Over the past 15 years (1995 – 2010), pc gaming sure has changed a lot.  As I look back, I also realize I miss some of those old games and the fan made modifications from the 1990s.  That time era was for games such doom, quake, diablo, diablo II, quake II, quakeworld, quakeworld  team fortress, capture the flag, half-life,,,,, you know, the epic kind of games.

In todays gaming market, rarely do I see a modification that gets the attention like what capture the flag, rune quake, quake world and rocket arena did. Its as if the fan made modifications get very little attention. And thats really sad, because modifications like Fortress Forever are truly great games.

I miss the days when games actually worked when they were released. Take left 4 dead 2 for example – it suffered from crashing to desktop bugs for 2 weeks after it was released.

Take a look at the quake series – Quake all the way to Quake 4:

Quake – no story plot, but still a great game.  One of the first games to feature atmosphere sounds and moving clouds.

Quake II – no atomosphere sounds, no moving clouds,,, it was like Quake II went backwards in time.

Quake III – no single player story plot, no story plot at all except deathmatch.

Quake 4 – 1/2 a story plot and a poor quality game.

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Tags: Diablo, Doom, Left 4 Dead, Quake, quake 2, quake 4, quakeworld tream fortress, team fortress

What made games like Doom, Diablo, Command and Conquer, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Halo and Left 4 Dead great games? They offered quality content, unique gameplay, and at an affordable price.

Quality content -A good story line, a good story plot that develops over the course of the game.  Even though Doom did not really have a developing story plot, it was described in the manual that came with the game.

This is also where the atmosphere of the game comes in.  How well does the game pull the player in?  Is the person simply “playing” the game, or are they being part of the game?  Does the play think about the game as simply “a game”, or do they think about how cool it would be to do that in real life?

Unique Gameplay – Something that has never been done before. Take Doom for example, when it came out, there were no other games like it on the market. Take Diablo, when it came out, there were no other games like it on the market. Take Left 4 dead, when it came out, there were no other games like it on the market.

Doom, Quake, Diablo, Left 4 Dead – all offered unique gameplay that has never been done before.

Quality Price – where can you spend $40 – $50 and get 6+ months of enjoyment?  Well, there are not many places you can do that.

What does not make a great game?  Marketing, eye candy, reusing the name from a great game.

Marketing – Valve marketed team fortress 2 for a long time, and its a sorry excuse for a team fortress game.  tf2 has turned into a role playing game, but still wears the team fortress name.

Eye Candy – Quake 4 has some great eye candy, but the level design is confusing.  Having to backtrack is an outdated game concept.

Just because a game “looks” good, does not make it a good game.

Reusing a name – Doom 3:Resurrection of Evil is probably the worst Doom game that ever came out.  Instead of making a quality game, the developers put something together, and relied on the Doom name to make the sales.

Post your comments in the What Makes a Game Great thread of the forums.

Tags: Counter-Strike, Diablo, Doom, great games, half-life, Left 4 Dead, quake 4

Steam has Serious Sam HD: First Encounter on sale through March 2nd. Regular price was $14.99, its on sale for $7.49

The 4 pack was $44.97 regular price. Until March 2nd, its on sale for $22.48.  $22.48 for a 4 pack seems like a pretty good price to me, except that the game has a metacritic score of 68.

The system specs are kinda low, which is good for people with older computers.  The recommend specs include an Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and only 1 gig of memory.

I just dont know, $7.49 for a game with a metacritic rating of 68. Is it worth it or not? Post your comments in this thread about Serious Sam.

Here is a random youtube video about Serious Sam

Tags: serious sam, Serious Sam HD

For all of you BioShock fans out there, BioShock 2 is available for pre-purchase on Steam. Regular price is $49.99, but its on sale for $44.99 for a limited time.

It looks like 2K Games learned their lesson the first time around and decided to include multiplayer in Bioshock 2. But, I winder if the multiplayer is going to use Gamespy or Steam? Will LAN support be included, or just internet?

Post your comments in the BioShock 2 available for pre-purchase thread of the forums.

Tags: 2k games, bioshock 2

The Steam Holiday sale has come and gone – it was fun while it lasted.  There were some good deals, and some not so good deals.

The ID package still does not have Quake 4, or Quake Wars – so its not a complete ID package.

There is no real Command and Conquer package to speak of.  When are we going to get C&C Gold, Red Alert or Red Alert 2 on Steam?

Painkiller: Resurrection 38 metacritic rating – why is that game even being offered on Steam? Surely there are some standards that games have to meet before their sold to the public?

The Unreal package seemed like a good buy – 5 games for around $13.  That one was difficult to pass up.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was on sale for $2, so I snatched that one up.

Now its time to start saving up some money for the 2010 – 2011 Steam Holiday sales.

Tags: steam holiday sale

Lets think something just for a minute. Think back to when Quake was released in 1996, and the number of modifications that were released shortly after.  Then lets consider what Valve software did with Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2, and the lack of modifications.

Valve software releases l4d, almost exactly a year later, l4d2 is released. This should have been when the modifications started to come out. Lets not pick on Valve, but they might be setting a poor example for other game companies to follow.

Lets go back and take a look at Quake:

Quake was released in June 1996
Team Fortress was released in August 1996
Threewave Capture the Flag was released sometime in 1996 – 1997, can not find an exact date
Rocket Arena was released sometime in 1997
Quake II was released in December 1997

Just with Quake alone we had 3 major modifications within about a year.

Now lets look at Left 4 Dead:

Left 4 Dead was released November 17, 2008
Left 4 Dead modifications?
Left 4 Dead 2 was released November 17, 2009

Where are the modifications for left 4 dead? Sure we have maps, but “where” are the total modifications? Am I missing something here?

With the quick release of left 4 dead 2 there is little need to develop full blown modifications.

My opinion, releasing a sequel so fast is going to have long term affects on the modding community – and not for the good either. In the long run we are probably going to see less modifications made, and those that are made are probably going to be of low quality.

Just in the past 5 – 6 years I have seen a massive downturn in the amount of fan based modifications that have been released.

Please post your comments in the fan based game modifications thread of the forums.

Tags: gaming modifications, left 4 dead modifications, quake modifications

This video covers some of the ground breaking games that have been released in the past 16 years. Some of the games in the video are Doom, Doom II, Final Doom, Quake, Quake II, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Quake III Arena, Doom 3, Counter-Strike:source, Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2.

Even though games like Duke Nukem, Sin, Blood, Call of Duty, Wolfenstein and Quake Wars and Quake Live were left, they deserve an honorable mention. There are only so many games that can fit into the video and regardless of which ones were included, some have to be left out.

Doom is considered the father of all first person shooters – even though it was not the first. It was the first first person shooter to create an atmosphere that pulled the player into an alternate reality.

Quake was the first first person shooter to have built in TCP/IP support.

Half-Life combined the finer points of Doom and Quake and included TCP/IP support.

Counter-Strike introduced the world to team based, objective based, reality gameplay. Where games like Team Fortress included unrealistic weapons, Counter-Strike used models based on real weapons.

Doom III tried to bring real fear and terror into a first person shooter.

Half-Life 2 introduced the Source engine that used real physics.

Left 4 Dead brought team based game play to a whole new level.

Post your comments in the First Person Shooter Games thread of the forum.

Tags: Doom, Duke Nukem, half-life, Left 4 Dead, Quake, Team Fortress 2

If anyone has information on this exploit in Left 4 Dead – Dead Air, please post it in this thread of the Left 4 Dead forums.  Somehow, Zoey was able to get through the invisible wall and get into a location where the special infected could not get to her.

This was in a random game of versus.

Here are some screen shots to show where Zoey was at.

The only way that the special infected was able t kill Zoey was through wave after wave of regular infected. After awhile the regular infected were able to wear her down. The boomer would spawn right next to her, she would shoot the boomer – getting the bile on herself. The regular infected would rush in and do some damage. If it were not for the regualr infected, this game would have gone on for a long, long time.

This goes back to the age old question – was Left 4 Dead finished when it was released?  Never in my gaming life have I ever seen a game with so many map exploits.  Its as if nobody even looked at the maps from a developer point of view.  The invisible walls might not be visible during gameplay.  But surely they can be seen in the developers kit.

Tags: Left 4 Dead, left 4 dead exploit

Starting November 22, 2009 you can play Killing Floor for free – but you have to have Steam installed.  This is a limited time offer and will expire in the next few days.

Killing floor is a type of horror action game where players play in a co-op mode.  Unlike Left 4 Dead where humans can control the zombies, Killing Floor is co-op only.

Tags: free weekend, killing floor, steam games, valve software

“Graphics” is a pretty generic term that can describe a wide range of “images” in a game.  There is the eye candy graphics that makes the game look pretty.  Kinda like a puppy dog when you want to say “oh how cuteeeee!”  But cute dogs can still leave a big pile of crap on your floor.  Then there are the graphics that pull the player into the game and make him/her part of the alternate reality that games try to create.

One thing is eye candy. This is how detailed the game “looks”. These are the textures on the walls, the details of the mountains, the details in the textures of the weapons, the players,,,,. Quality eye candy does not mean quality gameplay.

Then there is using graphics to improve the overall quality of the gameplay. This is done by creating an atmosphere. This can be done by adding a mountain range outside a window – as was done in the original Doom. Or creating burning building in the distance, as with Left 4 Dead. Having a quality atmosphere can help improve the game, because it pulls the player into the game.

Out of the popular PC games that have been released over the past 10 years, there are a lot that come to mind – Doom, Doom II, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Quake 4, Painkiller, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike:Source, Left 4 Dead, Fortress Forever, Doom III, Team Fortress Classic.

All game have graphics, but its “how” those graphics are used that makes them important.  How the graphics are used makes the difference between eye candy and creating an alternate reality.  Lets take 2 games as an example – Left 4 Dead and Fortress Forever.

The developers of Left 4 Dead created an atmosphere with their graphics, while the Fortress Forever Developers built some amazing looking levels.

Fortress Forever is a free Team Fortress modification for the half-life 2 Source engine.  Some of the levels have a massive amount of detail, while some of them are pretty straight forward.   In this image, the cranes in the background play no real part of the game.  But they do add a level of “depth” that makes the play feel that he/she is part of a bigger picture. Some of the levels have mountains in the background, while others have clouds, blue skys or industrial equipment.

Left 4 Dead is a zombie thriller action type game.  Most of the levels are based in a city, where burning buildings dot the skyline.  While the buildings do not actually affect the game, they create an atmosphere for the player.  This type of graphic pulls the player into the game and creates and alternate reality.

While the graphics of Fortress Forever and Left 4 Dead are different, they create 2 totally different “looks” for the game. The graphics of Left 4 Dead may not be as detailed as Fortress Forever, they do an excellent job of setting the “theme” of the game.

When you take a look at a game, and say “that looks really cool”. Think about “how” the developer is using the graphics. Are they being used to create an overall “feel”, or are the graphics being used to cover up poor game play.

Just because a game “looks” good, does not mean that it is a good game.

Post your comments in this thread of the gaming forum.

Tags: Doom, doom III, Fortress Forever, half-life, Left 4 Dead, Quake, quake 4