From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Alright, another month has passed, and you all know what that means.
We need to all share our playlists of the games we had fun with over
the last 31 days. So let's just hop right into it and get this thing
started? You all ready? Here we go.
Superbrief
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* S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
* Kraven Manor
* The C.H.A.O.S. Continuum
* Crysis 3 Remastered
Maximum Verbosity
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* STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1643320/STALKER_2_Heart_of_Chornobyl/
My major gripe with the original STALKER games was that the game-world
was partitioned into separate levels. Admittedly, each map was
impressively large --for 2007, at least-- but the divisions made the
world feel broken and incomplete. The map borders made the world feel artificial, like you were on giant sets. It was difficult to get an
idea of where each area sat in relation to the next, which meant that
it was hard to gauge if you were advancing or not. It affected the
game mechanically too; you could, for instance, always escape a
difficult combat simply by crossing into another map. Plus, compared
to contemporary games like "Elder Scrolls: Oblivion" or "Grand Theft
Auto IV", the piece-meal world felt primitive and yesteryear. Wouldn't
it be better if the whole game could take place on one giant cohesive
map?
"STALKER 2" finally delivered on this promise but, alas, it didn't
make for a better game. In fairness, "STALKER 2" wasn't disappointing
because of its single-map open-world design. It was all the rest of
the jank that brought the experience down.
In fact, conceptually I rather liked the single large map. Being able
to walk between the Rookie Camp (start of the first game) all the way
to Yaniv and then later into Pripyat (locations in the third game) was
a fun experience. Finally I could see how all the disparate pieces of
the world connected! All the regions of the first three STALKER games
are included, even if they have seen a bit of redesign in their
layout. Still, there are a lot of recognizable moments: the junkyard
from the first game, the swamps from the second, the ships-aground
from the third, and many more.
Unfortunately, for all that the map is now combined, it still relies
heavily on invisible (and not-so-invisible) walls to funnel you about.
That river? Immediate death because you have Instant-Drowning skills.
That shoulder-high wall? Impassable because you can't jump worth a
damn. That low ridge? You can't climb it, despite the many obvious toe
and hand-holds. That flimsy door made of rotting wood? It's locked,
and until the plot gives you the key it might as well be made of
adamantium.
Even this wouldn't be so bad if traversal was so tedious. It's not
just that there's no direct line anywhere, but the anomalies (weird
phenomena that injure or kill you if you walk into them) slow down
your travel to a crawl, and the AI is stupidly aggressive. You can't
walk five minutes without getting into a firefight. Stealth barely
works, and forget about running away: between your extremely limited
stamina and tiny carry capacity, you're not going anywhere fast... at
least not for very long.
All these downsides were forgivable when the maps where 2007-era
small, but as big as it is in "STALKER 2"? It's wearisome. All the
moreso since there just isn't very much variety in the landscape. Do
you like brown fields, thin forests, crumbling buildings, and bogs?
That's 90% of "STALKER 2" right there.
The combat is as expected for the series. Gunfights can be lethal;
take two or three shots and you're probably dead. Your guns
--especially the starter weapons-- are underpowered and inaccurate,
and the game rewards careful set up and good aiming. It's not quite to
my taste, but I accept that it's fairly well done for the style. I'm
less forgiving about how the AI doesn't seem to suffer any of the
penalties the player does; they have, at times, almost aimbot
precision for shooting me through walls, their weapons never jam, they
toss grenades with incredible skill, and they never, ever run out of
ammo (but, of course, when you loot the bodies their guns are always
broken and empty). The AI itself isn't particularly smart either, and
while there is some infighting between different enemy types, they'll
instantly swap targets to shoot at the player given half the chance.
What else? The story is a mess, filled with weird Soviet-super-science mysticism, not at all helped by the poor translation. Too much of the
story is info-dumped on you through PDAs and notes, so you'd better
enjoy reading (but do it in a safe spot because the game won't pause
when you do). Also, you'd better replay the first three games because
"STALKER 2" is heavily dependent on your knowing what happened during
those games and who did what. Remember Nibbles or Sidorovich or the
Doctor from the first three games? No? Well, "STALKER 2" isn't going
to give you much reminder of who these people were or why they matter.
Then, finally, there are the technical aspects. While not excessive, I encountered more than my fair share of bugs; doors that didn't open,
characters that didn't appear, or easily getting myself trapped by
wandering into an area before the game expected I'd be able to do so.
There were also a couple of crash-to-desktop events. It wasn't too
bad, but it was an added annoyance on top of everything else. More
pointedly, the game doesn't seem well optimized. While I didn't suffer
from poor framerates (even at 'Epic' settings, the framerate seemed
pretty smooth), this game worked my CPU like no other program, and I
had to reduce quality settings when CPU temps started topping 90
degrees. This was especially obvious with that silly 'compiling
shaders' on start-up which, fortunately, was skippable (and didn't
seem to cause any slow-downs by doing so). Yet for all that, the game
didn't impress me visually -- or at least, not any more than any other
modern AAA-quality game.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I was just expecting too much of the game.
But I had hoped that "STALKER 2" would be more than another generic
open-world experience with the usual brain-dead AI and tedious map
design. But take away its Slavic tone and lethal combat, and that's
all this is... with added jank. I hate riffing on the game, because it
is, after all, the much-awaited sequel to a beloved classic (and made
by Ukranians in the middle of a war-zone to boot)... but the game was
extremely disappointing experience overall.
* Kraven Manor
https://store.steampowered.com/app/296630/Kraven_Manor/
They say this game was developed as a student project, and as such,
it's really quite excellent. It shows off a lot of skill in art
design, level design, mechanics, story and gimmick. It's a passing-with-highest-marks effort as far as I'm concerned.
It's not quite so good as an actual game though.
Then again, maybe it's just that the game isn't in a genre that I much
enjoy, or perhaps the problem was that I was expecting something
different. I was hoping it was more of a traditional adventure, with
puzzles and inventory and all the paraphernalia that comes with that
classic genre. But Kraven Manor has very little of that in its DNA.
What it actually turns out to be is more aligned with the 'powerless
horror' game, where the protagonist has little ability to actually
fight the nasties lurking in the dark. True, this game has a twist
that makes it slightly different from the usual; in games like
"Amnesia", merely glancing at the monstrosities injures you, so you
spend much of the time cowered in dark corners, studiously not looking
in the direction of the horror. In "Kraven Manor", its the opposite;
the monsters only move when you AREN'T looking at them, so you
maneuver yourself --usually by walking backwards-- to ensure they are
always in view. It's different... but not really much more fun.
Also, the game has fun-with-portals by letting you pick up rooms and
move them around the house, which opens up routes otherwise not
available. It's a neat but under-utilized trick.
Which is really a description of the whole game: neat but
underutilized. It's a bunch of interesting ideas that never really
gels together into a whole. As a student-project, it's A-for-effort.
It shows that the team had good ideas and the know-how to make them
work. But it's a fairly shallow and short affair that feels more demo
than game.
Credit to the team, but still not a game I'd recommend anyone bother
to play unless they are die-hard horror fans who must partake of every experience. There are just better, more full-featured games out there
and your time is limited enough.
* The C.H.A.O.S. Continuum
https://www.mobygames.com/game/10190/the-chaos-continuum/
I've long expressed my unhappiness with the 1993 adventure game,
"Myst" but that always had less to do with the game itself and more to
do with its effect on the gaming industry. Quite simply, the amazing
success of "Myst" (and the comparative cheapness of its development)
led to a slew of half-baked imitators that drowned the hobby in
terrible games and essentially killed the adventure genre for nearly a
decade.
Case in point: "The C.H.A.O.S. Continuum", a 1994 adventure game that
utilized Macromedia Director, a ' multimedia authoring platform' (and predecessor to Flash) that let even the most modest studios hack
together a Myst-like adventure with little effort.
I first purchased this game back in the 90s, but (as I recall) never
actually finished it. This was less because of any innate difficulty
and more because it was just such an incredibly boring and tedious
game. It's biggest selling point was that it utilized a 'unique visual treatment [that] gives 24-bit look in 8-bit'; in actuality, it was a
game of dingy greys and greens that looked every bit its 256-color
palette. Over the years I made numerous attempts to play and re-play
it, but the underlying architecture was so fragile and so dependent on
1990s software (it was designed for the original version of Windows
3.1) that attempts to get it running on anything more modern were
futile. I finally had to hack together an x86Box session just to play
the game.
"The C.H.A.O.S. Continuum" is not a good game, but I'll give credit to
the developers for their vision, if not their competence. A rogue AI
has taken over the Titan Space Colony (and later an orbital station)
and trapped its creators in a parallel universe. You, controlling a
robotic probe, are tasked to explore the abandoned station, gathering
up the codes and maps necessary to get to the heart of the rogue AI
and deactivate it before it can expand its plans to take over the rest
of the solar system. Drab as the visuals actually look, the game tries
to portray a futuristic colony pretty well for a game of its era, and
the maps are impressively large, with hundreds of 'rooms' to traverse.
Unfortunately, the vast, vast majority of these rooms are nearly
identical and their only purpose is to move you one step closer to
your actual destination. There's nothing to do in any of them: nothing
to pick up, nothing to interact with, no information to glean through environmental storytelling, nobody to talk to. It's just grey corridor
after grey corridor after grey corridor. Worse, the layout is
purposefully mazelike, which not only makes it easy to get lost, but
even if you know exactly where you are going, there's rarely anything interesting to see.
Even when you get somewhere you need to be, the puzzles are extremely simplistic. There is the 'Simon Says' match-the-colors locks, a maze
of lasers, and an occasional killer drone that (if you not quick
enough on the 'Fire' button) will blow up your robot probe. In other
areas, all you do is press a button or two to download the appropriate data-file that will unlock the next section. Be quick figuring out the
puzzles though. One or two mistakes and your probe explodes; game
over, and time to reload (so save often!)
Where "The C.H.A.O.S. Continuum" really fails is in its lack of
direction. You're expected to wander the mazelike halls until you
stumble upon a room where you can actually do something. This results
in a lot of tedious back-and-forth, with little reward for the effort.
There's no hidden details that you can click on to learn more about
the world or your opponent; no depth to the puzzles. It's the most
tedious point-n-click maze-design (with instant-death puzzles) pressed
onto CD-ROM. It's all trial-and-error and very little logic to any of
it.
It's easy to see why games like this destroyed the adventure game
genre. New users were rushing to the PC platform in the mid 90s, and
if my first experience with adventure games had been "The C.H.A.O.S.
Continuum" I probably never would have picked up another adventure
game after that. It's bad... but at least now I can say I finished it.
* Crysis 3 Remastered
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2096610/Crysis_3_Remastered/
So, I had to give "Crysis 3" another chance, and what better
opportunity to do that than by playing the remastered edition. Better
graphics, better optimizations, and no EA-App/Origin client to launch
first? What could be better?
Honestly, not playing the game at all. "Crysis 3" wasn't a very good
game in 2013, and it hasn't aged very well in the intervening 13
years.
And I don't mean the visuals. The graphics of this game are... well, I
wouldn't call them cutting edge, but the engine still impresses on a
technical front. The textures are looking a bit rough around the
edges, and there's a lot less detail in the underlying mesh that makes
up the game-world than is found in modern games, but it's not that far
behind. It's still not what I call a good looking game. There's a
difference between what the graphics engine can DO and what the
developers actually have it render... and the artists of "Crysis 3"
just aren't that good.
The easiest thing to pick on is all the superfluous effects used in
the game. Lights and shadows and water effects and god rays and
droplets on the screen and bloom and who knows what else. It robs the
game of any clarity or artistry. The developers were too busy showing
off what the engine could do to stop and think if all those effects
were needed, or just distracting. And boy are they distracting. Couple
to that the limited field of vision (max is 80 degrees; the default is
55!), too busy scenery and uninteresting setting (it's supposed to be
a ruined Manhattan, but it looks a lot like generic green-apocalypse),
and the game just fails to impress visually.
The gameplay is fine... for a 2010s corridor-shooter. It's as bland
and generic as a "Call of Duty" clone in mechanics and story. Well,
that's not quite true; it's story in "Crysis 3" is so trite and dull
it makes the narrative and characters in any "Call of Duty" game look sophisticated. The AI is routinely both smart and idiotic; at times
they are marvels of tactical combat, maneuvering around you and
setting up kill-zones in which to trap you with withering fire
(although I'm fairly sure this is sometimes accidental due to
respawning enemies). Other times they get stuck or walk one after
another around corners for me to gun down. There was much less variety
in enemy types than I remembered, and the battles tended to blend into
one another; none of the arenas were particularly memorable. But maybe
that's my fault for abusing the invisibility cloak and sniping the
enemies from afar most of the time.
I'd say "Crysis 3" feels like a tech demo, but it doesn't even do that
well. It uses all the engine's features, but never uses them in any
way that made me go, "Wow!". It was all a fairly dull and tedious
adventure with unexceptional combat and uninteresting level design. It
was a slightly-below average game in 2013, and just not worth playing
at all now.
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Well, that was fun. We should make this a regular thing. But anyway,
that's what I played last month. What about you?
What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2026?
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