commodorejohn
Shameless recidivist
I've been meaning to start this thread for a while, so here we go:
For those of us fed up with the overproduced, overly glitzy, wildly samey, dull grey-brown, constantly hand-holding and waypoint-marking, and generally substance-free triple-A titles that modern gaming is saturated with, what are some good alternatives from the days before the industry started vanishing up its own "fundamental aperture?" I'll start:
COD, Battlefield, etc.: DOOM, Quake, Half-Life
Wolfenstein 3-D was a primitive start, but by DOOM basically all the important mechanics for the first-person shooter were in place. Fast-paced, colorful, and gleefully violent, with a ripping metal soundtrack on your MIDI module of choice. Quake takes the action into full 3-D but loses none of the giddy, gory fun, and has some of the best monster designs I've seen in an FPS. And for those of us who like a plot to go along with our killing sprees, Half-Life is a classic example of how to use a game to tell a story without compromising either - even if it does fall apart at the end. And best of all: none of them have regenerating health.
If you're looking for excellent multiplayer, there's also Quake III and its clone OpenArena, but I just can't bring myself to give a full thumbs-up to a game that so thoroughly ignores the single-player experience.
Skyrim, any sandbox game: Morrowind
Morrowind is not a flawless game (combat's meh, it's possible to wildly over-power your character,) but it trumps a lot of modern sandboxes (and its own immediate predecessors) with a few simple aspects. One, it feels much larger than its map is, even larger than Oblivion in my opinion (even though Oblivion's map is actually larger.) Get as many graphics mods as you want (and I highly recommend that you do, since the game with its default models and textures looks more like an N64 game than an XBox game,) but don't use the distant-landscape mod, it destroys this effect and kills the mood. Two, it doesn't place any artificial limits on your actions; there's no bull about unkillable NPCs like the later games in the series, it just lets you know that you botched the main quest and may want to think about reloading. And again, you can wildly over-power your character - it will let you, instead of placing a bunch of artificial constraints in the name of "balance," but since you basically have to set out to do it, you can't really accidentally ruin the challenge for yourself. Three, it is hella detailed. Every cave and dungeon is unique, many of them have little mini-stories attached to them, and every single NPC in the game is unique - even the bandits out in the wilderness have a name and don't just regenerate when you kill them! The soundtrack is also utterly gorgeous.
EVE Online: Descent
Remember how you started playing EVE because you thought you were going to get to pilot a spaceship? But then it turned out that it's basically a second job you have to do in hopes of one day getting to pilot a spaceship? Yeah, screw that noise: Descent never takes you out of the spaceship. Sprawling levels that it's quite possible to get lost in (thank goodness for the auto-map,) creative and instantly-recognizable enemy designs (you can tell what basically any enemy in the game is even on the other side of a large room,) frantic action interspersed with moody exploration, and a quite frankly amazing soundtrack - a full hour and twenty's worth of excellent industrial electronica! Highly recommended.
Anyone other recommendations?
For those of us fed up with the overproduced, overly glitzy, wildly samey, dull grey-brown, constantly hand-holding and waypoint-marking, and generally substance-free triple-A titles that modern gaming is saturated with, what are some good alternatives from the days before the industry started vanishing up its own "fundamental aperture?" I'll start:
COD, Battlefield, etc.: DOOM, Quake, Half-Life
Wolfenstein 3-D was a primitive start, but by DOOM basically all the important mechanics for the first-person shooter were in place. Fast-paced, colorful, and gleefully violent, with a ripping metal soundtrack on your MIDI module of choice. Quake takes the action into full 3-D but loses none of the giddy, gory fun, and has some of the best monster designs I've seen in an FPS. And for those of us who like a plot to go along with our killing sprees, Half-Life is a classic example of how to use a game to tell a story without compromising either - even if it does fall apart at the end. And best of all: none of them have regenerating health.
If you're looking for excellent multiplayer, there's also Quake III and its clone OpenArena, but I just can't bring myself to give a full thumbs-up to a game that so thoroughly ignores the single-player experience.
Skyrim, any sandbox game: Morrowind
Morrowind is not a flawless game (combat's meh, it's possible to wildly over-power your character,) but it trumps a lot of modern sandboxes (and its own immediate predecessors) with a few simple aspects. One, it feels much larger than its map is, even larger than Oblivion in my opinion (even though Oblivion's map is actually larger.) Get as many graphics mods as you want (and I highly recommend that you do, since the game with its default models and textures looks more like an N64 game than an XBox game,) but don't use the distant-landscape mod, it destroys this effect and kills the mood. Two, it doesn't place any artificial limits on your actions; there's no bull about unkillable NPCs like the later games in the series, it just lets you know that you botched the main quest and may want to think about reloading. And again, you can wildly over-power your character - it will let you, instead of placing a bunch of artificial constraints in the name of "balance," but since you basically have to set out to do it, you can't really accidentally ruin the challenge for yourself. Three, it is hella detailed. Every cave and dungeon is unique, many of them have little mini-stories attached to them, and every single NPC in the game is unique - even the bandits out in the wilderness have a name and don't just regenerate when you kill them! The soundtrack is also utterly gorgeous.
EVE Online: Descent
Remember how you started playing EVE because you thought you were going to get to pilot a spaceship? But then it turned out that it's basically a second job you have to do in hopes of one day getting to pilot a spaceship? Yeah, screw that noise: Descent never takes you out of the spaceship. Sprawling levels that it's quite possible to get lost in (thank goodness for the auto-map,) creative and instantly-recognizable enemy designs (you can tell what basically any enemy in the game is even on the other side of a large room,) frantic action interspersed with moody exploration, and a quite frankly amazing soundtrack - a full hour and twenty's worth of excellent industrial electronica! Highly recommended.
Anyone other recommendations?
"stricltly on the basis of an older version of the game"