http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/30/wrack-doesnt-ruin-doom-hopefully/

Reminds of RetroBlazer quite a bit. 

Looks like it has really REALLY boring level design.

A lot of developers seem to confuse "old-skool" with "crap". 

I honestly couldn't watch much of the video. The fight with those large robots after they hit the red button almost put me asleep. I've never seen such a dull shotgun before. The lack of feedback/flnching or such from the mentioned fight and later doesn't exactly help either.

Many people do seem to miss the point with this 'old skool' thing with FPS. Just because the game doesn't play like COD and you run around in various square rooms fighting enemies like in the 90s doesn't mean it's 'like Doom' and going to be fun.

It's the level layouts (and then design) which tend to fall short. :/ 

most "old skool shooters" made these days tend to be arena shooters with waves of dumb enemies. The level design is dull and generic typically.

I never really understand why this is, if you look at the real old-skool shooter games, ie. most of the older id games, they are nothing of the sort. Either these developers are incredibly lazy or incredibly uninspired.

Wracked will have it's own level editor on release however, it looks very similar to worldcraft. Just fyi. 

shit level design, even shitter enemies and combat. cell shading as always looks kind of cool, but it's only hiding a pretty shitty game. that needs a lot more work.

when, for the love of god, are developers going to stop putting fucking spiders in their levels? Daikatana should have permanently ended developers love affair with insects. 

"Feel" is the hardest thing to nail in a game. They have the basic mechanics - fast movement, guns, enemies, pick ups - but it doesn't have any feel. There's no kick. It's all very sterile and meh... 

Looks so bland and not fun. As Willem points out, the weapons seem to lack oomph. The shotgun looked like it was spraying buckshot everywhere but killing enemies regardless of the awful spread. Plus it had a crappy sound (youtube video fault maybe?) and animation.

Daikatana might have had crappy little spiders, but it actually had some fucking awesome weapons. Shotcycler was the best shotgun ever. The RL was pretty nice in dkt too. Don't really remember the other weapons because I deleted the game after a bug with the shitty "AI" "helpers" prevented me from finishing a level.

Also, if you're going to throw 200 crappy mechanical spiders at me, give me some explosives, not a lame sword.

Among us, we could probably make a nice old skool fps, but Quake already exists so I'm not sure there is much point. What was the last really good old skool fps anyone played that isn't Quake? 

 

Painkiller was pretty oldschool.

Also: A lot of developers seem to confuse "old-skool" with "crap".

Yes.

"No, no, it's supposed to be shit, it's oldschool!" 

Defines old school as a lot of these developers seem to want to emulate. But instead they emulate the dearth of shit Doom clones that came afterwards and nobody wanted. 

Some modern developers seem to think that oldschool means that they just threw the game together, that they didn't work hard for months on end and impose crunch of themselves (before that term was coined) in order to make a great game.

So they do a half-arsed job without any soul or proper balancing, then slap the name old school on it when all it deserves is 'poor'. 

Soldier of Fortune 1 

"Oldschool" is used quite freely in certain contexts, as if the term was a definte concept, while in reality it closely relates to feelings of nostalgia, which differ from person to person and over time. If there was a new game that's 100% like Doom, it might still not get the same love and everything, simply because it's judged from a different context (now vs. 17 years in retrospect). I was actually going to make a discussion thread about this topic for some time... 

And I'm not going to attempt to define it because I don't think you can. I think most FPS's stopped being oldskool after Half-Life 1 - suddenly it was all about coherent stories, and a coherent progression through a convincing environment. A lot of the abstract and arcadey elements seemed to vanish. Yeah, you had stuff like Painkiller that ignored all that, but Painkiller sadly forgot to add any interesting gameplay. 

I enjoyed Painkiller, but as a game, Serious Sam is far, far better. Serious Sam doesn't have the level design complexity of Doom or Quake, either, but it does have even greater monster variety and uses that variety well, and becomes it's own game.

Really the level design and variety is a key thing always missed. I think a lot of people, especially in reviews, haven't actually played Doom, or played it years and years ago and don't actually remember what it's really like.

Having said this, comparing the default maps of Doom to Quake's maps or modern user made wads like Scythe or Speed of Doom is pretty amazing. You see how unfocused and tedious a lot of Doom maps were, and how refined the craft has become :) 

PS The idea that 'arena combat' is oldschool is pretty funny really, because that's exactly what a modern shooter level does. Stick you in a fixed area and spawn stuff for you to kill, move to next area, repeat. 

DNF felt a little old skool to me, in that the gameplay was not really all that complicated by the awful plot, and it really seemed that it was an anything goes kind of game. Almough many of the levels were super generic, there were a few gems in there such as the one set in the fast food restaurant where you are shrunk down and have to navigate many obstacles for whatever reason...

Then again, due to its ridiculous development, I think DNF also showed the difference between pre and post half-life fps games, since it seemed like they started off as a classic shooter with a few crazy elements, then later toned things down and tried to match what hl and later hl2 had done.

I id make a new Quake, I doubt it will lack a story or obviously linear levels, but I hope id at least look at why we are still making levels for it 16 (argh!) years on. 

Finally played Bioshock and rated it 9/10. Pretty lenient because the gameplay got a bit shit in the second half of the game.

Review here:
http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/reviews/2012/bioshock.php

Looks like Crysis is my game of the year for 2007 now that I've played everything. 

So apparently the first three "DLC" for Risen 2 are already included in the game --> and can be unlocked by a simple cheat code! While the pirate clothes are usable just like that, Steelbeard's treasure isle and the Stormisle expansion will lack the corresponding dialogue voiceovers, but they're still fully playable with subtitles. The only actual downloadable part is the dialogue files.

On the one hand, this is a case worthy of outrage similiar to the ME3 controversy, but on the other hand it's also quite a lol. I'd like to think PB did it on purpose as a sort of retort to this dick move by Deep Silver. :D 

Most DLC's are already inside the game and unlocked when you buy them. It's how games are made. Downloadable Content typically isn't, because games are built in a modular form and the publishers only want to pay once.

Also, making genuine DLC incurs greater costs from Microsoft / Sony. 

DLC = Downloadable Content. 

Forget the acronym and the orginal meaning of it, Bal. Bonus content (or the majority of it, anyway) for add-on packs and extra 'DLC' is often included with the assets for the original version of the game, as ijed says.

The nerd rage that ensues when gamers get wind of it is always at least vaguely amusing, but it's getting a little tired nowadays due to sheer repetition. I'm always completely astonished that the indignant spankers getting up in arms about it completely ignore the business aspects of it and can only repeat ITS ON THE DISK SO I ALREAdY PAID FOR IT again and again, like a toddler having a tantrum. 

I remember rumours, playing the Quake 1 demo, that the other 3 episodes were unlockable if you just had a certain "hack." Lol, as if the other episodes and extra monsters etc were included in the quake demo - why bloat the demo DL size especially in those days.

That said there is absolutely a psychological difference between "I'll sell you this cookie jar," and "well technically you already have the cookie jar, but I'll sell you a key to get into it." The latter pisses people off, I don't understand how you don't understand that Frib. People's calculation of winning, losing, and especially "having a right" or "getting screwed" are not necessarily rational. Seriously, don't give them data they can't unlock and then offer to sell them the key, it's douchey - sorry for thinking like a caveman about it heh. 

I know from my experience on Gears that this is not entirely true. Generally, we're working on DLC content after the game ships. Are there recent examples of companies having shipped DLC content on the original game disc? 

I do understand, and you're right from an absolute perspective about the psychology behind it... but seriously, after the initial outrage, why can't people just take a step back and actually think about it?

- Buying the physical disc doesn't mean you 'own' what's on it. You're paying for the advertised content and set of features, and gaining the right to use them only in the ways set out in the EULA. I'm not saying I necessarily approve of these practices, but that's the terms and conditions that we're agreeing to when we purchase the games.

- Further to the above, just because it's on the disc (or in the initial download) doesn't mean you paid for it. The extra content cost extra money to develop, and the developer/publisher wears that cost under the assumption that they can recoup (and hopefully profit) via the 'DLC' fees.

- It costs a lot of money to deploy a patch or update on services such as Xbox Live. Not a trivial amount, either.. it's enough that even the big boys hesitate because the cost could cut heavily into profits or even cause them to lose money. This is why the Xbox version of TF2 didn't get all the free incremental updates that the PC version did, if you recall. For this reason, bundling the extra content on the dics makes a lot of sense.

- Sometimes having the extra content is done in part for the convenience of the users. A recent example was one of the Street Fighter games, where all of the extra characters (which were to be sold as 'DLC' later on) were on the disc in part to allow players to join servers and play against those characters (rather than being locked out of the game entirely, or having to download the content just to get in the game).

- Not everyone has fast/cheap/always on internet.

You don't have to be a developer to understand these things, the average gamer that follows the news could connect the dots (and to their credit, they often do).