"I like a lot of modern shooters too, for different reasons that I like older ones - variety, graphics, spectacle, themes, story."

Yeah, many of them are really good. I just don't understand the need to refer to modern shooters as having some sort of disease. It's ridiculous. Modern shooters are great!

"Any modern shooter that combined those with exploration, solid control feel, and visceral action would be ace."

I haven't played it but I've heard that STALKER is kind of like that. Large environment, open world-ish, but still a solid shooter. 

and so buggy that I sold it a couple of days after buying. Last game I bought btw... 

Pretty sure it's patched by now. Guys are always talking about playing on it other boards that I visit. 

...began with Half Life, then Counter Strike, then continued through further military/tactical ops/WW2 sims. Somewhere in there the sense of fun got lost, along with the wacky gonzoid OTT designand the sense that anything could be done even if it didn't thematically fit.

Pre-Half Life the sky was the limit, you could design anything, and as long as it was a blast it was cool. Post-Half Life things got serious. Everything had to accurately reflect the real world to some extent. Insane crap was no longer welcome.

And that's Modern Shooter Disease. 

Having actual settings is a good thing. Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Bioshock - these are all games that are far better for having a cohesive environment.

Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake have cohesive themes too, BTW. You just happen to like them. :) 

I recently bought STALKER for �2 in the steam sale, having quite enjoyed what I played of it at a friend's house. It is quite a good game, but the 'exploration' factor is achieved by setting it in a huge sandbox world rather than by cunning level design that invites the player to look round dark corners or follow mysterious sounds.

As far as cohesive environments go, they're all well and good until you get half way through the game and find yourself bored shitless because the designers were far too constrained by 'cohesion' to add any surprises or interesting deviations. TBH, I got bored of Bioshock's environment before I even owned the full game! It was a great design, but it was their ONLY design. 

Quake doesn't have a cohesive theme at all . . . 

Sure it does. Cthulhu mythos + army bases with slipgates. It's not a GREAT theme, but it does exist. 

But it's very loose indeed - castles and knights, boxes of ammo everywhere, the player having shotguns an Ogre with a chainsaw and grenade launcher.

I'd say its alot less cohesive than most games out there. 

But:

Q: Why am I in this dungeon with a rocket launcher?

A: Because you came through a slip gate.

Isn't something most modern games would be able to get away with.

And:

Q: Why does that Ogre carry those weapons?

A: Because it's cool and works for the gameplay. 

Certainly it's looser but they definitely tried to have SOMETHING there that made sense, on some level. 

Spawn / Tarbaby's would either be removed or handicapped so that someone higher up who played for a short span of minutes wouldn't die. 

It all needs to be explained now. 

I would have removed the fucking tar babies myself had I been on the team. Worst enemy ever. :) 

you're not going to like tarbaby v2 ;) 

Your mistake appears to be in assuming that a 'theme' has to have something in common with 'reality'.

Not to get too personal or anything, but one of my gripes about RMQ is the health vials in medieval levels. To me, that's just trying to force a sense 'realism' on something that's better without. 

Just a blob really - not bad for experimental modelling techniques ;)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a good game, very deep game infact, and once it gets going pretty enthralling. But it was buggy as hell out of the box. Weird really I dont understand. 1 thing - Mr SPIRIT - if you were to re-aquire a copy of stalker for very little money which it costs nowadays, install Oblivion Lost mod - basically this repairs the game. What I dont understand is why there are mosters in the packs includuded with the game which had been seemingly programmed out of the game just before release (!). Oblivion Lost mod (2.2 i think is the most recent one) also fixes the gameplay - gun accuracy, as a major part! It also puts "blow out" events back into the game (which AFAIK were meant to be in the vanilla version too but never made it at release.

Wierd. Very weird. Its like someone sabotaged the game just before its release. badly. 

Because the vials look bad (they do) or just that they're replacing in the first place?

Nehahra did the same (not saying that let's us copy whatever we want from them with auto-justification) - did you have the same opinion there?

In any case, complaints are usually useful. Not always in the way the complainer intended, but there you go :) 

...began with Half Life
Hmmm...nice theory. So , by it's excellence , HL1 spawned an army of imitaters. 

The vials look absolutely fine and I have no problem with the notion of replacements where they're needed. My issue with them is that for me, a big part of Quake's theme/atmosphere is the mixture of tech, medieval and gothic. If you start differentiating completely between the three prevalent Quake themes then you lose the feeling of a vast multiverse that's been slowly bleeding together to become one inexplicable Lovecraftian nightmare. 

I get what you mean now - it's under discussion. 

Heh, my love-hate relationship with the fuckers reached a whole new level after the 'Pain Maze' in warpc ;)

About the health powerups - I think having tech powerups in a medieval setting absolutely does break the cohesion, it's just that we're somewhat desensitized to it after 13 years. Text_fish's explanation for the stylistic blend is interesting - I'd always semi-unconsciously assumed that the stuff had been teleported there by your Marine superiors back on Earth - a leap of logic which doesn't make a lot of sense either.

I don't think it would damage the integrity of the Quake Universe to differentiate worldtypes with different powerup styles. If anything, I'd say go all the way and do it for ammo too, if possible. Given that the ogres carry grenades and sometimes nails, it's logical for them to be there. And come to think of it, what human would invent a fucking nail gun? That's obviously something the quake marine found on his otherworldly travels. And spinning floating guns? Yes, very realistic. Don't think about this stuff too hard folks, there's no point except fun. 

i thought the soundtrack was the best thing about Q2.

stalker was great. stalker - call of pripyat was how the original should have been... had the publishers not had the upper hand.

i did enjoy quake 2 , but if you are going to remake it in Q4, then for christ's sakes add the atmosphere that it was lacking in the original. 

first ziffon, now iart, next we will see elek return. 

Humans did invent nail guns, albeit not as weapons. Perhaps Earths forces were so depleted by inter-dimensional warfare that they resort to modifying domestic items for use as weapons. How likely is it that humans would equip modern day soldiers with huge axes, afterall?

Though to be honest, I came to the conclusion some time ago that most of the story of Quakes invasion of humankind played out long before we set foot in the slip-gate complex. The human forces have been scattered and defeated and any that remain will simply spend the rest of their lives jumping from one dismal realm to another, surviving merely for the sake of survival. Occasionally they may find themselves back in what was once human territory, but that is now as hostile to them as anywhere else so they just keep moving. There's no beginning, middle or end to this story and that's what I find so beguiling about it.