Martli
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MartliParticipantPlayed it with my 3 year old son and he is also a shark fan. I kinda wish they’d made it so that each character had a special ability, like if the shark was faster under the water or something.
MartliParticipantAlways Yoshi, oh wait, wrong game. I kinda like the moose guy.
MartliParticipantApril was a rough month for me, but I managed to get most of the way to the end on the wits path. My game seems to have a bug where it freezes in combat though which is preventing me from finishing. I may need to try and load it in scummVM on a modern PC and try from there but just haven’t got around to it.
Overall I liked the variety and the different paths available. The production quality was great (as you’d expect) and the storyline was engaging enough. The puzzles were challenging in parts but not to the point where they felt punishing. Gameplay wise, it’s your standard Luca darts game there.
I did find the Atlantis segment quite a tough slog. Lots of back tracking and probably where I resorted to the hint book the most… but all in all very glad to have played this classic and hopefully I can get around to actually finishing it soon.
MartliParticipantApril 26, 2024 at 8:17 am in reply to: Cricket explained for beginners + my experience playing cricket games #8614Just for total clarity – the video is very much a parody, playing on the theme of what TigerQuoll said above 😂.
I find that as a male in a cricket playing country it’s almost mandatory to have at least a basic understanding of the game and a few go to comments if you want to contribute to casual conversation, especially when games go on for 5 days and everyone in the office is following it on cricinfo. A few comments like “we really should have batted first, it’s a really dry wicket” will get you far in social standings 😂
Oh and Tijn, the Dutch cricket team is ranked 14th in the world btw.
MartliParticipantDone! Thanks!
MartliParticipantI had assumed I’d picked team without realising it after the initial sequence walking around with Sophia, but after a bit more playing the selection came up and I chose wits. I didn’t realise there were other ways into the theatre, so I assume I used the wits method for that too…
MartliParticipantI just ripped the game files from the gog install and put it on my DOS PC. I’m playing it on a recently acquired CRT monitor with (emulated) MT-32 music. An absolutely fantastic way to experience it 😃. Maybe I’ll have to do a side-by-side comparison.
MartliParticipantAh, I didn’t even realise this was an option. I guess I’m doing Team.
MartliParticipantI’ve just finished the 6th episode tonight. It probably took me about an hour per episode to complete, and I’m now tossing up whether to give spear of destiny a go or to just leave it there. I feel accomplished having beaten this legendary game, if a little exhausted.
I don’t have strong nostalgia for this game as I was slightly too young for FPSs when it came out, and DOOM was better timed for my FPS coming-of-age. I did watch my older cousin play it though, so I was aware of it, as well as its links to DOOM (from the two DOOM II secret maps).
The nostalgia for me was really around the fact that I didn’t have it as a kid, and that it had this taboo or forbidden quality to it. Do I dare play this game?! What if my mum found out?! I dabbled in it over the years, and I’m pretty sure I got as far as beating the shareware episode, but never much further than that.
The hardest part for me in playing this game was trying to set aside my DOOM-bias and to consider it from as clean a slate as possible. I didn’t do a good job of that because going into it I was thinking “oh it’s just a series of confusing mazes without an automap” and “the controls are going to suck because you can’t circle strafe” and all the usual complaints about this game.
But anyway, none of that was an issue and I loved (almost) every minute of it. Turns out it’s really fun to go around killing Nazis (not so much the poor dogs) and stealing their gold. The worst part about it was I kept getting the ‘theme song’ stuck in my head and whistling it out loud (it’s not a song you want to get caught whistling in public).
My approach was to basically just focus on completing the level rather than maximising my score. That means taking out as many Nazis as I could, and reaching the end of the maze. I didn’t want to ‘wall hump’ myself into insanity trying to find every possible secret.
The mazes are indeed confusing, and you get lost, and overwhelmed when you open a door to find a big open room with four more doors to explore. But you muddle your way through them, get the keys and move on. I think I only ever had to look at a map for one level (the only level where a key is hidden behind a secret).
The controls do feel a little primitive, but they work and usually the spaces aren’t big enough where something like circle strafing will actually do you much benefit, so it’s fine. Just get used to pushing ALT every now and again.
Some of the elements like ‘score’ and ‘lives’ are redundant, but they do add replay-ability to it (ie, playing with different rule-sets, or trying to get 100% across the board).
The secrets are totally random, but boy is it satisfying when you hear the sound of those walls opening up.
This ticked all the boxes for me. I got to play a game that was in my gaming ‘periphery’ but that I had never completed before, and at the same time get a greater appreciation for the later FPSs that were so fundamental to my gaming experience. That’s what DOS gaming is all about for me. If it hadn’t been game of the month I would have probably let my preconceptions get the better of me and left it sitting on my C: drive unplayed.
Overall, this game is like listening to AC/DC – each level/song is basically the same, but it’s a damn good level/song so I’ll keep playing it.
MartliParticipantI did a write up of my main DOS rig (a pentium MMX) on Vogons for anyone interested: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=99005
I have two other Win98 rigs that I also do some DOS gaming on too (Pentium III with Voodoo3 and a Pentium 4).
MartliParticipantWell I can definitely see a consensus forming here!
The whole mouse/keyboard combo thing is interesting. Like you TigerQuoll I didn’t realise the ID shooters were intended for mouse/keyboard combinations until very recently. Everyone I knew back in the day played keyboard only. The hint guides Wesbat posted confirm that though, and I believe John Romero himself confirmed it via some tweets – apparently the arrow keys are because John is left-handed, so it’s sort of a reverse WASD:
https://twitter.com/romero/status/1247118205849669637?lang=en
https://twitter.com/romero/status/473587688977596416
MartliParticipantI managed to squeeze in a ‘standard’ game of the deluxe edition before the month wrapped up. Result: a victory over ‘Ludendorff’ no less (he’ll say he was stabbed in the back, but don’t listen to him).
Overall, my impressions are largely unchanged from my earlier post where I tried out a few ‘basic’ games. The standard game was a much better fit, and a bit more enjoyable and varied for that reason. The main thing is to just keep building ships, especially battleships in the late stage of the game.
This probably isn’t one I’ll revisit, at least soon, but it was great to experience. To me, this game is quite ahead of its time. I can see its influence in games like civilisation (of which I’m a big fan of the 4th installment) and so I certainly owe a debt of gratitude to this enjoyable but time-consuming game. A game to pay homage to, but a game that has ultimately been superseded.
MartliParticipantThat would be cool, half the Shiny team went on to make one of my all time favourite games The Neverhood, a (windows) game made entirely in claymation and with characters very much resembling Earth Worm Jim.
MartliParticipantGreat to see its on the radar!
MartliParticipantAgree with your summary, Wesbat. Cool game, but it just takes forever! I love a good 4X game though, so this just hits all my dopamine centres and I definitely got that familiar feeling of obsession that I get from these types of games.
I had a quick go at ‘war-game of the century’ to get a feel for it, and have played through a couple of games on the ‘deluxe’ edition.
My first impression was “wow, you mean I don’t have to worry about economy OR keeping my population happy, and I can focus ONLY on military production and strategy?!”. I thought this would make the game quite simple, but as the game progresses you end out having quite a lot to think about. I found I would easily lose track of units stationed inside my cities, and it was quite time intensive to take stock of them all without a summary window like in other 4X games.
The long build times in particular require a fair bit of future planning. Control of the seas really counts here and ships take AGES to build, so you need to make sure you don’t neglect that otherwise you’ll just not be able to progress in the end game.
Likewise, what appear to be basic manoeuvres/invasions can take a long time to execute, as you have to navigate production, transportation/concetration, and sometimes even your own traffic jams!
I did not find the UI very intuitive to start with, particularly in WGOTC. I just wanted to click on everything I wanted to deal with then and there rather than work through the order of moves determined by the game. This resulted in a few bungled moves (thinking I was in survey screen). I definitely recommend skimming over the manual to understand the different screens and keyboard commands etc. Once you get the hang of that, then the rest of it is pretty self explanatory. The ‘W’ key (for wait) is very important so you can sequence your units moves right. Took me a while to figure that out…
One frustration was also the combat variables/odds. I couldn’t tell if there was an obvious way to know if I’d win a conflict or not? I’d be keen to know if there is, other than a unit’s relative hit points etc. To me this just seemed a bit random and I wanted something that would indicate whether a battle is worth picking or not. More often than not though, I just threw caution to the wind (maybe that’s what they want you to do?).
In deluxe I played a few ‘basic’ games. In these games planes aren’t available and you can see all the enemy’s moves and production. This is probably too basic, but a useful introduction. On my second game I was able to quite quickly isolate my enemy’s city and destroy their transports while I built up a big enough invasion force to take them out, so yeah, definitely too basic. I will have a crack at a ‘standard’ game soon which I imagine is similar to the standard WGOTC game.
The music is… annoying… but helpful so I know what type of unit I’m moving I guess. But hey we’re not in it for the music right? This is all about guns and conquest.
Overall, love it, just wish it didn’t take so long.
MartliParticipantDo we include the “spear of destiny” prequel in this too?
MartliParticipantThis would be a good subtopic for the eventual podcast: games based on the WOLF3D engine. I’ve got the two “Blake stone” games in my GOG library but haven’t played them – are they worth a go? Maybe March will be a good excuse to get them running.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Stone:_Aliens_of_Gold
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Stone:_Planet_StrikeThen of course there’s Rise of the Triad which was already extensively covered in 2021.
Wikipedia lists some others too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wolfenstein_3D_engine_games any of these worth a go?
MartliParticipantA cricket game would be great, if only to confuse the hell out of those who aren’t from “the empire”. I didn’t realise cricket 97 was a DOS game, I had many fond memories playing this with my brother, serenaded by the timeless commentary of the one and only Richie Benaud. I have an “Ashes tour edition” on CD-ROM along with a “New Zealand team disc” which I think is just a patch for the main game, although this is the Windows 95 version of the game, so blasphemy in these parts 😉
MartliParticipantThis was my first time playing this game, and first time doing a DCG game of the month. I think I made it to about level 4 or 5 before deciding to move on. Apparently this means I didn’t even make it past the tutorial levels, perhaps I should have persevered for a better experience! In my defence, I did get a little side-tracked this month with the birth of my second son :-).
I think the approach to combat (or lack thereof) is ultimately what put me off going deeper into this game.
On the positive side, I really liked the dark vibe of this game, the gritty dungeons, the beastly creatures inhabiting a grim underbelly, the overtly lovey-dovey township names, the misanthropic narrator, and general doom and gloom. The game is really quite unique in this regard.
The dungeon building was kinda fun (once I got the hang of how big to build each room), but started to feel somewhat formulaic after a while. I also liked the excitement of exploration, and trying to prioritise which rooms to build when and where.
But I just couldn’t help feeling that when it came to combat it was all just a bit random. Each fight just felt like I was flailing about helplessly and ultimately succeeding, and that it was ultimately just a numbers game (number of creatures and training level).
I think I will revisit this game eventually, but I’ll have to start from scratch as I accidentally lost my save game in an overzealous clearout of my DOS PC (also a pentium MMX, although I’m using a CF card so no defragging on that!).
MartliParticipantThanks for the warm welcome, mate. Definitely using the ol’ lap technique and the wife certainly appreciates it. Racing games are a hit, especially when I crash spectacularly in stunts, and I’ll definitely be going with Kings quest or space quest over Larry!
