for the game to display bullet holes and things so that the game level shows signs of damage? I mean, play a multiplayer game in PD for half an hour and there's blood everywhere, bullet holes, scorch marks (if you've used explosives) and so on, and it really adds to the atmosphere, unlike in Unreal Championship 2 and others, where there is no sign of activity at all, reminding you that it's just a game you're playing,
- the ability to have the enemy humans to be of different heights, different hair and skin colours, different faces etc, and for some to be left-handed, and some to be right-handed, as PD does at random,
- the ability to use an interesting and inventive range of weapons, and to be able to carry more than two or three at once,
- the ability for guards, when shot in the leg, to limp, and when shot in the gun arm, to drop the gun, etc,
- all the control options you could want, including auto-aim on and off (many console games won't allow you to turn auto-aim off (Halo, Half-Life 2 on the XBox etc)), hold or toggle zoom, and even the ability to use two controllers instead of one (I've never tried it, but some people aparently like it). Rare even made the auto-aim diminish effectiveness the higher the skill level you selected, a great idea which I've never seen since.
- the ability to play the first person shooter as a first person shooter, and not to have to play entire levels driving a car/jeep/submarine etc. It's a first person shooter, not a driving game (*cough* Halo)
- the ability to explore and find interesting things that have no relation to the gameplay, such as in-jokes and references to other games/films/books/etc
- the ability to unlock cheats/features/new levels etc, and not some "concept art" or "designer's interview" that no-one really cares about, but is so common on XBox games nowadays. I mean, when you complete PD on a given skill level, you unlock a new level (map), and when you complete PD on Perfect Agent you also unlock the ability to choose the skill and health settings of the enemy, which is great. And using other unlockables, you can play against enemies who all wield rockets, use any weapons you like, and so on (great for playing the whold game through with just your favourite weapon, how I wish you could play Half life 2 (XBox) from the start with the gravity gun, but it has no such cheat). And when you complete PD on the hardest of it's three skill levels, you unlock a fourth skill level that allows you to choose the starting health, the accuracy and the speed of your enemies,
- the ability to replay any single player level that you've already completed, which is not only a lot of fun, but allows you to explore further and try to beat your (recorded by the game) best time on that level, at all skill level.
- the ability for the game to store your time accurately for each level, so you can improve your times, and also the ability for you to start on any level you like,
- twenty one single player levels, and sixteen multiplayer levels, most of which look different from each other (unlike most modern FPSs, where many levels looks more or less identical to each other...). In PD, you get such varied levels as a chicago China town district during a thunderstorm, a city sky-scraper, an alien space craft, Area 51, a luxury villa, an alien planet, and more. Plus you get a training level with a firing range, to teach you how to use the various weapons,
- you can play (and preview) any music in multiplayer mode, and create your own playlist, plus you can view all unlocked cutscenes (the music option is great, the cutscene option I could live without, but it's nice to have the option, I suppose),
- about forty different weapons, including ten bonus unlockable weapons from Goldeneye (GE was PD's predecessor). All of the PD weapons (not the GE weapons) except for one have a secondary firing mode, and some of them are very good, such as the Super Dragon, which is a machine gun with a secondary firing mode of a grenade launcher, the laptop gun, which is another machine gun but which can be deployed as an automatic sentry gun, the rocket launcher which also has computer guided rockets, and many more. The game has conventional weapons, such as pistols, machine guns, mines (timed, user triggered and proximity), and grenades, and alien or exotic weapons, such as a rail gun (shoots an energy beam through anything, with infinite range), a neural bomb that makes the victims dizzy and forces them to drop their weapons and suffer temporarily damaged vision), and a Robo-cop style gun that automatically targets enemies. You can choose what guns to have in multiplayer, and where to place them (at which weapon respawn points), so you're never forced to play with any weapons that you don't like. And you can even dual-wield some weapons. A feature that Halo 2 likes to think it invented,
and so on. All of these things (and more) fit into a 32MB cartridge, yet you rarely see any of these on a game that comes on a 9GB DVD.
I'm not saying PD is perfect, of course. It has many faults, such as dubious voice acting, a fatal bug (it can crash in the NTSC version, if you play three people in the Warehouse), the introduction of aliens seriously damages the atmosphere, and an annoying, sterotypical alien called Elvis (I HATE HATE HATE him), who just cheapens the game. But it still does so much more than any other game I've ever seen would even attempt. And it has some of the best graphics and sound ever on an N64 (though of course that means little to anyone used to a newer generation machine).
Anyway, sorry to sound like an advertisment, but it really irritates me that so few people have seen PD, or are willing to even try it, simply because it's old, on a console that's mainly known for a fat Italian plumber and an elf (or whatever Link (from the Zelda games) is) or it's not Halo. PD deserved so much success, as it did so much that other games don't even attempt, but instead it's forgotten, except by those of us who still think it's the best FPS, if not the best game, ever. And judging by the travesty that is Perfect Dark Zero (the prequel that came out five years and two console generations later), even Rare no longer have the "let's put every option and feature we can think of in, and make it all work" attitude.
Every new FPS I see seems to follow the Halo or Quake style of play. And most FPSs don't even have bots, well many of them don't even have multiplayer modes anymore. Or if they do, they feel like an afterthought. Six years on from the release of PD, and all the first person shooter genre has done is go backwards.
[And yes, I know that Half-Life 2 has great physics and atmosphere (Ravenholme is especially great), F.E.A.R. is great, Far Cry looked incredible (I didn't like it much, though), Painkiller was great fun, and so on, but PD blows them away on so many levels.]
Just thought I'd mention it.
Oh, and if you want to learn more about PD, go to:
http://game-brains.com/archive/aug29_2005/perfectdark.htm
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark
Rare (who wrote the game, formerly known to us as Ultimate: Play the Game) really did add almost everything you could ever want in a first person shooter - I mean, the list of features that PD had that are seldom if ever seen anywhere else includes:
- the ability to disarm an oponent, so even if they have a grenade launcher or a machine gun and you're unarmed, you can steal it from them; you just have to get close enough to punch them and snatch the weapon from them. It's not easy to do, but it does add a new level of fun to the game, especially against your mates when playing multiplayer!,
- the ability to shoot a weapon from out of an enemie's hands,
- the ability to pause the game and select a new weapon (as opposed to scrolling through the menu of weapons whilst the game is playing, and getting killed whilst trying to select your chosen weapon),
- the ability to pause multiplayer and be given a comprehensive guide to the score, including how many times you've killed a particular player, and how often they've killed you, along with the score of every player,
- the ability to define teams in multiplayer *exactly*
how you want (you can have up to four teams in Capture the Case, and up to eight in every other mode, whilst most games nowadays only let you have two teams, plus they usually alocate the players to the teams, whereas in PD you have absolute control over who goes where, regardless of the numbers), and also the ability to play all game modes as either team play or every man for himself,
- the ability to choose what weapons to use in multiplayer, and where to put them,
- the ability to define the playing attributes of the computer controlled bots (though nowadays most games don't even have bots...), including their skill, playing style (thirteen different styles) and skin (their appearance),
- the ability to choose the speed of the multiplayer game, from fast, slow and normal, and also a Matrix style mode where the game slows down according to the action,
- the ability to select One Hit Kill mode for multiplayer, and various other useful options,
- the ability to choose how many bots to use, and not be dictated by the map or the game type (some games only allow you to use given number of players or bots for a given map or gametype),
- the ability to save the multiplayer game setups, so you don't have to re-enter the options every time you start the game,
- the ability to save your game statistics, and build on them from gaming session to gaming session,
- the ability to set the multiplayer limitations to your own choice, including infinite,
- the ability to choose your own music in multiplayer,
- the ability to force each player's character to appear in their team's colour, so you know what team they are on,
- the ability to choose from a decent number of different multiplayer skins (PD has sixty-odd, plus you can mix and match the heads with the bodies),
- the ability for the game to display bullet holes and things so that the game level shows signs of damage? I mean, play a multiplayer game in PD for half an hour and there's blood everywhere, bullet holes, scorch marks (if you've used explosives) and so on, and it really adds to the atmosphere, unlike in Unreal Championship 2 and others, where there is no sign of activity at all, reminding you that it's just a game you're playing,
- the ability to have the enemy humans to be of different heights, different hair and skin colours, different faces etc, and for some to be left-handed, and some to be right-handed, as PD does at random,
- the ability to use an interesting and inventive range of weapons, and to be able to carry more than two or three at once,
- the ability for guards, when shot in the leg, to limp, and when shot in the gun arm, to drop the gun, etc,
- all the control options you could want, including auto-aim on and off (many console games won't allow you to turn auto-aim off (Halo, Half-Life 2 on the XBox etc)), hold or toggle zoom, and even the ability to use two controllers instead of one (I've never tried it, but some people aparently like it). Rare even made the auto-aim diminish effectiveness the higher the skill level you selected, a great idea which I've never seen since.
- the ability to play the first person shooter as a first person shooter, and not to have to play entire levels driving a car/jeep/submarine etc. It's a first person shooter, not a driving game (*cough* Halo)
- the ability to explore and find interesting things that have no relation to the gameplay, such as in-jokes and references to other games/films/books/etc
- the ability to unlock cheats/features/new levels etc, and not some "concept art" or "designer's interview" that no-one really cares about, but is so common on XBox games nowadays. I mean, when you complete PD on a given skill level, you unlock a new level (map), and when you complete PD on Perfect Agent you also unlock the ability to choose the skill and health settings of the enemy, which is great. And using other unlockables, you can play against enemies who all wield rockets, use any weapons you like, and so on (great for playing the whold game through with just your favourite weapon, how I wish you could play Half life 2 (XBox) from the start with the gravity gun, but it has no such cheat). And when you complete PD on the hardest of it's three skill levels, you unlock a fourth skill level that allows you to choose the starting health, the accuracy and the speed of your enemies,
- the ability to replay any single player level that you've already completed, which is not only a lot of fun, but allows you to explore further and try to beat your (recorded by the game) best time on that level, at all skill level.
- the ability for the game to store your time accurately for each level, so you can improve your times, and also the ability for you to start on any level you like,
- twenty one single player levels, and sixteen multiplayer levels, most of which look different from each other (unlike most modern FPSs, where many levels looks more or less identical to each other...). In PD, you get such varied levels as a chicago China town district during a thunderstorm, a city sky-scraper, an alien space craft, Area 51, a luxury villa, an alien planet, and more. Plus you get a training level with a firing range, to teach you how to use the various weapons,
- you can play (and preview) any music in multiplayer mode, and create your own playlist, plus you can view all unlocked cutscenes (the music option is great, the cutscene option I could live without, but it's nice to have the option, I suppose),
- about forty different weapons, including ten bonus unlockable weapons from Goldeneye (GE was PD's predecessor). All of the PD weapons (not the GE weapons) except for one have a secondary firing mode, and some of them are very good, such as the Super Dragon, which is a machine gun with a secondary firing mode of a grenade launcher, the laptop gun, which is another machine gun but which can be deployed as an automatic sentry gun, the rocket launcher which also has computer guided rockets, and many more. The game has conventional weapons, such as pistols, machine guns, mines (timed, user triggered and proximity), and grenades, and alien or exotic weapons, such as a rail gun (shoots an energy beam through anything, with infinite range), a neural bomb that makes the victims dizzy and forces them to drop their weapons and suffer temporarily damaged vision), and a Robo-cop style gun that automatically targets enemies. You can choose what guns to have in multiplayer, and where to place them (at which weapon respawn points), so you're never forced to play with any weapons that you don't like. And you can even dual-wield some weapons. A feature that Halo 2 likes to think it invented,
and so on. All of these things (and more) fit into a 32MB cartridge, yet you rarely see any of these on a game that comes on a 9GB DVD.
I'm not saying PD is perfect, of course. It has many faults, such as dubious voice acting, a fatal bug (it can crash in the NTSC version, if you play three people in the Warehouse), the introduction of aliens seriously damages the atmosphere, and an annoying, sterotypical alien called Elvis (I HATE HATE HATE him), who just cheapens the game. But it still does so much more than any other game I've ever seen would even attempt. And it has some of the best graphics and sound ever on an N64 (though of course that means little to anyone used to a newer generation machine).
Anyway, sorry to sound like an advertisment, but it really irritates me that so few people have seen PD, or are willing to even try it, simply because it's old, on a console that's mainly known for a fat Italian plumber and an elf (or whatever Link (from the Zelda games) is) or it's not Halo. PD deserved so much success, as it did so much that other games don't even attempt, but instead it's forgotten, except by those of us who still think it's the best FPS, if not the best game, ever. And judging by the travesty that is Perfect Dark Zero (the prequel that came out five years and two console generations later), even Rare no longer have the "let's put every option and feature we can think of in, and make it all work" attitude.
Every new FPS I see seems to follow the Halo or Quake style of play. And most FPSs don't even have bots, well many of them don't even have multiplayer modes anymore. Or if they do, they feel like an afterthought. Six years on from the release of PD, and all the first person shooter genre has done is go backwards.
[And yes, I know that Half-Life 2 has great physics and atmosphere (Ravenholme is especially great), F.E.A.R. is great, Far Cry looked incredible (I didn't like it much, though), Painkiller was great fun, and so on, but PD blows them away on so many levels.]
Just thought I'd mention it.
Oh, and if you want to learn more about PD, go to:
http://game-brains.com/archive/aug29_2005/perfectdark.htm
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark
Post edited by ewgf on
Comments
Necros.
The single player game itself I personally think pisses all over any FPS produced before.
I have heard a fair few people say that, but I don't agree, although GE is my second favourite ever game. Every FPS I've ever played is waaaay below those two.
Erm, you can't disarm an opponent in HL2, in HL2 the non-playing characters can't even crouch down to go through a low gap in the wall, you can't shoot them in the arm for them to drop their weapon, PD's arsenal is far larger and more varied than HL2's, you can't pause the game to select weapons, HL2 has boring platform sections that PD doesn't have, and HL2 doesn't even have friendly fire, to name just a few things.
HL 2's gravity gun is great, though ;-)
I think HL2 is great, but I prefer HL1, as I think HL1 has better weapons, is more fun (the best part of either HL game to me is fighting the human soldiers in HL1) and has better atmosphere, although I detest the Xen levels. The trouble with both HLs, to me, is that they lack replayability, you play them a few times maximum, wheerase I've been through PD and GE many, many times.
As for shooting the weapon off enemies hands - why bother when you can bring them down with a head shot? :D
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
perfect darks ok, but im afraid im another goldeneye man :)
PD is nice... but aye... GoldenEye for me too :)
I think you missed what I was getting at. With the fact that total conversions and modifications exist in the Source Engine - something you can't do with PD - anything can be added or altered, way beyond the ability of PD.
Want to shoot the gun out of an enemies hand? Mod the game so you can do so. Hell, mod it so you can shoot the hand off the enemy altogether! Why not mod it so you can shoot the hand off the player, and have the ability to pick the hand up and beat them to death with it? With modding, all this is possible. Just because it's not in the game to begin with, doesn't mean it can't be added later. This is why PD will pale in comparison.
Isn't pausing the game to change weapons cheating? In my eyes it is. In a war, a soldier can't stop the whole fight to take time to choose a weapon to do the job. He's there, it's real, it's happening, so putting a pause option screams of "dumbing down" the game to help the player.
HL2 (in unmodified form) doesn't really have friendly fire, but it does have better level design, better story, better physics - physics you can use that is, not just pretty effect with no benefit.
Half Life 2 doesn't have a large arsenal because it doesn't "fit" with the story being played out. You're in a war, on the losing side when you join, and they don't have the luxury of weapon factories and resources to build them, unlike in number 1 where you're in a complex doing just that.
If PD was the best FPS ever, it would've gained much larger awards and top votes from all the magazines, but what two games did instead? Give you a clue, begins with "H" and ends in "alf Life 1 and 2".
They were both ace.
True, but by that argument, why buy a game when you can buy a programming package and write a better game than any that's on the market? Or why buy Half-Life 2, when you can wait a year or two and buy
Half-Life 3?
Mods can be great; look at U.S. Darkstar, the They Hunger trilogy, Azure Sheep and others for Half-Life, for example, but we're not talking about what might one day exist, we're talking about what exists now, comparing present day games (and mods), and as far as I am aware, there is no mod for any game (or any game itself, for that matter) that even approaches the features of PD. I have a PD mod for Unreal Tournament, that has several very accurate PD maps, a few weapons, and some of PD's game modes, giving maybe ten percent of the overall PD multiplayer mode. It's very good as far as it goes, but it has been abandoned, as sadly many mods are, and probably won't be taken any further.
There may one day be a mod for HL2, or another game, that does everything as good or better than PD, but until then, PD offers unrivelled gameplay to me.
And given that it's a six year old game, on a console two generations back, and on a 32MB cartridge, that doesn't say much at all for the gaming industry.
The operative word being "will" (though it should be "might"). At the moment PD still offers many features that HL2 doesn't. HL2 betters PD in many ways, such as far better physics (the gravity gun is soooo much fun with the sawblades :-P ), on-line multiplayer modes, better graphics, better frame-rate (on a suitably fast PC, and it does have to be said that the HL2 engine is very efficient compared to other game engines) and of course the ability to support mods. But, to me at least, PD beats HL2 in every important way (except for mods, I'd love to be able to create maps and mods for PD), and it's PD I repeatedly play, not HL2.
I can see your point, but I don't think it's cheating; when you pause the game, you then (if you choose) select your weapon, and when you unpause the game, the weapon change *then* starts to take place. The weapons don't change when paused, they don't even begin to change until the game starts up again, so pressing PAUSE, selecting your choice of weapon, and then pressing PAUSE to restart the game is basically the same as pressing a button to directly choose your desired weapon.
And as for cheating, what about HL2's lack of friendly fire, or it's support of health packs? Not that I'm suggesting that PD is realistic - in PD, as in HL2 and just about every other FPS ever you can somehow runs backwards or sideways as fast as you can run forwards, you can even run safely backwards down stairs, and you never fall over. And somehow you can carry a stack of weapons and ammo, and even pick up items just by walking over them...
Better physics, yes. But better level design? No way. Look at the tedious canal levels, or the pointless platforming bits, and the boring "lets pile bricks up to pass this obsticle" parts. PD has no boring parts to it. And PD has hidden things to discover, unlike HL2, play through that once and you've seen just about everything.
Better story? Debatable. PD has a more detailed story, but HL2 tells it's story *far* better, as you are part of the story (PD's cutscenes remind you that you're playing a game). HL2 doesn't have too much story, it's largely background detail and conjecture. What there is is very interesting, but PD has a better story, I think. But you don't get the full story from playind PD, you have to complete the game first, then read the story on the computer in the Carrington Institute.
But the lack of weapons weakens the game, it's not enough to say "that's because of the story", the story shouldn't impede gameplay.
The N64 was all but commercially dead when PD came out. The PC was far, far more widespread, and had a lot of supporting magazines, and so HL reached a far greater audience. And regarding magazines, do you really think that PC Gamer or PC Zone would award "Game of the Year" to a non-PC game? I honestly think that if PD had been released on the PC, it would be far better thought of, and played far more widely on-line and off, than any other PC FPS.
Anyway, I've just checked the two multi-format gaming sites I do visit for reviews (for the XBox mainly, nowadays), and they gave the results:
Game.............IGN.................Gamespot
Perfect Dark.....9.8....................9.9
Half-Life...........9.5...................9.4
Half-Life 2........9.7....................9.2
Please ignore the excess full stops, the forum software wouldn't align the columns, so I've put in a load of full stops, though of course all of the review results are in decimal format with one decinal point. Of course, these scores are only the reviewers' opinions, (well, it's all down to opinions in the end), but I do think that PD is far better and far more complete than either HL game (bots in multplayer, a cop-op and counter-operative mode for two players in the single player game, a shooting gallery to test the weapons, said weapons being far better than in either HL etc).
But again, that's just my opinion.
Your pathetic shooters (including HL2) pale into insignifcance when compared to Thief: The Dark Project.
D.
Necros.
Why wait? Through the beauty of modding, Half Life 3 is already (semi) out, with the episodic content (Gabe Newell has stated that this is the sequel being released). AND it's modifying the engine as it goes.
but that's simply down to you liking that particular game more than HL2, like I prefer it the other way around. Doesn't mean that PD is a better game fullstop.
no, it's still cheating as far as I'm concerned, since you shouldn't be allowed to stop and think about what weapon you're gonna use, before changing it.
I don't see your point here. Just because there's not as much friendly fire, and ther support of health packs, that doesn't equal cheating.
Absolutely better level design! The canal levels might be tedious to you, but you cannot fault the sheer amount of thought and detail that went into the design. And if you think that PD's level design is better, then you must be drunk!
Again, if the story is told better, that makes it a better story. Even if a game is the most elaborately written story ever, if the story telling is not executed well, it makes it a worse game.
And PD's serious flaw is that you have cutscenes, that take you away from being *totally* immersed in the story. HL1 and 2 solved that by putting you in the story at all times. Not once are you ever watching the story from anything other than the character you're in control of. What they see and hear, you see and hear.
No, that's incorrect. The player should never be pushed too far with realism - based on the story. If you're in a WW2 game, you shouldn't expect to have a lazer gun, JUST BECAUSE it's a varied weapon. HL2's weapon's are there because they are real in that world. As I have explained elsewhere, you're on a side losing a war, and they don't have the resources to make fantastical weapons like the enemy. You can't be given guns that go beyond what is acceptable in the world you're in.
Oh god, I wouldn't touch their scores with a bargepole. if ever there was two websites soo biased to the consoles, they are it.
I am talking about readers votes, national and international awards and the like. Not one (console loving) reviewers opinions.
Me and my mates do ocassionally play Goldeneye on multiplayer and id say its still the best for multiplayer.
Most new fps just feel like deja vous nowadays and there isnt much new just better graphics except for Far Cry (the pc version) which is very atmospheric and has tons of mods and user levels around the net.
I do feel that Goldeneye's single player was an overall better experience, I sold my Playstation because it wasn't getting any use due to Goldeneye.
But PD's multiplayer was better than goldeneye's due to the introduction of bot's and better weapons, one thing i couldn't understand though was why none of it's single player maps we're used in the multiplayer.
in Airforce 1 their are service elevators on all floors even though you don't use then all, also in the room behind the cockpit under one of the bunks is a hole which would bring you out right behing anyone in the piano room who was crouched behind the wall, i've never understood why you couldn't play this level in multi as it was obviously designed with that in mind, i know it's based on the real airforce 1 but it still lends itself to being a multiplayer map
My greatest Goldeneye moment was working out how to get the cheat on archive
and a challenge for you complete Bunker 2 on 00 difficulty unarmed except when using the twin PP7's to take out the security cameras
Duke was amazing. I remember playing it linked up on two Playstations with my mate and it was some of the best 2 player gaming ever. Especially when he found the jet pack and stood on top of a rocket taking long range shots at me.
Far Cry is brilliant. The only thing that lets it down is the lack of stealth kills. As soon as you kill someone everyone is alerted to it. That said, I thought it was the closest thing to being in the film 'Predator' and therefore a very good thing indeed.
Other games might have some nice additional features, but those are the ones that really defined the genre.
Tedious, boring, repetitive? Oh dear. Not at all! HL2 probably is way ahead of the game compared to any other FPS game out there. The canal bit is one of the more interesting levels I've played.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
last year it bored me to death :(
now I was stuck for two days in the pipeline section with loads of explosive barrels and wasn?t able to find the valve to raise the waterlevel to get to another section via pipes... :roll: :D
wolfstein3D, Doom and Duke Nukem defined the genre, oh yeah, but first real 3d was Quake - nothing beats the atmosphere of first horror 3D (Blood 3D is ok, but not so scary)
now, the finest discovery in FPS for me was PREY - played only the demo, but this is really piece of art!
uses Doom3 gfx engine, but plays with gravity, portals, perspective and dimension changes... better creatures and environment than Doom3 and doesn?t scare you with low-minded SHOCK from the dark (like Doom3-> shock isn?t scary, it?s bastard?s technique - it?s only a shock with no atmosphere)
Yes, but my point was that PD offers me far more than HL2 does currently, the episode packs don't, as far as I know, offer me the features of PD that I like (and listed in my first post).
Of course not. Better is objective, depending on a person's tastes. That's why I put a question mark after the "PD best FPS ever" title for this topic.
Then having a pause button is potentially cheating, as you could (if you wish) pause the game whilst thinking of which weapon or course of action to choose.
Well, the lack of friendly fire removes any worry of you injuring your friends, so if they are engaged up close with an enemy you can fire at that enemy without having to worry about accidentally hitting your friend. And health packs are, I think, unfair (in single player mode, not multiplayer, where all characters are equal), in that you can use the packs but not your enemies, so you and an enemy can weaken one another, but you can then retreat and find a health pack (or do so after you've killed him), and refill your health meter. I'm just not a fan of that, as it lessens the impact (and hence the importance) of you losing health.
Not at all. Yes, HL2 looks superb, but there's nothing to explore, when you've been through the game you've seen everything. I've explored all through PD, and yes PD is lower textured, and lacks HL2's facial expressions and real-world (by today's gaming standards) graphics, but it doesn't have any tedious sections either. Check the comments about HL2 on the net - lots of people find the canal section boring, the last level dull, and the street level where you have to "guide" the stupid non-playing-characters can be so irritating, they are supposed to understand the "wait here command", but I've played HL2 on both the PC and XBox, and if you tell them to wait, then move away from them, they follow you again.
And HL2 feels so linear. Yes, all FPSs are linear, and yes, PD is just as guilty as any other, but HL2 feels especially so. HL1 was amazing in that, although being totally linear, it didn't feel that way, as it managed to convey the feeling that there was a world on the other side of that wall, behind that locked door, down that blocked lift shaft. No other FPS gave the illusion of freedom as fully as HL1. And HL2 lost that in a big way. You are constantly aware that you can only go one way, and that that way will lead you to the next section. In that respect, HL2 is a real step backwards from HL1.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that, a bad story is surely a bad story however it's told, and a game can be great even with a terrible story, and if that game is then given a good story, it won't necessarily improve the game, depending on how it's told, and if the player is interested.
Now that is something we do agree on 100% Ever play American McGee's Alice? An amazingly atmospheric game, but because it had cutscenes, you were constantly made aware that you were in a game. With HL1 and 2, the fact that there were no cutscenes, just real-time events and people talking to you, and the fact that you never stepped out of the first-person viewpoint, meant that you never lost the immersive feeling that the game generated. Also, what was even better was that you never hear Freeman speak (though he does speak, we just don't hear him), so you can mentally transpose your own voice to him, so that you really do feel as though you are he.
And no other FPS that I know of has learnt from HL. Most games still have cut-scenes (including unskippable cutscenes, which I HATE HATE HATE), and even the ones that don't (such as Far Cry) have your charcter speaking in a voice and manner that isn't your (the player's) own, thereby reminding you that it's just a game.
So why can't you find/steal/be given some of the weapons that were in HL1? The Snarks (I think they're called, those horrible little creatures that explode after a time), and the alien and human weapons? HL2's weaker arsenal hurt the gameplay, and should have been improved.
I don't know about that (literally, I'm not disputing it, it's just that they're the only two WWW sites I go for reviews and they do seem to like PC games as much as console games, but I haven't covered enough off the site to discount accusations of console bias).
And of the people you mention, far more would have played HL than PD. PD reached a far smaller audience, both for the reasons I've already stated (dying console that's mainly associated with kids games), but also because PD requires an add-on memory pak for the N64 that was overly expensive (it's still more expensive now that the console), plus HL's cheaper price and easily pirated format made it far more affordable than the ?50 the PD cartridge cost.
Out of interest, how far have you played PD? I've completed PD, HL, and HL2.
DN3D is superb, and was well ahead of it's time, what with it's different items (scuba diving equipment, jetpac, night goggles etc), and had some great weapons, some great humour, and some of the locations were brilliant! And findind the secrets really added to the longevity of the game. I like Doom, but I'll never understand why Doom and Quake got all of the publicity, whilst (to me) DN3D was a much better game. Have you tried the TCs at:
http://msdn.planetduke.gamespy.com/tcrev.shtml
and the 3D front-end at:
http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/index.php?p=jfduke3d
I've not tried the high resolution pack yet, though.
GE is the only FPS my mates will play multiplayer on, when they come round - nothing else will do, not Halo, not Unreal Championship 2, not even PD. It's always GE (or a non-FPS such as Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros., or Worms: Armageddon)
Yep, everything is Quake or Halo style, with no replayabilty, and with unlockables that you don't care about, like a video interview with the developer, or pencil drawings of the enemies.
You always had a choice about either escaping with Elvis or escaping on a hover bike, on any difficulty. Whichever way you went, Jonathon went the other way, and if you let Jonathon go with Elvis, then he (Jonathon) was available to help you later in the game when the Carrington Institue was attacked. There were other things that effected what happened in different levels, too, a nice touch, I thought.
Yes and No. I do think that GE had something in single player that PD didn't, but I could never give it a name.
I know, GE did it, so why not PD? The Carrington Institute especially would have been great for deathmatch! If you have a Gameshark, though, you could play any single player level in multiplayer mode (and vice-versa), see the level modding FAQ at:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/n64/game/198275.html
(it's the bottom one, by Krijy). I've played Chigaco streets and a version of Crash site in single player. You need the right version of a Gameshark (or Equaliser or Explorer/Exploder, if you are a PAL user like me) though.
Yep. Incidentally, have you seen:
http://www.yamoslair.com/mystery.html
a fantastic site that lists many, many PD mysteries, including the holes you mention?
And going by the other poll, no it isn't. by a long way. ;)
But how many of those who voted have actually played PD? Of those you mention, I haven't played Quake 4 enough to pass judgement, and of course the "Other" catagory covers many games I've never played. Perhaps one of the "Other" games would be my favourite, if I'd played it, and equally, perhaps many of those who voted for games other than PD would have voted for PD, and very enthusiastically, if they'd have ever played it?
And it does have to be said that popularity is no guarantee of quality, just because more people prefer (or say that they prefer) x to y, doesn't mean that x is necessarily better.