Doom’s Clones & Killers – Pt1

In this, the first of a four-part retrospective, FBT goes back to the best era in gaming (so he says) – The 1990s explosion and implosion of First Person Shooters

Part One: Gott im Himmel

They say in the Sixties everyone remembered where they were when JFK was shot. In the Eighties, everyone remembered where they were when John Lennon was shot. But in the Nineties, we remember doing the shooting – on December 10th, 1993, id unleashed Doom.

Built by gamers for gamers, Doom may have been underground but like an earthquake its impact was seismic, sending shockwaves through the gaming world and eventually reaching the real world; referenced in The Simpsons, Friends and ER, Doom was part of the nineties zeitgeist, gaming’s Nevermind or Pulp Fiction and in modern terms, it was bigger than Facebook, affecting workplace productivity and causing issues on company networks.

Doom even slowed Microsoft’s world domination; When their ads for Windows 95 asked ‘where do you want to go today?’ Gamers replied ‘DOS’ – the platform W95 was replacing and the only sure-fire way to game on PC. Gamers weren’t going to risk losing Doom (it was rumoured Doom was installed on more PCs than W95) and Microsoft, realising Doom’s dedicated fanbase was the future, developed Direct-X which allowed games to play ‘as’ a Window. It was a watershed moment; Doom was ported to Windows (by some bloke called Gabe Newell), and Bill Gates appeared ‘in’ Doom during a W95 Expo to prove Windows was the future – a video game created by a bunch of lads made Bill Gates, at the height of his power, say ‘if you can’t beat’em…’ It gave Gabe Newell some ideas too.

And Doom pissed off parents, like every good trend should. Doom wasn’t the first game to show death but this time you really were in there, up close – with a chainsaw. Stories of players passing out, getting motion sickness and post-traumatic stress triggered Parent Groups who classified Doom as top-tier evil alongside Ren & Stimpy. ‘Killology researcher’ David Grossman coined the phrase ‘murder simulator’ and it was said this new era of games could turn kids into killers; Doom was held accountable for the Columbine Massacre.

But none of that mattered to the gamers who discovered Doom that day; we had no idea we were loading up the You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat moment of gaming; we were in the Aliens Hive scene screaming ‘its game over man, game over!’ – And for any other game, it was. Doom was the new standard, and it launched a whole new race to be the biggest, baddest First Person Shooter – gamers couldn’t be happier. Parents, less so.

Games back then, loaded up through that DOS prompt and the shareware warning were way more exciting that anything around now. You really had no idea what you were getting into, even with a Doom Clone. It took commitment to finish a game in the nineties; we didn’t have any of your fancy auto-saves or mission skips, no walkthroughs; you had to really love a game to finish it and that stays with you. We sweated for the exit, got your head down and tapped spacebar until something opened. And the joy of finding the secret that had an exit! That meant secret level, that meant bragging rights, that meant pranks on friends. It was a great time. So, what happened? The FPS genre is awful now. Generic reheats, remakes, reboots; story-led, watered-down, XP-driven, gimmick-ridden bastard-childs of RPG. Thinking back to Doom, when is something gonna come out of nowhere and make us think ‘the fuck just happened?’ I’m going to replay FPS from Wolfenstein onwards until I track down Doom’s killer. Where it all went wrong.

Mein Leben! In May 1992 Wolfenstein 3D landed. We’d barely gotten over the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert and now we were blasting Nazis. Not sure what the connection is, but I admit I might have been listening to Extreme at the time. More than words can say how much I played Wolf back in the day; the only German I know is from Wolf (and Die Hard…) Replaying Wolf doesn’t just bring back embarrassing adolescent musical choices (I was also into Mr.Big for a while; don’t judge me, I liked Guitar Shredders at the time, Steve Vai rocks. Totally not a power-ballad phase), but it has fondly reminded me of Shareware; ripping a disk off the cover of a magazine I didn’t read and excitedly loading up every demo, game and crappy screensaver. Then borrowing the full game from mates. I think one of those mates still has me To Be With You CD single.

Wolf was Gamer’s You Know When You’ve Been Tango’ed moment. When we weren’t suffering tinnitus from ear-clapping each other in the playground, we were amazed at the fast-moving, unforgiving gameplay. It was exhilarating; Wolf wasn’t the first FPS but it was the first to get it right, to make you feel like you were there. I played Wolf endlessly, least when Gladiators wasn’t on. But unlike Jet, it’s not aged well. Really, Wolf is a maze layout fighting through pixelated Nazis over and over. I don’t know what I was expecting but once you’re through the first level you’ve played them all really, but you can appreciate the work, feel the energy that went into building this. It’s kinda quaint now and has that arcade feel but still, it’s fast and unforgiving – I expected years of digital shooting would make this a cake-walk but I spend as long reloading the game as I do the guns. If they had reload.

Wolfenstein is best left in the past; while it had me smiling, once those memories of singing Ebeneezer Goode stop flooding, the lack of ceilings and floors and the repetitiveness make Wolf a bit of a slog, but you must pay homage to the OG of FPS, the calm before the storm. What Wolf has done for me is get me excited for what’s coming next.

What came next was Blake Stone. I feel sorry for Blake, sent to a mad scientist’s space-station to stop his evil experiments; like the rest of us, he didn’t know what was coming. Released in December 1993, just before Doom landed, BS was completely steamrolled and I was mid-way through it when my friend appeared, waved a floppy and yelled ‘get ready to shit your pants’ – I remember it because I did shit my pants; that disc had Doom shareware on it. I also I never went back to BS. It felt like a kiddie game after Doom.

As I play it now, I realise I owe Blake an apology; it’s a really good game. It does look rough but there are some surprising touches absent from the others of the era; Blake gains health at vending machines and you’ll find scientists who give info – one of several ways this reminds me of Half-Life. Like all games of the era you’re looking for a key to progress but more logically, the keys unlock floors accessed via an elevator and you can return to a floor to further explore when better armed, rather than exit never to return – the floor layout, while basic is much more interesting than Wolf and the art design has a nice 50s Sci-Fi style to it, the antithesis of Doom’s slimy atheistic. It’s a lot more busy that Wolf’s basic look and while it may not have been intentional, BS feels like it was just having some fun; the monsters wouldn’t look out of place in a Goosebumps book and it has an Indy-inspired adventure feel to it. But that was exactly what we didn’t want at the time – Doom created the perfect run n’ gun; who wants to talk to Scientists, use vending machines, go back instead of relentlessly pushing forward? But there’s a lot to it, it’s harder than it looks and it’s crying out for an app re-release. It fun and worth a go if you’re bored of shitting your pants.

So this was it, September 12, 1993 – A moment I’ll never forget. Terri Hatcher in Lois & Clark. Three months later, Doom landed and nothing was the same again.

As the years passed I left Doom behind. I played it endlessly at first, but eventually recalled it becoming hollow once you’d gotten over shitting your pants and, especially after the Wolf and Blake experiences, I expect to find Doom equally dated – I’ve not played for at least ten years yet as soon as I get going, I remember secrets, barrels just around corners, which exit doors have an Imp behind them. Doom is so entrenched in my DNA, my first-born’s first word will be an Imp growl; and that familiarity isn’t the only thing I’m responding to – this is really good. Not in its scares or firefights, but the rhythm. I hadn’t appreciated how well balanced a game Doom is, how it subtly ratchets up the tension instead of exhausting you into giving up. Twenty plus years and modern shooters could still learn from this. Doom was like when you were a kid and found a wasps’ nest. You still poked it with a stick even though you knew better. Doom gave you a shotgun instead of a stick and there was no Mum with the Savlon and a scolding afterwards but you still went for it. That’s a good game.

Doom does, honestly, still have it. It isn’t even in my top ten but it should be; I realise now, Doom formed my opinion on every gun-orientated game since. It’s one thing to remember how good a game was, it’s another to be realising just how good it is. Doom 3 sucked because it went for the jump-scare. That’s not good level design or pacing, that’s lazy. No, worse than that, it’s a misunderstanding of Doom, where you hear the imp behind the door and you have to open it. That’s far scarier than something leaping out at you. You’re so into it that the minimal pixels and blocky movement melt into a pure visceral experience and while modern shooters may look the shit, they’re not In The Shit like Doom is – this is just a bunch of pixels, how is it triggering some caveman-survival instinct?

There’s a real subversive simplicity in Doom; you can describe it in a sentence, but you have to experience it to understand; Modern Shooters are nothing compared to your first Tour of Duty in Doom – take down a horde of invisible pinkie demons, then we’ll talk about your kill-streaks. Some of the impact has been lost, but when it all kicks off I’m still as mesmerised as when Terri Hatcher said “They’re real … and they’re spectacular.”

I wouldn’t have called Doom art back then, I do now.

Of course, Doom didn’t stop at the exit. The biggest shock was Deathmatch. Seeing your pal as a little Doomguy then fragging them with a rocket launcher was something gaming hasn’t ever surpassed; Multiplayer, co-op, online is a standard now but that’s nothing compared to LAN games where the only smacktalking was from your friend sitting opposite – this was just fun scrapping about, not a dickhead half-way round the word being a little big man on his mic. Fuck those guys, I miss the Doom Parties. Even when you were hilariously murdering each other, Doom brought us together. Nothing has ever topped that, and nothing ever can.

Replaying Doom does bring back some awesome memories, especially the best prank of all time on my ‘shit your pants’ mate – the secret level in episode 3. It’s a remake of the first level and I found it when I was playing alone. I saved it for future fun and at our next hang-out, suggested we speedrun episode 3. I went first and reached the exit … Then, when he was busy mocking my attempt, I loaded the secret level instead and let him have at it. His face when he hit the exit and sat back to crow but the Cyberdemon appeared instead – he actually jumped as if it was in the room with him. But then he sucked it down and got on with shooting, his voice trembling as he called me names. That’s Doom – panic and pals. I’ll admit the panic has waned, but it’s replaced with appreciation and the excitement is still there – Doom is brilliant. Who killed you? I shall avenge you. Just as soon as I’ve humped my rig over to my mate’s house and LAN’ed it up for old time’s sake.

By 1994, UK society was on the brink of collapse. Ch4 aired a lesbian kiss on Brookside and Frances Ruffle flashed Union Jack knickers (take that Ginger Spice) during a Top of the Pops performance; the children of Mary Whitehouse screamed the place down – they also felt affronted by Frances’ hip-swinging. The outrage. Hips! Swinging! Did we learn nothing from Elvis’ gyrations, sending an entire generation into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy? Good job that Brookside kiss turned us all homosexual otherwise it doesn’t bear thinking about. Society was at an end apparently though; our most beloved TV character (besides Beth Jordache) was Mr. Blobby?! How did he get a Christmas single and Zig n’ Zag didn’t?

There was little to do in the wake of Doom, except on Wednesdays when you’d get rudely awakened by the Dustmen. There was Pie in the Sky; while their game engine PitS was a bit Poundland, it was offered as an off-the-shelf product making PitS the archetype of Doom Cloning; dozens of PitS-powered shooters popped up and while they’re long-forgotten now, PitS should be remembered for filling many a floppy on the cover of PC Gamer while we waited, and watched Brookside.

And it was Doom II we were all waiting for. Released in September 1994, I was more excited about Doom II than Rachel’s haircut. I rushed it home and at first I was shrieking and screaming at the scale and intensity of it, but then I started to feel like I was playing mods of the original. And that bloody ending with the Icon of Sin – I do recall cheating and finding Romero’s head, although then I had no idea who it was. I had high-hopes for DII when I restarted this time, hoping for a new appreciation like the original, and to begin it is heart-stoppingly brutal; Those damn chain-gunners, that rocket-launching blob, the missile-launching skeletons, the goddamn Arch Vile, all (and more) between me and an exit that took effort to reach alive. Those are big levels. But then, that energy starts to dip. The expanded level-sizes are all good but it’s more of a survival game than an exhilarating rush like the original, and while the layouts are good, the larger size starts to be betray how little art design id had to work with – as good as it is, it gets samey; Doom was never a game to stand around and look at the wallpaper. It’s just not as much fun, like the id guys were distracted by what Carmack was cooking up for Quake. There’s some brilliant levels, and it’s still an awesome yardstick game, but it just doesn’t feel fresh. I’m never happy – had DII been a departure I likely would have moaned too, but DII should have been more than just more. For me, besides further improving the Deathmatching, DII greatest contribution was the killer Aliens Doom mods, complete with facehuggers, plasma rifles and Hudson as Doomguy; they’re better than Aliens Colonial Marines. But then, what isn’t?

Most games from this era punted out quickie sequels; Blake Stone turned in Planetstrike, Wolf repeated itself in Spear of Destiny – using left-over level designs, those retweaked remakes were low-cost, high-sell games and I would dismiss DII as just a Clone, but it was more than that; Doom might have been game-changing, but Doom II was industry-changing; no longer an underground, mythical thing traded in playgrounds like fuzzy VHS copies of Evil Dead, Doom II was a grown up, on the shelves game and a phenom on release – it netted id millions and cemented FPS as a major genre; it was everywhere, like that Meat Loaf song. I’d do anything for Doom but I won’t do that. It was so big even my parents knew it. I recalled my Mum saying she’s “read about some horrendous game that lets you chainsaw people, you’d better not be playing that” / “No mum, I just wanna listen to Mr Big. Did you buy the Radio Times with Lois and Clark on the cover?” – we have our first suspect in the Doom murder. Not Terri Hatcher, Doom II! The motive? DII brought FPS into the mainstream; every publisher that saw shareware as rinky-dink suddenly went ‘that could’ve been us’ and while the music industry was busy signing up every band that wore a checked shirt, publishers descended on devs and demanded more Doom. Doom II didn’t kill Doom with innovation, it killed it with success. Clone after clone followed, each a copy of a copy, until the pure Doom experience got fuzzy.

FPS was out now, there was no stuffing that demonic genie back in the bottle. As Doom II cleaned up, others were about to make things messy. But which game dealt Doom the killing blow? I had a few more suspects to question; Lo-Wang and Duke to name a few.

Check out part two of FBT’s ‘investigation’/excuse where he continues to blast his way through the best 90’s FPS had to offer while watching Earth 2 and Seaquest.

#FPS #Shooter #blastfromthepast #playthrough #FBT #GOAT #extendedplay #Doomera

Carmageddon

A Blast from the Past review

FBT’s review of Carmageddon, the best racer of the 90s so he says – but he said that about Monster Truck Madness and Road Rage too so who knows.

The Past

I’d always disliked racer games. But Carma was different; originally envisioned by devs Stainless as a demolition derby, it shifted to sandbox when they pursued the Mad Max licence. People-mushing was added after they tried to licence Deathrace instead. Finally, they came up with their own world, ripped from 70s/80s dystopia movies; Rollerball meets Nascar, cars race through slums winning by crossing the finish or stopping anyone else from doing so; running over the ‘peds’ gained you more time to race. It was great. But what made it even greater was the free-roam element. My mates and I would chalk up a healthy amount of ped-death time then go looking for trouble. We would analyse the layout, work out if we could reach building tops, find hidden areas … We’d spend hours on a single level. Of course, you could attempt to win without running anyone over and that had its own challenges. The biggest of which was not giving in and handbrake-turning into a crowd of people.

The Daily Mail trembled with horror on it’s release and demanded Carma be banned, going so far as to claim the character Die Anna was a ‘sick’ reference to the people’s princess. That’s … okay I wouldn’t put it past Carma, except Princess Di died after its release, but don’t let that stop a headline. Building on the controversy, publishers SCi, decided to submit it to the BBFC … which hugely backfired. The BBFC weren’t exactly open-minded in the nineties and they banned it, supposedly because they enjoyed it so much that suggested people would emulate – what? Stainless released it with zombies instead, who spewed green blood. But what we knew, and the morally-panicked didn’t, was that new internet. From there, Stainless’ own mod quickly made its way to floppies and magazine disks, providing a way to turn the zombies human again. We were back in business. When not one child mowed anyone down in their Dad’s car, the protesters moved on to being dismayed at GTA instead.

In today’s moral-choice driven and heartfelt emotional gaming, there’s nothing out there that celebrates your pure homicidal side. Time to Die Anna again.

Still a Blast?

As I race along ‘Maim Street’, the first of thirty-odd races, memories come back and I take off, aiming for the stadium where I mow down NFL teams, then shoot down the road knocking peds for six, blood and body parts spinning. I mistime a corner and obliterate my car, then get rear-ended which causes me to shunt a mailbox that skids off and takes out a passing OAP and earns me a ‘good shot, sir’ bonus. Holy crap this is good. And not in that ‘I want to try this in the real-world’ way. Chasing after the peds is fun, they squeal and take off, yell and swear at you, while hitting the cows in the countryside levels, listening to their Moo turn into a Goo is always a giggle. Although there’s only four or five locations – inner city, coastal, a mine, countryside and industrial areas, each race opens up different or expanded areas, so the races always feel bigger rather than just longer or repetitive. Plus, it gives you another chance to get somewhere you couldn’t earlier. Completing a course gives you points, alongside the points you gain in-game to buy upgrades and unlock your position, which in turn unlocks the races. And more dangerous opponents…

As I crash around, I realise just how much genuine fun I’m having, how exhilarating, exciting and intense it all is. Yes, it’s blocky and dated but that soon disappears because you’re so into it. I miss this, most modern games don’t have this reckless abandon and most of it is my own doing rather than the game manipulating me into a scripted experience. As soon as I finish one level, I’m revving to get onto the next. Carma is just so exciting – that’s not the controversy talking; it’s a really good game. The physics and engine are amazing and the levels are laid out in a way that maximises freedom so you can really take control of the way you play; you quickly learn how much you can push it, anticipate its reactions and gauge when to turn, slide or break. I’d forgotten about Die Anna’s face in the corner, reacting to the mayhem as we went, the on-screen congrats as we made good kills, the noises the peds make, the way the levels are filled with things to trip you up or give you the chance to let loose. As the game progresses you get the opportunity to steal opponent’s cars once you’ve wasted them, and they each have their own feel and ability. There’s a caddy with a cattle-catcher, driven by ‘Otis P Jivefunk’ that makes short work of any head-on attacks but is like driving a bouncy castle, Vlad with his hotrod car which will impale yours and there’s OK Stimpson (renamed Juicy Jones in rereleases) who drives what looks a lot like a white-topped Ford Bronco … The opponents and their cars are all very different although their tactics are largely the same – ram you.

There’s not much in the way of in-car fighting and early on it’s a war of attrition as you just batter each other, but later you’re cutting through them like bloody butter; except for the big boys (and girls) like The Plow and Heinz Faust’s tank-car. They’re nightmares, but not as bad as the cops.

Cops do serious damage and constantly ram you, siren screaming, holding you in place while the timer ticks down. The only downer is the cops only go after me. It’s not until at least mid-way through and several armour, power and offensive upgrades that I can even think about taking them on. It’s a hugely gratifying moment when the car is tricked out and you grab the solid granite powerup then spy a copper in the distance. Revenge. Of course, there’s that damn super-cop car sitting on a roof in later levels. When that thing lands, it’s game over. Except it’s not. The great thing about Carma was you can’t die – your car can get disabled, but you just repair and live to maim again, giving you the freedom of just putting your foot down and seeing what happens. They removed this invincibility from the sequels and they suffered because of it; once you get nervous about accelerating in Carma, it’s not Carma anymore. I remember discovering this in Carma 2 and being so disappointed I sacked it off.

The only way to lose in Carma was to run out of time. So long as the timer is ticking, you’re okay. You gain time in three ways – passing checkpoints, battering opponents or running over peds. You can even win by killing all the peds, but even with a power-up that reveals their location it’s incredibly difficult to do. Other powerups include instant handbrake, good for anyone chasing you, damage magnifiers, and the insanely annoying Bouncy Bouncy. The big one is Pinball, which as the name suggests sends you – and everything else you touch – careening around the map. They’re huge maps too, Carma doesn’t scrimp on the experiences; so many areas to explore, so many opportunities to cause mayhem. I’m attempting to drive up the sides of buildings, ramming things to see what happens, taking huge chances and accelerating so hard Die Anna starts screaming. Skimming past opponents, setting up games of chicken (they never falter), grabbing powerups then rushing to use them before they run out, clobbering cop cars then taking off … Carma is basically like school playtime, when you realise the teacher’s about to herd you all in so you suddenly go mental trying to have all the fun at once before you’re forced back into class.

It’s amazing that Carma didn’t have more influence on race gaming. Series’ like Flatout, Midtown Madness and Road Rage shared the anarchic DNA of Carma but without the murder or black humour – Monster Truck Madness did have open world opportunities but you still had to hit checkpoints rather than the crowds to win. But I realise now Carma isn’t really about running people over, it was the racing without rules, and along with the swearing, cheeky level names, the ‘Pratcam’ and the on-screen congrats for outlandish kills, it all adds up to a game that’s dedicated to you finding your own fun. So few games let you have your own fun anymore, least of all the racing genre.

Even a decade after release the protesters never let it go; That bastion of family values Keith Vaz was still using Carmageddon in 2005 to prove a point about video game violence, stating in a commons debate that Carma’s ‘sounds of cracking bones adds to the realistic effect’ – did he ever play it? He also noted “Duke Nukem hones his skills by using pornographic posters of women for target practice and earns bonus points for shooting naked and bound prostitutes and strippers” – Really? There’s been so many re-releases of Duke that I must have missed the ‘moral outrage edition’. He also talked about Postal and even mentioned the ‘Postal Dude’ – A politician using the word Dude in the Houses of Parliament? Games rock. Yet Vaz, The Daily Mail and pressure groups like Mediawatch seem to miss their own point when they panic hysterically about video games; twenty years on and still no one’s ran anyone over because Carma told them too. Carma was rebooted in 2015 and the Daily Mail was there for it, reporting that “ultra-controversial video-game Carmageddon might be unleashed on another generation of teenagers” as if the terror alert should be raised to severe after the original nearly brought society to its knees via rampaging teenagers with learner plates, before screaming about the original being banned (But not ‘unbanned’). Let it go.

Like Doom, the thing about Carma wasn’t the violence, it was the perfect experience – it wasn’t real, anyone except Daily Mail readers could tell the difference, but I could anticipate the car’s movements, how hard to push it, where it would end up – when I missed a ped I could yell the game was cheating but really, I’m just not that good a driver. There’s nothing ‘real’ about it, but it was a brilliant game and one that you could tell the devs had fun making and that shines through. It wants you to have a good time. It’s blocky and the sprites animate through two or three stills and you can’t really see what’s going on. But once we’re off, the gloves are off too and I’m barrelling down the road, bashing my fellow drivers and pulling handbrake turns into peds like I’m twenty years younger. Pixels don’t matter when a game’s this good. Carma is a brilliant game on every level – to play and to offend. The sequels weren’t as good and that includes the 2015 reboot which veered into arcade silliness and lost the original’s black humour in favour of smut, but the original still plays great and it’s even available on iOS/Android. There’s no excuse. Play it, just to annoy the Daily Mail.

Die Anna, the gamer’s princess.

Developer Stainless Games | Publisher Sci / Interplay Productions

Platforms; Win | iOS/Android

F.E.A.R

A Blast from the Past review

FBT’s not scared of Alma. Honest. Leave the lights on.

The past

In 2005, society almost collapsed because an idiot released a hack that unlocked a ‘hidden’ sex game in the already contentious GTA San Andreas. Hidden! Secretly adding sex into games for little children to find? The outrage. It was the end times. GTA SA was rated Mature so kids shouldn’t be playing it anyway and the unfinished sex element was removed before release, the hack just reactivated it but Politicians and the Papers ignored that; they had Moral Outrage to peddle. F.E.A.R, released at the height of the Hot Coffee spill, is a perfect example of a game not for kids. Not just because of the gameplay intensity but the tone, the story was pure grown-up’s time – A deep, unsettling physiological mindfuck about a solider being harassed by a Carrie-like little girl while fighting telepathically-linked super-soldiers under the charge of a cannibal trying to find the girl. Not exactly a Teletubbies episode.

The Hot Coffee whohah did one good thing; games were recognised as entertainment like movies or music and should be considered accordingly. The morally outraged moved on to being horrified by the internets. Meanwhile, FEAR scared the hot coffee out of me.

FEAR was like being armed and in a horror film. But you’re not fighting Freddy. This was pure Japanese horror; Ringu, Dark Water, The Grudge. The increasingly horrible story just freaked you out – learning who she was and worse, what had happened to her. The scares often aren’t threatening and that was somehow worse; you’d be terrified, but she … She was just curious. The ‘Unknown Origin’ noise, a little like the sound of Saddako approaching, first seemed a bit of spoiler but became psychological torture; she’s here. Somewhere. You just cowered and hoped she went away. I still remember swinging around on a ladder and she was right there. FEAR’s over ten years ago and I still get jumpy using a ladder in a game. That time I saw her bloody footprints walking towards me but not her. That time I saw her on the monitor – a monitor that was showing what’s behind me. Waa! And the screaming banshee, all spindly and screaming, matted hair, rushing at you, trying to – *Shivers*

I haven’t played FEAR in a long time, but I haven’t played anything that got to me like FEAR. Lots of games made me jump, but FEAR kept me jumpy. It is my favourite shooter from the Half-life to Bioshock period but I’ve not played it since then. I think I’m actually nervous. Time to face … Alma. Even typing her name is triggering.

Shoulda Stayed There?

Oh god, even the loading screen has that screeching sound. Just gonna go pop the lights on.

I’d forgotten FEAR actually stood for something; First Encounter Assault Recon, a spec-ops team investigating paranormal activities. It’s a shame the series didn’t make more of this, the sequels confined themselves to the fallout from the first game so FEAR as an idea was largely ignored. A series about a bunch of Spec Ops investigating the paranormal could have been awesome, The X-Files with a shotgun.

I am The Pointman, a hero so silent Gordon would be proud. I don’t even have a name, just a squad position. I’m all for silent heroes, but given what Pointy goes through you think at least the occasional ‘WTF!’ would be uttered. Pointy is the new kid to the team, and after some friendly joshing from a teammate and some promising interest from Jin, the team’s Agent Scully, we’re off to investigate some mysterious goings on.

What’s been going on is Fettel, a man who’s escaped from a lab at the ATC Corporation, a tech company with government defence contracts. Fettel didn’t escape alone though; he is telepathically linked to an entire legion of ‘Replica’ soldiers and they are tearing through ATC offices looking for something – or someone. He’s also capable of projecting himself wherever he likes. So not just a disgruntled employee with a gun then.

Pointy, who has the odd ability to move faster than bullets, is sent in to scope the place out. Besides Jin, the team we’re Pointing for includes our CO who directs things from a safe distance and another Operator who mysteriously disappears, only to reappear as a ghostly image warning she’s interested in me. Could you stop that mate? Not helping. There’s some nice moments early on, overheard conversations about how weird The Pointman is and the legitimacy of FEAR’s work. It’s a slow burn game, unlike most shooters where you’re dropped into a firefight and head to the opposite side, FEAR unfolds like a novel or film, drawing you into the story not just the bullets.

As we progress, more story elements come to light. We discover the little girl we keep glimpsing – and by glimpsing, I mean witnessing her murdering entire squads with her mind – is ‘Alma’, the daughter of a ATC scientist who discovered she has psionic abilities. Turned into a lab rat, Alma is subjected to various experiments and tests, but quickly grows bored and instead fills her time making the scientists kill or mutilate themselves. Sounds like she’s played the Hot Coffee mod. Fettel is interested in helping her escape, and also starts to take an interest in you. He’s not your battlefield nemesis, goading or chatting on the mic. He just appears right in front of you, says something cryptic then disappears. Usually with blood around his face. Because he’s also a goddamn cannibal who eats ATC employees as a novel way to get info. This game …

It’s not just Alma that drives the game; for much of the time, that’s just background. It’s great how we’re just in the middle of several greater stories – as well as Fettel, there’s ATC’s attempts to cover up the incident and Alma’s father; so much going on conspiracy-wise, Mulder would have a field day. Phone messages, conversations, laptops reveal the depth of ATC’s experiments – it’s so involving that finding power-ups like injectors that extend Pointy’s health and bullettime makes you wonder what else ATC has been experimenting with – and why does Pointy already has the ability? Stick around for the last phone call during the credits. It’s a zinger that would make the Smoking Man proud.

While tangling with Fettel’s Replica soldiers, we also contend with ATC security and later their black ops team; melee fighters with invisibility cloaks. Anything else? Yeah, there’s also manifestations of Alma’s, disembodied demons that come out of the blackness ready to rip you to pieces. Think that’s it. Oh, and the harpy that screams and scampers towards you. Don’t let her touch you, that’s if you can keep your tremblingly finger on the fire button.

As a shooter, FEAR is way, way up there. We’re more than a decade after its release and the firefights easily match anything the latest CoD clone’s managed. The Replicas in particular – you do get a sense they’re linked, and you know they’re just clones but they’re real. They get scared, yell at each other (‘get to cover!’/’where?!’) and act so lifelike it’s unnerving. They stumble and trip if you clip them in the leg, scramble to get away from fire, run for it, act aggressively and it doesn’t feel scripted or manipulated. Obviously walking into areas triggers their appearances, and events are scripted but they don’t seem to be; It’s like playing Online – and you’re the Newbie. They’ll work around you, sometimes taking such long routes to reach you, you’ve forgotten and you just run into them randomly – which seems to make them jump too. They react to teammate’s positions and actions, duck under obstacles, vault over things, change their minds, get intimidated by your tactics – they’re incredible just to watch let alone try to hit. It’s also unnerving how they’re completely compliant but have free will.

Pointy is no slouch with the bullets either. The bullettime he possesses is one of the best I’ve played. Similar to The Matrix, we can see bullets flying about and the detail is amazing as they ricochet off walls and bodies. We’re running through clouds of blood and sparks, real John Woo stuff. The firefights are always frantic, you get constantly battered and bloody, dust and debris fly everywhere ruining your shots, everyone’s hurling grenades about, it’s practically a schoolyard scrap. Pointy can carry health packs and pick up vests; neither last long.

The best/worst thing in FEAR of course is Alma. When she’s not shocking or observing you, she’s making you experience her life at the hands of ATC. It’s terrifying, but you develop pity for her. Then you see her kills littered about, bodies melted to the bone and get nervous again. You never quite know if she’s on your side or not. Some of her actions seem hostile, others helpful. Hearing that Unknown Origin noise hasn’t lost its power, and while the game does occasionally lapse into quickie shocks they’re more than made up by Alma’s other appearances and behaviours. That scene where she’s on the other side of the glass just staring at you and all you need to do is open the door is just terrifying. She’s a ghost, she could just walk through but she doesn’t. She just wants to see what you’d do. You have to walk towards her and that’s just insanely scary. But there’s so much more than scares going on. Alma does draw heavily from J-Horror – Alma is the daughter of Saddako and Ikuko with possibly a bit of Don’t Look Now thrown in, but the abuses she suffers and the story behind it are all hers and as a character, Alma is practically without peers; this isn’t just some entity stalking you – you start to wish you weren’t uncovering her story because you understand why she’s so angry. Just, leave me out of it yeah? No such luck.

The only let down in FEAR, and it is a sizeable one, is the never changing environment. You’re always, with very few and very brief exceptions, fighting through offices and industrial areas. It makes sense for the story, Fettel is storming ATC’s properties looking for Alma and this kind of story works best in places you can’t just turn tail and run out of. But while the intensity of the story can get fatiguing and the Replica’s onslaught tiring, it’s the locations that makes you reach for the Main Menu button. Perhaps had it had more going on within those locations it might have felt fresher, but while the level designs are good, with multiple approaches, interesting obstacles and multi-level areas perfect for smart-arse soldiers and scary children to creep up on you, the environments all merge. I recollected shoot-outs and Alma-scares, but never the locations and as I replayed, I realised without the loading-screen updates I’d have little idea about where I was, where I was going or why.

As we reach the final destination (and really feel nervous doing it, I remember now what’s coming; I think I blocked it from my mind) it’s amazing that even now, ten years after the release, FEAR can still pack such a punch – it’s novel-quality story, terrifying experiences and insane gameplay marks FEAR as one of the greats, either to replay or discover for the first time. Maybe the original Bioshock came close two years later, but FEAR makes you despair at the state of modern shooters.

Alma and her revenge are The Exorcist of gaming – you just want it to stop, catch your breath, remind yourself it’s only a bloody game. Add in the Replica’s AI and the conspiracy that weaves through the plot and FEAR is a masterclass in gaming. It taps into that feeling you get when you’re alone in the house and hear a noise … It’s a good job the moral crusaders got distracted by the internets, I’d hate to think what they’d make of a psychotic little girl melting people with her mind. Turn on the lights and fear Alma.

After FEAR, there were two add-ons. Those were the days. Not money-grubbing DLCs but actual mini-games. The first, Extraction Point continues the story as the FEAR team attempt to escape the repercussions of the main game. It starts off well enough, but quickly descends into more typical horror-survival territory and FEAR elements feel crowbarred in, while Perseus Mandate tries something different. Set alongside the first FEAR, we play a Sergeant who inexplicably has the same bullettime powers as Pointy. This FEAR team is tasked with investigating the ATC coverup and the events of the main game spill over into this one. You’re largely fighting against a splinter group within ATC who use the event to grab the data the original project was based on. Alma makes a few cameos, but otherwise this is largely a straight shooter. It’s fast and fun, the black ops team are a lot more gobby than the Replicas (calling me a pussy for backing off for example) and there’s a great standout where you’re chased by an ED-209 through the office, but otherwise it’s typical shooter stuff. Both were created by TimeGate Studios and aren’t considered ‘cannon’ to the main series – shame, they’re both better than the FEAR sequels and Extraction Point ends things in a more satisfying way than they do; it would have freed FEAR to go investigate other scares. Pointy would have made a great Mulder.

And that fricking ladder scene is even scarier than I remember.

2005 | Developer Monolith | Publisher Sierra

Platforms; Win, PS3, X360

Postal 2

A Blast from the Past review

FBT remembers Postal 2 as an ironic giggle n’ guns-fest through life’s little annoyances.

He was looking forward to this one.

The Past

The original Postal, taking the phrase for a mid-eighties spate of postal workers gunning down co-workers, featured an insane lead character killing his way through his home town. It generated so much controversy the United States Postal Service tried to sue developers Running with Scissors and it was proclaimed public enemy number one; well, one of three enemies in Liebermann’s ‘worst things in America’ (the others were Marylin Mason and Calvin Klein ads). It’s no surprise then that the sequel, even before hitting the shelves was considered the most dangerous game ever released; this time you’d be murdering in a free-form, open world 3D environment and in first person; up close and personal, just like in real-life the campaigners panicked. It was the end times.

While Rockstar’s Manhunt largely owned 2003 as the game everyone loved to hate, Postal 2 still cooked up some outrage; it was blamed for some unrelated violence, banned from most US supermarkets and even appeared in the Black-Eyed-Peas’ Where is the Love video, showing kids playing it while the band watched sadly (Rather than responsibly taking it off the kids). Fair enough, the BEP’s music makes me go Postal. Briefly known as the most violent and notorious game ever released, Postal 2’s reputation has faded over time, replaced with better, more efficient murder-simulators but for a while it was the Moral Campaigners poster-child. After a poster of Marylin Manson in some Calvin’s, presumably.

Of course, the efforts to ban Postal 2 did the opposite; I heard about PII through reputation not reviews and bought for that reason. Friends and beers gathered around to snigger and giggle as we rampaged and were utterly uninspired to do the same in the real world. I remember PII as a game that tricked you into revealing your psychopathic urges; it wasn’t evil, you were – you could complete it without harming anyone, something the morally outraged ignored (Or more likely didn’t know, since it’s doubtful they played what outraged them so much) – but you weren’t going to play Postal peacefully. It really got the idea that hell is other people and it explored exactly what you’d do if life’s everyday annoyances came with a shotgun. With the world the way it is and me a lot less patient than I was in 2003, I can’t think of a better time to go Postal 2 again.

Still a Blast?

I’d forgotten how PII’s levels are broken out into days, each getting progressively worse. I, The Postal Dude, wake on Monday to the sound of a wife nagging me to fulfil her to-do list; get paid, cash paycheck, get milk. Easy.

I launch myself in Monday ready to let humanity do its worst. Paradise, the town we’re in, looks 15yrs old and while it’s basic even for 2003, it works and it doesn’t take long to get the lay of the land. The inhabitants of Paradise though, are insane and asking for it. They yell, shout, walk into you, flip the bird, vomit, drink, dance, stop dead, turn suddenly, dawdle; standard everyday people. At one point my progress is hindered by a marching band. But I don’t feel like going Postal.

As I head through town, I grab various other weapons and a cat, which takes me back. The Cat silencer, which triggered hysterics back in the day, consisted of sticking its butt on the machine gun or pump-action and it muffled the gunfire. I start to recall PII had many an immature moment but I always defended those as subversive or cynical moments; Smoking crack gives Dude a huge health bump but he also gets addicted and loses more health if you don’t keep using them. That’s obvious, but there’s a nice touch in the way Dude will keep changing the selected inventory item back to a crackpipe. Miss the change and you find yourself accidently smoking it even when your health is totally maxed. After a pleasant enough walk, I reach work; the Running with Scissors office. Meta. Once I’ve found RwS’ boss man the office is stormed by anti-game protestors. Postal 2 had pre-scripted shooting sequences where you’d trigger some violent act by a 3rd party and have to fight your way out and it’s a bit of a shame to have forced enemies, I was enjoying getting from A to B and testing my patience. The groups you encounter will turn hostile whenever they spot you after that scene too, increasing the postal oppotunities.

Besides the protestors, we also draw the ire of book burners, Rednecks and Survivalists amongst others plus there’s the corrupt cops and later FBI/Swat guys and the National Guard, all with itchy trigger fingers. Random fights can break out at any time and ‘Dude’ can catch a bullet or the blame. There’s also the trifling matter of Al-Qaeda who are given to suicide bombings and almighty shoot-outs. The game’s tagline was ‘ever had one of those days’ but I’ve never had a day where Vegetarians shoot me for killing cows. I’ve had days where I seem to spend forever queuing, which seems to be the main source of annoyance in the game but I queue for my milk, pay and walk out then go ‘Oh?’. It never occurred to me to pull the trigger; my patience never wore thin and I wonder if I’ll ever go Postal unprovoked.

This looks tough

About the only kind thing you can say about PII’s FPS aspect is it’s of its time. During the RwS fight the protesters all got stuck in the office door allowing me (and the boss) to mow down most of them. Shooting is very hit/miss and clunky. There’s a huge array of weapons to choose from, melee through to rocket launchers including gross out stuff like an Anthrax-infused Cow’s head. One of PII’s melee weapons is Dude’s penis. He can whip it out and piss on people. Hit them in the face and they’ll stop to throw up. If he leaves it unzipped you can flash people, which sometimes triggers a gunfight; the game often tries to prod a hidden juvenile streak, but after a while you want a hidden satire streak to begin. It can be argued using piss as a melee weapon isn’t supposed to be taken seriously (and if I do, the jokes on me) or that it’s a comment on other game’s weapon choices, but I think I’m reaching; RwS just think pissing is funny.

I reach Wednesday’s chores without really feeling aggrieved enough to brutalise anyone and I’m starting to think PII doesn’t have the balls to go through with its own outrage. It’s just gross-out not sly sarcasm, like they watched South Park and completely missed the subtlety, and that’s not me misreading PII the way some thought Fight Club was about violence – I want the tension, the frustration of everyday life to wear me down and snap; that’s a dangerous game, one that explores or exposes what we’d do if pissed off and armed. A game that really does satirise the moral panic and the righteous right, explore supposed game addiction and the contested causal link between games and anti-social behaviour. P1 was blamed for all that and more, heralded as downright evil and inspiring people to murder; PII should have answered those accusations; and I thought it did. I had in mind an original, cunning black-comedy beneath some media-baiting, a game was both making a comment and not to be taken seriously but … it’s actually just infantile. At first I wondered if modern games had ruined PII for me; thanks to the huge worlds of Skyrim, Mass Effect and GTA it’s no big deal to walk for an hour, take on thankless tasks, wait an age for an NCP to stop talking; queue for five minutes? Completed it mate. But it’s not that. PII just isn’t antagonistic in the way it thinks it is. There’s nods to politics, mass media and moral outrage, but it’s unexplored and buried under offensive and misjudged moments. I can take insults and over-the-line commentary if it has some guts to it, but this is just crass. It’s not social satire to have an arcade game called Fag Hunter, unless I get to blast those playing it – but no one’s playing it but Dude. It’s like PII took lessons from the Howard Stern school of Offend Everyone Equally but failed the exam.

satire.

Without any demonstrable wit or comment there’s a lot to be offended by and with no subtext, no commentary it comes off as nasty; The Al-Qaeda terrorists are not a satire on Bush’s reactionary and directionless War On Terror, they’re caricatures and generalisations; The local convenience store is run by an Apu (Hindu) rip-off yet it’s is revealed he runs an Al-Qaeda base. We visit Uncle Dave’s compound and there’s an FBI/ATF-style cordon around it, a nod to the Branch Davidians siege but what’s it saying? A parody of the government’s handling of it? No, and that massacre is not something to make funnies about without also saying something serious. Homophobia is present in a DLC level that brings Fag Hunter to life. Dude’s wife is known as ‘The Bitch’ and the women are either overweight or seemingly scanned from the pages of RwS’s porn collection. When compared to its peers PII just comes across as late to the party, telling dad jokes. To think Manhunt was the same year; for all its horrors, it truly had something to say about violence as entertainment. PII has a level where Dude catches Gonorrhoea.

By the time I’d reached Friday (Or Sunday if you picked up the Apocalypse Weekend add-on) I’d been murdering and mayhem’ing my way through Paradise for a few days, mostly because everyone by this point is armed and pissed off making it impossible and pointless to even try to do the chores peacefully. Basically, everyone but me has gone Postal. I’ve battled a scrotum-shaped Kids TV Character, got Gary Coleman’s autograph, been forced to become a Redneck’s gimp and pissed on Dad’s grave. Somehow none of it was fun. Even if you ignore the wasted opportunity, the unforgivable tone, the schoolboy humour and the bargain-basement shooter mechanics, Postal 2 even fails at going Postal; There’s a million mini frustrations in everyone’s day, how is it that the only frustration in the game is queuing?! PII just doesn’t have anything to say and with nothing to add to the debate; it’s aged into something insulting not timely; it would have been incredible to revisit PII and find it’s themes more relevant today than 15yrs ago but now I can’t see anything worth defending let alone playing; Worst of all, it failed to make me go Postal.

boss-level queuing

RwS does maintain a strong and dedicated band of fans, and they remain active on their website (which no longer features a Postal Babe of the Day, they’re growing up) – the games continuously get updated and upgraded. 2015 saw another PII add-on and 2017 had a Postal Redux release; which generated zero outrage. RwS just seem to be recycling the same piss for the same fans. But with so much to be really outraged at those days, a Postal 4 done right could be a return to form; Trump, Corruption, Big Business, a nation divided; but it’ll inevitably make fart jokes, feature ISIS and have a mission where you queue up to use a gender-neutral bathroom. And, sadly, it’ll barely cause a ripple. It’s really saying something about the state of the world if a game all about raging against society doesn’t provoke a reaction – RwS should make a game about that moral decline.

As I try to find something nice to say about PII, a game I loved on release, one that I defended and celebrated until now, I find myself arguing I’ve fallen for a meta-satire. The original Postal put you in the bloody shoes of a delusional maniac who kills his way towards an elementary school. A satire on the media hysteria around spree-shooting, hidden as a celebration of it? Postal was RwS’s first game; it’s as if a satirist chose the very medium blamed for spree-shooters to make their point. In Postal 2, every possible contentious subject is literally pissed on; It’s a mockery of hysterical reactions and exposes people’s own prejudices; if you weren’t offended, you were the problem. Postal III was unfinished and unplayable; But, RwS didn’t develop it, they outsourced it – a comment on labels forcing devs to release unfinished games? Its plot encouraged you to follow the peaceful route to get the ‘good’ ending; considering Postal’s entire point, surely a parody on choice-based games like Bioshock and Mass Effect. RwS followed PIII with an apology DLC where PIII was just a dream and Dude teams up with his old enemies – Al Qaeda included – A commentary on game franchises being inconsistent and forgetting their roots. And they sold the movie rights to Uwe Boll. That’s a subversive comment on publishers selling out their games. I get it now, Postal is a digital art installation, a massive social comment on gaming and we fell for it at every turn; both fans and haters are the punchline. Wait, I think I’ve finally gone Postal.

2003 | Developer Running With Scissors I Publisher Whiptail Interactive / RWS

Platforms; Win

Monster Truck Madness

A Blast from the Past review

FBT relives a beer-soaked memory of crashing monster trucks in what he remembers as the best racing game of the nineties. How much beer did he drink?

The Past

Monster Truck Madness has a special spot in my gamer heart. Many nights were spent with friends and beers playing about in this game even though we shouldn’t have. Not because it was outside our age rating or we’d stolen it, but because it seemed too shiny and pleasant, a kids game. We were all about Doom and Road Rash, what was this doing on our rig? You couldn’t even run people over. We put it on for an ironic laugh, and then we were laughing for reals.

I remember MTM as a bright, silly, fun racer. A year later two racing games were released that spoke to me on a higher, more intellectual level – GTA and Carmageddon; Everything that MTM was not. But up ‘till then, MTM was the only racer I played that let me drive how I wanted; Like a maniac. Sure there were demolition derby-style games, but they kept within the confines of the track. MTM had tracks in an open environment; the game seemed to nudge you and say ‘go on, have a muck about’. You’re driving a monster truck – if there was ever a game that could break the rules, it’s this one.

While Carma’s violence and GTA’s criminal behaviour had me cackling at the mayhem, MTM made me giggle with sheer fun. The commentator’s dialogue, neatly tied to your actions just added encouragement to messing about; ‘Gravedigger is looking for a detour!’ he screamed when I drove off into a nearby field, ‘Gravedigger is doin’ it in the air’ he’d inform the crowd when I went airborne or ‘Leannnnnnnnn into it!’ if you looked set to tip your truck over. Oh we did lean into it, and how.

The trucks were mostly based on real-life machines – the Big Daddy Bigfoot featured along with other ‘famous’ monster trucks of the day. I don’t remember much about the tracks but that’s likely because I was rarely on them. The game didn’t really care what you got up to, it didn’t constantly flash ‘wrong way’ or auto place you back on the track if you ventured too far and the contestants didn’t pull over once they finished, they kept truckin’. As soon as we realised this, we stopped even trying to win a game. Much like Driver, released 3 years later, where we’d bump a copper then run for it and see who lasted the longest, in MTM we’d just hang a right as soon as possible then drive towards the other trucks to cause pile ups then relive our greatest moments in the replay menu. Because most of the environment was moveable, within minutes we’d be shunting caravans, bins, trees, anything possible into the path of the oncoming trucks. The AI wasn’t too smart but it knew to avoid something it could see, so we created a new genre – stealth monster trucking. We’d back Gravedigger up behind a billboard and wait, switching views (you could switch views!) to Bigfoot and watch to as it hammered around the track, blissfully unaware a competitor was not taking this seriously. ‘Bigfoot is hanging ten!’ the commentator would yell as it hit the portapotty I shunted into his path and span off. I don’t know why but we spent hours doing this. Hours planning traps and exploring the region looking for things to push miles back onto the track. It became a badge of honour to send an opponent into the abyss and hear the commentator yelling ‘Bigfoot is calling in the whirly bird’ and we knew we’d bested him. Name one other racing game where instead of hitting ‘reset’, you called in a helicopter to recover you?

I’m really excited to get back to the madness; if there was ever a game title I took to heart it was this one. I never won a race, but I never had so much fun losing.

Still a Blast?

So yeah, maybe alcohol played a part in this memory. The game is exactly how I remembered, but with a whole lot of rose-tint going on. Once the game starts, I am struck by one thing; I am old.

The commentator ‘Army Armstrong’ is there spouting encouragements and updates but it’s gotten hard to look at and control and what I remembered as the thundering sound of monster trucks now sounds like my phone vibrating on my desk. I justify it’s rough and ready feel as part of the charm, that it was never going to stand up graphically to modern games but even I’m surprised at how basic this looks, how clunky it feels. It’s 20yrs old I argue, age isn’t a barrier to playability I whine, but I have to consider that during this time, Playstation and N64 were at war and racing games were the battlefield – they had the genre down to a fine art and were pulling people away from PC. It seems as if Microsoft’s studios were trying to offer equally bright shiny fun with MTM and its stable mates Midtown and Motocross but graphically it looks like a port from the previous generation of consoles. This should have been a precursor to Carma or GTA but MTM looks like something you’d be playing down the arcade ten years earlier.

I shove caravans into Bigfoot’s path but he easily dodges them and when I do finally spring a trap it’s nowhere near as ballistic; there’s not the hysterics or the physics I remember. Mostly they back up and continue on. I wonder if we were so drunk we thought we were controlling the cutscenes.

When I do start to take it a little more seriously, MTM takes on a life of it’s own. The tracks are basic but you need to keep an eye on where they’re twisting and looping – and not get distracted by the giant dinosaur eating a car on the side of the track (A robosaurous I believe) – there’s jumps, shortcuts and loads of areas you get caught out by. I never get close to winning a race, but it’s really hectic, daft and great fun. There’s other modes I never tried before, and lost at as well – Drag and Rally as well as Circuit.

So MTM should definitely have stayed in the past? Maybe not. When I compare it to my memories, it’s a letdown but that’s unfair. When I play GTA5 I spend all my time stressing about scratching my delicate car or injuring myself. Like in real life. Games have become so life-like, so real they’re not an escape anymore. The moment I bring real-world worries into what’s supposed to be escapism it’s gone too far. Games didn’t used to be like that and MTM reminds me of that time. It makes me want to dig out Carma, GTA VC and Driver, drive it like I stole it not like I bought it on a payday loan. Only Saints Row 3 has come close to this level of nuts and MTM just really wants you to have fun – you can chose your truck, who you race against, the tracks; it doesn’t force you to win to unlock, you’re not scoring prize money to upgrade – it’s as up for fun as you are, which is also lacking in games nowadays. If there was ever a game to get a second life as a iOS racer app like Carmageddon did, MTM is it.

It may not be the game I remember, but as Army often yells; ‘That’s gonna leave a mark!’ He’s right, MTM did. MTM informed my expectations of racers for game-generations to come. It’s because of MTM I was disappointed in GTA5. That’s a memory, alcohol-infused or not. And who doesn’t want to drive Bigfoot? Or at least trick it into hitting a portapotty.

1996 | Developer Terminal Reality | Publisher Microsoft

Platforms; Win, N64

Total Overdose

A Blast from the Past review

FBT remembers when he was a Mexican not a mexican’t.

My memories of TO are good. I spout on about insane gameplay, a DGAF attitude and feeling like I was in a Mexican GTA. I also remember I picked it up solely because it’s tagline was ‘Chili Con Carnage’; You knew what you were in for. I recalled TO as the granddad of Bulletstorm and Saints Row III, games that let you play insane.

But when I try to remember specifics, I struggle. I take this to mean it wasn’t important, I was too busy living a Rodriquez movie; I can’t really remember what GTA 3 was about either, beyond the fact Claude never spoke (Or maybe he did and I don’t remember), so not recalling any detail doesn’t make a game unmemorable … it’s the experience you took from it and I would describe TO as great, but have no demonstrable specifics to back that up. It was great though, honest.

Thinking about it though, if I consider TO so great why’d I only play through once? It came out in 2005 and the budget edition a year later (big seller then) and within that time there were a few other distractions; Star Wars’ Republic Commando and Battlefront 2, FEAR, Quake 4, Gun, King Kong, Just Cause and TES Oblivion to mention a few, many of which are still being mentioned ten years on yet TO is long forgotten; was it Bulletstorm, one of those underground games only a few knew about or was it best forgotten? Deadline Games, the devs weren’t high-end but it was shepherded by Square Enix who’d overseen Tomb Raider and Thief so it had pedigree. Plus, my copy had avoided the great eBay purge of 2007 (when Steam started releasing major non-Valve games and I figured everything would be on there soon – Still waiting, NOLF) so something about TO stopped me from parting with it. Time to work out what’s going down in Mexico.

Shoulda stayed there?

So after two production credits that feature Day of the Dead characters dancing in skeleton outfits (one in a sombrero) I already wish I’d played this hundreds of times. I can tell this is going to be awesome. Mexican rap plays over the menu and I feel like I’m in Desperado. Then I’m into the story. I’m a DEA agent whose cover has been blown, attempting to escape some airfield and being shot at by drug runners. I begin by sliding down a zip-rope uzi’ing the smugglers and then take out everyone between me and my plane; which once aboard, I’m promptly thrown out of by my double-crossing extraction team, bought out by the drug kingpin I’ve sworn to bring down. Given how heroic I’ve just been, I expected to have expected this, but I didn’t and I’m actually dead. The action then switches to later and I’m now playing my son, also a DEA agent who is also in deep cover in the same kingpin’s crew to prove dad didn’t die of an ‘overdose’ – what kind of drug gets you so high you die from the fall? Let’s not worry about it, the game is either joking around or doesn’t care, and that’s part of its appeal – As the son, I’m instructed to drive a car towards a gas truck and use a ‘stunt exit’ option. I slo-mo out of the car as it crashes causing an explosion, then I wipe out everyone around me. Finally, down to me and one last guy who taunts me with a grenade, in cut-scene I shoot him between the eyes then stand about looking cool, before realising the grenade landed by a petrol pump. It goes up and so do I. Does every mission end with the death of my character?! No, I survive although with a broken leg. I’m then transported into the son’s wayward twin brother who has been released from prison on the understanding he’ll pretend to be who his brother was pretending to be and continue his (their father’s) work to bring down mr kingpin. Got it so far? In return, my sentence will be reduced (so, I’m in prison and the DEA sends me to a country with no extradition order and expects me to infiltrate a drug business filled with criminals in return for reducing my sentence? Again, don’t sweat the small stuff). Cue opening credits. What a start!

Once in the Mexican city, I do various small criminal jobs to attract the interest of the Kingpin then work my way to his side by doing missions alongside various side quests to build up health and xp. So far, so typically free-roam but the initial fun has worn off and I start to see how old this plays (despite being built on Renderware, the same engine that underpinned GTA SA the year before); the cars drive worse than Driver which was 6 years old and the on-foot sections are less refined than GTA 3, 4 years earlier. I try to remind myself it’s a decade old but it plays like a decade before that. It’s not from some deep-pocketed dev so you can forgive some creakiness, some unrefined gameplay but you’d expect more than this. By 2005 driving, running and general mayhem were, if not a fine art, past blocky characters and wobbly car behaviours. It’s just not fun to play and worse, not nice to look at.

Deadline Games seem to be on their first major free-roam game here, but whereas Stainless Games managed to pull off Carmageddon, DG seems to have made a vanilla GTA; but it’s actually softer than that; this is Midtown Madness meets Blake Stone; not mad or bad enough to actually be anything but a Clone and a largely inoffensive one at that. Worse, the world is tiny with very little to interact with or get lost in. There’s nothing to see and all too soon I give up wandering. You never feel like you’re in a Mexican town let alone one controlled by a drug cartel, it’s a bland featureless concrete area with no interaction, where running is preferable to driving and the side missions are all races or brawls, which get dull quick.

While many story missions are great in their layout (a level in an abattoir is a standout) and there’s some nice cinematic cut-scenes, they’re hamstrung not just by the featureless look but the shootouts themselves aren’t especially exciting. Baddies stand and shoot or run at you, they’re hidden in areas they couldn’t possibly have chosen to stand in unless they knew you’d walk past and every single door will have someone behind it; it’s so simple it’s like playing a shooter from the Doom era. To spice it up you have bullet-time and insane power-ups including reversing time, onscreen graphics congratulating good kills and comments from our hero (‘spicy move!’, his favourite phrase is uttered over and over) but it all comes across as set-dressing, gimmicky after a while and irritating soon after. This is one of those games where the engine and development just couldn’t compete with the concept and spirit and that’s best illustrated by the launch trailer that still makes TO look like the game you always wanted someone to make.

Maybe much of this banality could be overlooked if it was great shakes with storyline and characters – a gaming element not curtailed by budget or graphical constraints – but while in the game’s head you’re Antonio saving a feisty Salma-alike, the reality is a cliché story and strained, obvious dialogue.

When TO came out in 2005, Free-roam (Sandboxing, nonlinear, open-world, whatever) was in its most exciting period. We’d had three GTAs, Morrowind and Far Cry building up to Boiling Point, Oblivion, Gun and Just Cause and barely a year after that Assassin’s Creed, Crysis and STALKER. TO was dead in the centre but there’s none of the reckless enthusiasm that pervaded those games; if TO’s limitations were down to a budget constraint, then they should have constrained themselves to a clean linear game and dropped the free-roam. Released around TO was Call of Duty 2, FEAR and Doom 3 – not suggesting TO should have reached for those lofty heights but how much more immersive could TO have been as a straight shooter with all the free-roam work funnelled into a real Drug Cartel experience saving a Mexican town.

In the end, Total Overdose isn’t just dated, it was five years too late to the (open) world. Despite my disappointment at finding my memory lied to me, it had its moments; our hero yells lines other than Spicy on rare occasion that get a snigger, flies descend on your kills, if you shoot a guy wearing a hat, it’ll fly into the air. Position yourself under it and your hero will be wearing it until it gets shot off. It has flashes of brilliance that makes TO feel like an unfinished game, like it’s still in beta phase. It’s frustrating because it could have been so much more; it’s got a lot to give – but there’s no world to be given it in.

2005 | Developer Deadline Games / Square Enix | Publisher SCi / Eidos Interactive

Platforms; Win | PS2 | XBox

Blood

A Blast from the Past review

FBT goes back to when FPS spoke to him on a spiritual, personal level. The weirdo.

The Past

Should I ever get into a discussion about the best shooter from the “Post Doom – Pre Half Life” era I tend to turn the conversation bloody real quick. Folks go for Doom because it was a quantum leap; Doom wasn’t released; it was unleashed they cry, claiming it was the Jaws of the game world. They are right. But while Doom was gaming’s We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat moment, for me it was when I saw Elvira’s calendar in ‘Blood’ -the same calendar on the wall of my bedroom– and I knew, Blood and I got each other.

Like anyone else staggered by Doom’s release, I played everything and anything similar; Wolf3D, Duke, Shadow Warrior, RotT, Heretic, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Blake Stone, Redneck Rampage, Quake. I bought them, played them, loved them and eventually lost them. All but Blood; I still have the CD. It’s burnt into my memory so deeply that in my advanced years I may begin to confuse its levels with actual memories. That should make the old folks’ home interesting.

Thinking about it now, I recall that Blood was made up of everything I was into. Packed with references and nods to my VHS collection, my posters and film quotes, everything I thought was the coolest thing ever was in there. And, Blood had a plot. A real, on-screen story and reason why everyone in my eye-line had to go, not some vague background written in the manual. And Blood’s storyline was explored by an equally perfect lead character; Caleb, a wild-west era killer-for-hire who worshipped a Dark God which inexplicably has Caleb, his beloved wife and friends murdered for an unknown failing. Reborn (‘I live…again!’), Caleb was the perfect antihero to inhabit as I waded through a thousand bodies in a dark gothic setting, looking for revenge and reasons. Caleb wasn’t a jokey celebration of macho like Duke and he wasn’t just an arm like Doomguy; Caleb was every dubious hero you adored while watching straight-to-video films in those big puffy WB cases. He was Snake Plissken meets Eric Draven with a dash of Ash. Ultimately I loved Blood for its ‘soul’ despite Caleb not having one; It’s so fatalistic, the tone so foreboding it could have been a John Carpenter film. Blood is one of my best gaming experiences and I’d defend it with my boomstick. But I admit now, my love for Blood is based on it matching my bedroom walls, not it’s comparison to other shooters, its graphics or whether it’s actually any good. So, at the risk of losing a 20yr long argument (Blood is better than GoldenEye), time to see if Blood still courses through my veins.

Still a Blast?

The opening menu is satisfyingly gothic, blood drips down the screen and demos play, instantly taking me back. Okay so I ignore that it’s looking blocky, that maybe the menu is Doom Clone, but that’s no reason to mark it down. So far, so top ten.

the guy she told you not to worry about

I kick into the level and … the opening cutscene. I watch Caleb, his wife and friends summoned by their dark god, talking through an acolyte who disintegrates as he speaks, seared apart by the power of his Lord’s voice. Which isn’t happy. Caleb demands to know what they’ve done to earn his ire, but he can only watch helplessly as his wife and friends are attacked by monstrous creatures and he is sealed alive in a grave. Now that’s an opening. There was nothing like this back then (or since). Okay so now it’s graphically on a par with that Dire Straits video about MTV but it’s bleak, gothic and I’m taken by it; It reinforces that it’s not graphics that make a game; Blood’s opening would have been as effective in any gaming age. When Caleb fails to reach his beloved before she’s taken away I’m moved. I have a reason to live… again.

I emerge from the ground armed with only a pitchfork and Army of Darkness quotes. The zombies come running and once it’s over I’ve forgotten I’m playing something 20yrs old. I had at them and the excitement, the frantic killing and the thrill are still there. Yes, I have problems with mouse doing the movement instead of looking but I soon get used to it. Sort of. I still lob Caleb off cliffs and into pits when subconsciously trying to look up but at least I can quick save.

What happened to quick saves? AutoSave in a shooter encourages you either play ultra-safe or to mow mindlessly hoping you reach one before being offed. You’re scared not by the game but of being respawned at a checkpoint miles away; it’s not a genius level design or a carefully constructed battle that bested me and it’s a lazy way to add tension. Worst of all, AutoSave icons spoil the moment – you just got told something bad is about to happen. Just add a quicksave and leave me to fire a rocket-launcher at point blank range cos I panicked and span the mouse wheel too quick, don’t punish me by making me trawl through all that crap again.

I’m seriously getting my ass kicked. My reload (thank you quicksave) is higher than my bodycount. I can’t keep blaming the mouse. Is it the game? Is it me, am I too old, is Blood something I can grumble about to kids of today telling them, hunched over the latest COD reskin that they don’t know how easy they have it? I just needed time to adjust, this era of shooters wasn’t as forgiving. I have less options, I can’t hide in tall grass or go invisible. And quickly I realise it’s all on me, I have to win this situation not manage it, and that’s actually really exciting, more exciting than any recent shooter that practically encourages cowardice. I just gotta shut up and man up.

Finally able to survive a level or two, it all comes back to me and lost in the world again, grinning like Caleb when he gets the shotgun (‘Good, bad, I’m the one with the gun’), I’ve got this. I’m enjoying this. It’s like meeting up with an old friend and instead of realising how far apart you’ve grown, you actually have a ton of fun and stuff to share.

i ain't got nobody

Blood squeezes every drop out of the Build engine. The graphics aren’t hard on the eye; in fact they hold up incredibly well and I don’t feel like I’m playing an old game. Levels are cleverly constructed to draw you in and then spring a trap, they encourage exploration even when you know better; they reward and double-cross you in equal measure. Best of all, you always feel like you’re pushing forward and you’re getting somewhere rather than Doom’s drudge towards whatever. 20 yrs on and I’m still amazed at the sheer inventiveness of the locations; frozen mazes, moving trains, disused fairgrounds, Haunted Houses, Crystal Lake complete with the ki ki ki, ma ma ma sound in the woods, a Meat packing factory, it’s like playing through every horror film I watched when I was too young to watch them; Lovecraft, Poe, Tolkien and Sinatra refs are thrown in too. Modern games, better by every technical yardstick, don’t have this inventiveness. Why are modern games so samey? Within Blood’s levels, buried deep are multiple references to … well pretty much everything you ever thought was cool but your mum would have taken off you if she found it. But Blood doesn’t go for the Duke cheap shots. There’s no strippers who show their pixel-nipples for a dollar, In Blood you have to know your stuff; Dismembered hands scream “I’ll swallow your soul!”,

all work and no play...

Caleb growls “Son of a bitch must pay”, “Are you gonna just stand there and bleed?”, “Victims. Aren’t we all?”. There’s an orange jumpsuit with Kimble on it during the train level, a room filled with magic-tree air fresheners and a body strapped to a bed, a reference to the Flukeman. They are absolutely everywhere and 20yrs later they’re still gloriously retro and I’m still finding them; I heard a dog barking and Caleb muttered ‘Cujo?’ Blood was built for the kind of folks who’d get the zombie in a bath in room 237 of the Overlooked Hotel. Borderlands, Far Cry Blood Dragon and Saints Row owe Blood a debt and still didn’t do it as Rat Pack cool. And this attention to cool, in its clever locations and level design, its references and quotes go a long way to forgiving any of its graphical limitations, it’s playability or its age. Which I honestly don’t find confining.

Like all games of the era, the limitations of the engine also extended to the monsters and the weapons. The monsters head towards your muzzle with little more thought than zig-zagging and the weaponry is just a variation on Doom’s, but they’re as inventive and macabre as you’d expect. A flare gun is a personal fave, just to clip a distant zombie and watch him burst into flames feet from you. There’s the bloody butcher lobbing cleavers, a tommy gun, the cultists mumbling what’s likely some film ref I’ve still not figured out, the voodoo doll. And the zombies with heads you can kick off. Still fun. It’s a shame games grew up, COD could do with some kickable heads and have shooters really progressed any further than dressing up Doom’s gameplay anyway? When they do try something different, we moan about it. We still want to run and gun. That’s what we’re here for and when I battle in Blood I’m having a better experience than most recent games because it gets me; it’s as much fun as freak.

it's stone, it's stone, it's stone

The level design is way above Blood’s peers too. I’d forgotten how much your survival and fun depended on using the environment – which can’t be trusted. The haunted house has some great secret passageways letting you get the jump on creatures waiting in rooms, but the ghosts found there screech and scare you back into the open; Outside, jumping into swimming pools or lakes to escape gunfire is not always a good idea – there’s often a gill monster thing lurking and worse, it can get out the water to chase you, so you just added to the monster count. Clambering on top of buildings keeps you out of range but watch those stone gargoyles … Blood is not for cowards. It’s for explorers ready for a fight. I found myself exhilarated the entire time and when I’d cleared a level, I’d happily wander taking in the style and the references. It’s not lost anything and anyone who grew up on today’s shooters would find this more rewarding an experience if they could see past the graphic limitations.

So involved was I, that when I finally reached the Dark God and demanded a reason for all this, I was speaking alongside Caleb; and the answer didn’t disappoint. Neither did our response. The mystery solved, my wife sadly avenged and the day saved, the game was played and I am no less a Blood fan than I was 20yrs ago. Quite possibly more so because it showed me how placid and safe shooters have become. Once in the zone I forgot it’s age; it’s exciting and so engrossing you don’t care the world isn’t photo-realistic.

Subtly subversive and rewarding, there’s few games even now that can offer Blood’s depth and that transcends any advancements the genre has made; against its peers, Blood still reigns down; Doom has not aged well, Duke is best remembered and not replayed, and the others? I can’t remember what Quake was about at all. Technology may have improved immeasurably, but mo-cap and pseudo-moral choices don’t hold a candle to a game that gets you. Blood still gets me, and it still sits proudly in my top ten.

Elvira. Still got it

Spoiler alert, aka that ending.

I remember the ending being hysterical. Like a real Snake Plissken exit. But this time something different struck me. Call it age, over analysis, maybe I’ve become used to moral choices and my actions having an impact but Blood’s finale was dark. Really dark; even for a shooter, which usually ends with the hero’s murderous mayhem at least justified. I remembered Caleb, having killed the God (He kills a god!), walking into the night victorious; the lone hero. But now, in my later years, I see a man who leaves with nothing; his faith shattered and the society he belonged to gone, Caleb is left with no friends and no future – all by his own hand. Other heroes got their reward; Duke and his babes for example. Calab got nothing but blood on him. So far, so dramatic. But then, his work done, he outright murders someone; someone innocent who was thanking him for their liberation. Games don’t portray real bastards generally. Indifferent maybe, narcissistic perhaps, but typical anti-heroes on the side of right if not the law, sitting comfortably in the ‘he’s bad but they’re worse’ camp. What actually shocked me was the realisation I’d played Caleb just how he was. He was a murderer before and he’s a murderer still. So many games sit on a contradictory fence where the cutscene character is behaving one way, but me inhabiting them sure isn’t. They lament the murder, the horror, then let you take control to enjoy doing just that. You as the player ignore whatever’s troubling that cutscene character; I recall killing endless pedestrians from the outset in GTA SA, just to get some money. That’s not the behaviour of cutscene CJ who desires to rise above the mindless violence of the streets. I wasn’t true to him; your character may be a goody goody, but you aren’t and what caught me was Blood’s Caleb was as true as I was playing him – a cold murderous villain. He was who he was.

20 yrs on and Blood still had one impression left to make; The cutscenes did not justify or ignore the death I’d wrought, they showed Caleb intended to do exactly what I did. For all of Bioshock’s Rescue or Harvest, Mass Effect’s Paragon vs Renegade or whatever the hell Far Cry 4 was trying to say, I’d always do what was best for me the player, not me the character. But Blood knew both of us; it is a brilliant game.

1997 | Developer Monolith Productions | Publisher GT Interactive Software / Atari

Platform; Win

Painkiller

A Blast from the Past review

FBT relives a painful memory.

The Past

My memories of Painkiller are vague yet vibrant. It stayed with me somehow, despite playing once and never going back. I recall the best ‘melee’ weapon of any shooter (The eponymous weapon) as I fought through the lost and pissed off souls of Purgatory to re-join my wife in Heaven, assisted by none other than Eve, looking typically seductive. What really stuck with me, my first thought when I recalled Painkiller is endlessly battering baddies; that’s the point of any shooter, but it was such a consistent onslaught and not in a frenetic, frantic or exhilarating way. I remember them in their hundreds plodding towards me as I plodded towards them, Painkiller akimbo. I think I enjoyed it but didn’t want to be stuck in purgatory again.

Painkiller was released in 2004 – a big year for gaming, starting with Rockstar’s GTA San Andreas. It finally cracked what we’d been after since the beginning; an immersive shooter experience. Along with 2004’s other open world release, Far Cry, games that would have been traditionally linear shooters changed – Now we could choose how and when we shot it. Shooters began to absorb more Role-Playing tropes; xp, level ups, choices and side missions and eventually games like Borderlands became the modern shooter, only CoD laboured lineally on. Meanwhile, 2004’s Doom 3 had one thing going for it – it’s iDTech4 engine; Doom 3’s guts and GTA:SA’s heart meant games were going to get interesting again.

And in the middle of this revolution was Painkiller, in its own kind of purgatory. It’s ‘shut up and shoot’ approach seemed dated, a year too late like Daikatana or SiN, steamrolled by their contemporaries. But somehow Painkiller held on, kept coming like its monsters. A steady stream of add-ons, DLC, odd remakes, and a sequel – Painkiller was one of those games most gamers had played but didn’t really talk about, like living through ‘Nam.

So, my expectations for Painkiller are mixed. Would it play like a refreshingly clean game, a change to the overly complicated shooters of today? Why did I play it once and never go back?

Still a Blast?

Despite it being all about Hell, Purgatory, Regret, Loss and all that, I wasn’t prepared for how Gothic it is in here. An opening cut scene shows a car on the road at night, our hero Daniel (What kind of name is that for a hero? I’ll assume some biblical reference that I can’t be bothered to google) looking lovingly at his wife instead of the road and ploughing their car into a truck. She goes to Heaven while Daniel, in purgatory is left to his own device. The Painkiller. Easily one of my favourite Melee weapons, beating the Grav-Gun from HL2 or Duke’s foot, PK is a bladed fan that slices through enemies like one of those Dicers that cuts anything on a teleshopping channel. But wait, that’s not all! If you order now you’ll also get an alt fire that sends a tracer firing out creating a laser that eviscerates anything walking through it, while the tracer also grabs an enemy and pulls them towards the blades. Plus it can rip open anything destructible. It’s the multipurpose tool of any Purgatory survivor and one of those early weapons you keep going back to because it shakes things up a bit. I’m in a graveyard and looking forward to letting loose.

But two steps of exploration later and I’m battling through pretty much an endless roll-call of Gothic, horror nightmare-ish villains. Crone Witches, Skeletons in armour wielding swords. Fine, this is a shooter afterall and it’s a strong start. But after this happens two or three times, I sense a trend. For no real reason, I’m locked or forced into battles, trapping me into what really are mini arenas; walk into an area and a door locks and off I go, spinning and shotgunning until it opens again. I’m just corralled and set upon. But that’s what a shooter is surely? I justify this as Hell’s punishment for me, to eternally wander into firefights, fighting for my non-life. A dozen baddies pop up, I dispatch and continue. And keep doing it.

Eventually my smiting is over and the entire graveyard smote, my stats are revealed like a deathmatch game and on we go. For levels and levels I repeat this until Eve appears, who along with an angel (who looks like the keyboardist from a ‘80s Swedish pop band) explain Lucifer is on the march to claim Heaven via Purgatory and all I have to do to join my wife is stop him. That’s … big. That’s a big boss battle, the devil. And then it’s back to killing groups in areas in levels, with no real sense of moving forward, of getting anywhere because each level is it’s own part of Purgatory – that makes sense thematically, it just doesn’t work narratively, when in the game itself. When I die I expect it to ask me to insert more coins.

Painkiller is schizophrenic. The cutscenes do all the telling, I do all the shooting. They could be different games if it wasn’t for the backgrounds. Sure, that’s the basic structure of any FPS, but the stages, the stats completely remove me from any personal involvement. I just wander looking for traps to spring waiting for the exit to open. I have no investment; This feels like a bot-controlled deathmatch, like I have no friends to play with online. There’s no story elements to the parts I control, no reveals, no curiosity to be had. Just shoot.

Daniel, in a pleather jacket and frowny face, doesn’t seem too concerned about it. He’s like a Max Payne knock-off. Had Daniel been a bit more of a Maxalike, constantly doubting himself in-game, it could have been interesting but once you’re back in control, Daniel is silent (except for those annoying ‘huh, haa, oof’ noises first person heroes used to make every time they jumped.); All the apprehension and seemingly unwinnable situation carefully woven into the cutscene’s narrative is swept aside in favour of literally hundreds of creatures who take the quickest route towards Painkiller’s blades. Zero AI, zero challenge. All I got from this was RSI from clicking fire. You could mod the backgrounds into anything (Serious Sam springs to mind) and it would have no effect on your experience; Your purpose is to clear out the baddies and start the next battle.

To look at, it’s a thing of beauty. Each level is a master-class in art design and different to the next. Every possible gothic and nightmarish location is explored and it’s done so well – you’re maiming through huge cathedrals where robed figures lob axes, blazing medieval villages under attack from witches on broomsticks, a mental institution where tortured patients still strapped to their electro-shock equipment scream, medieval castles with Executioners. Later levels reflect WW1. It drips with death and despair and that’s what is so anger-inducing; none of the surroundings are reflected in the experience. Purgatory is full of decrepit and wasted places inhabited by victims siding with the Devil in the hopes he’ll lead them to Heaven yet you’re just holding down the shoot button in arena battles. If it felt like you were pushing forward, that you were progressing through the story not a level it would be perfect. Painkiller should work, it should be full of a creeping sense of unease as I hesitantly explore the underworld knowing I’ll have to face off with the devil at some point. But I make no connection, I have no war-stories to tell, no anecdotes of lucky/clever fighting on my part or the baddies, no narrative moments while I’m in control; I don’t personally achieve anything except unlock the exit and my experience would be identical to any other gamer’s.

And it gets more frustrating. Each new level removes your previous ammo and armour disconnecting you from the narrative – It’s Unreal Tournament in a Haunted House; It’s easy to see why PK was chosen as the first World Cyber-Athelete game. Chasing after souls to invoke ‘devil mode’, juggling coin out of dead bodies to unlock one-use power-ups just add to the disconnect; Daniel should be Max Payne, the levels should show me clawing my way back to my wife, I should want to get through this but I just maim until I get to see Eve again in her barely there outfit; I don’t blame Adam for making a mess of things. Painkiller is essentially an arcade game while the cut-scene story is an animated Divine Comedy. Just watch it on YouTube.

2004 | Developer People Can Fly | Publisher DreamCatcher Interactive

Platforms; Win | XBox

Star Trek Elite Force

A Blast from the Past review

FBT goes boldly where no gamer has gone before. To replay a Star Trek game.

The Past

One of my earliest memories is of my Mum turning off the Star Trek episode Arena ‘cos the Gorn scared me. From then, I was a trekkie. But I was never fussed about Star Trek gaming. Most were either adventure stories which I had (and still have) little patience for, strategic games (boring) or were terrible (That’s more my style). The only exception was the 25yr Anniversary Game, and since Star Trek is now 50 years old, I can’t bring myself to go that far back when rediscovering old games. The reason I got Elite Force in 2000 was because it was marketed as a shooter. And it had form – It was from Raven, who gave us Heretic and it’s built on idTech3, back then the best shooter engine around. That it was set in my favourite sci-fi universe was just a bonus. That it was set on Voyager was less of a bonus, being my least favourite trek (other than that one with the Quantum Leap guy but that series doesn’t count). I was stoked to let rip with a phaser.

I can’t recall much about the game now I come to think about it; I know I enjoyed it, but I’ve never really brought it up in gaming conversations and I don’t recall anyone else celebrating it either. Maybe that’s because 2000 had a lot to celebrate; Hitman, NOLF, Deus Ex, Diablo II and, ahem, Daikatana were released, not to mention all the great games knocking about before 2000 that were still resonating (Half Life, take a bow). Not even the marquee value of its namesake could keep Elite Force in gamers’ minds. Maybe gamers were just after something fresh, something they could call their own instead of a dad hand-me-down like Star Trek. To be fair it did well enough for a sequel but Elite Force is long forgotten. I’d completely forgotten about it myself until I went looking through my ‘probably won’t run in windows anymore’ box. It’s not even on Steam.

But, it’s Star Trek and it did run in windows. So, Make It So. No, that’s Captain Picard. I can’t remember if Janeaway had any catchphrases. I recall she loved coffee, and that’s good enough for me. Make It Strong.

Still a Blast?

My first surprise is the menu. It animates like one of the computer screens on the show and it has the ship’s computer voice. It actually has a mildly nostalgic effect on me. Not for Star Trek, but because the menu is immediately involving. Games now go for that minimalist look with their menus, a sleek typeface and nothing of what you’re getting into. But for a time, games wanted you in the zone from the get-go and the menu was part of the world; Medal of Honor Allied Assault’s menu was a radio-set in a bunker; that reboot was all black background and white text. How does that orientate me into the game world? Remember when Doom’s exit choices would goad you into sticking around? The new one doesn’t, it just asks if you’re sure you want to exit (Yes, I am sure). Menus were part of the experience.

The cut scenes look adorably 2000; the external shots of the ship and space are CG animation and everyone’s got that scanned in face stretched across a box look. But it’s the real actor’s faces, Seven of Nine is still hot and rather than thinking this is too old to enjoy, I’m happily going along with it. It’s an old game but no less involving for it. Reporting for duty, stretchy-face Janeway.

So after a quick captain’s log, I’m wandering about a borg cube. While it does look a little Quake 2, movement is fine, the death animations are great and it’s thrilling for a trekkie and challenging for a shooter fan. The interiors of the ship look great and the borg are menacing. Taking their design style from the First Contact movie, they look Hellraiser-ish and have laser sights and make grabs as you pass, aiming to assimilate you once they get past your armour and health. Oddly, both Health and Armour are repowered by single health points dotted about, essentially giving me 200 health since amour gets whittled down first. Nevermind, turns out I need it, this is an unforgiving game in terms of hit damage. I’m really into it, and I’m resisting a resistance is futile comment.

Playing merrily away, I realise the mechanics of shooters really hasn’t changed in over a decade and a half. I spin through a choice of weapons, jump and duck, shoot and get shot, figure out how to unlock doors, get past some obstacle, take mildly non-linear routes to a goal. The only difference between now and here is the pixel count and that doesn’t matter when the game keeps you busy and involved. There’s lots of mini cutscenes during missions that reinforce what we’re up to, chatter between me and the rest of the team and mission parameters update and change regularly; I realise that structurally, it’s set like an episode of the show. This is great!

It’s not so great for Voyager though – unexpectedly transported to a graveyard of derelict ships, some malevolent force with a Reaver-looking ship is intending to turn Voyager into scrap. Well, guess who’s up for stopping it. Me. Or rather, she. Elite Force was the first game I remember playing where I could chose the sex of my arm (Being a FPS, the gun wielding forearm was all you saw save for the cutscenes). Games which allowed a gender choice back then usually plumped for ‘female; faster but weaker’ while Males were stronger but slower. But here the Trek world, everyone is equally capable. What doesn’t make me feel so good is the Elite Force of the title were some kind of Special Ops Red Shirts. Anyway, via an adorably dated cut-scene, we escape the immediate threat and Janeway sets us Spec-Ops Red Shirts up to go sniff around the other derelicts to find what we need to get out of this place before the Reavers are back.

Once free of the cut-scene, I can take a wander about the ship. This is new. Most shooters stick to cut-scene, shooting-scene, but here I’m on my own recognisance until I get called to a mission or breifing. The ship looks good and is well rendered, although I spend most of my time lost. Rather than feeling like padding it’s actually nice to take a break and get a sense of what I’m defending. Later as the story progresses, missions take place on board and you feel invested in protecting it, your home. You get to meet other crew members, hang out in your own quarters or the canteen, get ordered off the bridge, mess about in the holodeck and even develop a relationship with a fellow Red Shirt, Telsia (who consistently gets shot, kidnapped and in-the-way when you try to get through doors). Our flirting is likely down to the male version of my Red Shirt being the default, but regardless it’s amazing to consider a gay relationship in a game this old, with no commentary on it either. Considering how the game industry has portrayed – let alone treated – women through the years, not to mention an almost zero LGBT presence except for titillation, this is a nice moment; we have a cute little relationship to explore as Telsia warms to me and suggests places we can meet to talk more privately. If only I didn’t keep getting lost and forgetting where she is. When I finally found her I busted out my best moves and she told me to get lost. I assumed I’d missed our moment until I realised it wasn’t Telsia, just a similar looking NPC. Telsia was on the other side of the canteen. It’s disappointing then, that in Elite Force 2 a female option is no more. It regresses back to standard cis heroic male (with whom Telsia continues flirting, and likely getting stuck in doors with). So much for progress.

The structure of the game really does mirror an episode of the show and it makes it so much more involving. There’s plot, drama, action, problems to solve, retrospective moments and characterisation – much of which is on your say-so as you wander the ship, fix things and interact, influencing the way NPCs behave. It’s still basic, this is no Mass Effect but in some ways I feel ME owes EF at least a nod. If you swapped Voyager for the Normandy and Telsia for Ash. Or Liara, or Miranda or Tali, Jack or … Just the same. Anyway, point is I hadn’t appreciated the depth or subtlety in Elite Force. It really tried to be something more than a straight shooter although as a shooter EF works well; the weapons are varied and actually work with different baddies rather than lazily getting bigger/outrageous/unuseable the further you get. You can also choose a weapon loadout ranging from just a Phaser to going Commando (I mean like the scene in Commando where he tools up). Plus you’re often shooting trek badguys too. The Klingons, the borg plus a few Voyager villains and some created for the game. They use typical group or cover tactics but rarely miss; run and gun will get you Redshirted quick.

The missions are well paced and much like the show, you’re rarely alone; Elite Force crew accompany you. Aside from Telsia’s headstrong habit of trying to get through doors first, they’re handy to have around. They work well, fight well and are quite chatty, talking about the mission, past events, how they’re feeling about things. It’s nice to not to play the lone gun-woman and their prattling keeps it all tied together. They’re often key to progressing too, splitting up to recon or hack doors, or if Telsia’s involved, triggering a firefight or setting off a trap. You become protective of them, they’re not cannon fodder. If one dies, another NCP doesn’t just beam in and your team is down by one – and mourned by all. This comrade-connection extends to the periods of R&R aboard the ship and several main characters in the game are the TV show’s background or recurring characters – you often overhear comments or references to episodes or trek events. All of this would go over the non-pointy ears of non-trek fans but for those in the know, it’s a lovely touch.
The devs also keep each mission memorable. There’s a great plot twist during a borg mission where you walk into a trap (Telsia…) and instead of assimilation it was a set-up to blackmail you into finishing off an old adversary of theirs from the series. It’s a nice little nod tying it into the show but from a gaming perspective, suddenly you’re span off into a new situation and there’s a different tone to the mission.

One level in particular stands out, for its trek references and great level design; on a recon mission, Redshirt realises the space station they’re on is actually the fused together wreckage of different species’ ships where they co-exist in their own areas with an uneasy truce. It’s a great location and environment. We have a sneak mission past the Klingons who bitch about the untrustworthy humans. Humans? We sneak on, and enter a strangely familiar ship. It’s the original series! But not as we know it, Jim. This is the alternate universe from the classic series episode Mirror, Mirror. There’s no mention, no reference and it has no bearing on the story but it’s a brilliant touch and I had loads of fun walking in and out of the doors to hear that woosh sound. No Telisa to get in the way thankfully – because she’d been kidnapped. The level ends on a cameo (and boss firefight) with a well-regarded species from Voyager too. It’s a great level.

Finally, our hero, our Redshirt, Alex progresses too. Beginning as a hothead disappointment and threatened with being cut from the team, she progresses to team leader by the final quarter, and it actually feels deserved. It’s a nice little character arc within a great storyline, set in a solid game. Plus as part of the command crew, I get to hang out with Seven. Just don’t tell Telsia.

As a retro game, Elite Force is great. Yes, it looks its age but that’s most evident in the blocky representation; It’s got a solid plot, adventure, characterisation and you get invested – You care that Voyager escapes. It’s a shame it was marketed with the line ‘set phasers to frag’ – that’s just going to piss everyone off, trekkies and trek-haters. But it’s a great shooter. There’s few games in this genre that can boast such a well-rounded and considered experience; For me, I’ve rediscovered a rival to Half-Life and that’s not just the Trek talking. I am very happy that Elite Force isn’t going back to the ‘wont run in windows’ box and it won’t be forgotten so quickly. Least there were no Gorns this time around.

2000 | Developer Raven Software | Publisher Activision

Genre FPS, Sci-Fi

Platforms; Win, PS2

Road Rash

a Blast from the Past review

For saying FBT claims he hates racing games, here’s another one he won’t shut up about.

The Past

Ahh, Road Rash. RR was basically the DGAF of racing games back in the 90s. Before mayhem had to have repercussions, games like RR quietly got on with being really unethical for fun’s sake. You were one of eight or so bikers competing in illegal street races, but this wasn’t cannonball run with some friendly joshing mid trip, there was no Captain Chaos to help; RR contestants hated each other. If you got too close, they’d give you a kick or a punch to send you off and that was if they were being nice. Chains and pipes would often come into play, while CHiPs on Riceburners would clobber you with truncheons and arrest you after you fell off. And it wasn’t just the racers you had to contend with. The tracks which wound their way through close-quarter city streets and open highways were chock-a-block with cars, pedestrians (which you could mow through at the risk of getting knocked off) and other obstacles. It was one of those games you played with mates not against them, all of you going nuts at the screen as you tried to survive a race let alone win it.

I’m going to be in for a rough ride – it’s 25yrs old and all my memories are of moments spent playing it not the game itself. I can’t remember a thing about it beyond crashing and laughing.

Still a Blast?

Yeah, this looks old even though it’s the updated CD version. But the menus are actually kinda cool, someone in the dev team must have got a trial version of that new-fangled Photoshop thingie, as all the screens are morphed and amusingly stretched faces to represent the riders while FMV cutscenes of bikes doing donuts and wheelies set the scene and in no way represent the gameplay.

I enter the bikers clubhouse, pick a race and chat to the other bikers who give comments and advice on how to race. It’s not interactive, they’re all pictures and text but there’s a sense of fun to it, like it knows it’s a joker. I pop into the bike shack and discover a ‘rat’ bike is the best I’ll afford for a while. The superbikes are way beyond my Bad MoFo wallet. Best get some races won then.

Lined up on the blocky road I see my character out ahead of me and the usual heads-up display. A tiny roar of engines and we’re off. And I’m off my bike already. Damn car came right at me. The controls are terrible; it’s largely left or right to get around obstacles that come towards you, a little like a rail-shooter, but I don’t know what else I was expecting.

Back on the bike I race after my rivals and soon catch up and get my eye into it. You can’t really gauge distance or gaps and it moves at such a hectic pace staying on becomes the main source of excitement. Pedestrians hurry across the road and get splattered in a bloodless, basic way and make my bike bounce and I have to recover, but it’s easier than going around them; one touch too far and the bike takes a sharp turn and you’re off again. I do that a lot but always find it amusing. If he hits a car, the rider flies off for quite the distance or slides until a passing car stops him. Once recovered, the rider gets up and trots back to his fallen steed, sounding much like he’s wearing clogs. Another problem / amusement is he’s not very traffic-aware, so will simply run into passing cars or other bikes and get clobbered again. And again. Back on the bike I chase and catch up only to get kicked, punched and smacked with a pipe by my fellow bikers. I respond and fall off again. Kicking tends to throw off the balance when riding at 100miles an hour. But I persevere and amazingly I time a punch as someone swings a pipe and get it off him! Now armed, I take out several riders, watching them fall or go airborne then position myself to run them over as they clog back to their bikes. I also get brave enough to start aiming for pedestrians and timing kicks to send riders into passing cars. It’s mayhem and within seconds I’m off again and I’ve lost my pipe. Good while it lasted. I actually manage to finish Second and think that’s really not bad for a first time in two decades. I’m grinning at how mad that was, the hilarious ‘clonk’ sound the pipe made, the leather-bound punches and yells from riders I kicked, the screams from the pedestrians… It’s all in good sniggering fun. I wanna go again, and chose a longer race, find secret shortcuts and have a really good time being lawless, actively seeking out fights and folks to run over, caring less about winning. I even manage to take out Poncho during one race, kicking him into an approaching car. Such fun.

RR isn’t really a very good game, even for its time. It’s basic arcade level with digitised pictures for car sprites, pixelated messes for pedestrians and basic animation for the riders. The controls are terrible and the physics make no sense; I sent a rider off his bike and watched him sail into the distance until he disappeared. I’d forgotten about him until I saw him still running back for his bike (as in I swerved and ran him over) miles later. But the game really doesn’t care it’s not immersive or refined. That’s not its spirit, not what it’s trying to achieve. This is not a realistic depiction of bike racing or a game for winners, it’s for sinners. What RR wants to achieve is exactly what I’m doing now; Grinning like an idiot.

RR managed 6 games between 1991 and 2000 and there’s been unofficial/inspired-by reboots since, with Road Rage by Maximum Games and Road Redemption from Pixel Dash which was funded by Kickstarter (both 2017) showing it’s a popular underground franchise, and this the original was clearly aimed at the early console era when only one mate had a PS and everyone went ‘round for a laugh. It was the perfect beer and belly-laughs game where a controller would be passed around and everyone gets involved. It was a game for yelling at the screen, accusing it of cheating, watching your mates fail and creasing up at running over a granny.

RR is another one of those games waiting to be rediscovered but only if you discovered it originally, and are tired of moralistic criminal games (GTA5) – it’ll take you back to the time when flattening a granny was okay. For blocky, daft enjoyment, RR hasn’t aged – if you’re willing to go back to that age.

1991 | Developer Electronic Arts | Publisher Electronic Arts

Genre; Racing

Platforms;