Tag: first-person shooter

Gaming

Blog 878: Dark Forces

Rao Dao Zao

I used to like Star Wars. The original trilogy? Bangers. The prequels? Flawed execution of a fundamentally solid plotline.

Then there were the video games. Jedi Knight II has long been one of my favourite Expanded Universe adventures, but I’ve never played the game where this particular storyline began and I’ve been meaning to catch up for years.

Kyle Katarn started his life in 1995’s Dark Forces. Now, I struggled to play Doom and gave up on it after a few levels because it was too old even for me, so it was with some trepidation that I took this particular plunge…

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Gaming

Blog 735: Strafe

Rao Dao Zao

I’m always late to the party, but I never let that drag me down. I first heard about Strafe when it was half-built and it looked interesting to me; a shooter in the classic fast-paced style, full of crunchy low-poly levels and laser guns, albeit with procedurally-generated levels.

Having recently finished grinding my way through Dragon Age: Origins, I followed that up with Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition (hence the, er, lengthy blogging hiatus), which left me somewhat in the mood for something a little snappier. As is always the way, Strafe recently released its powered-up Millenium Edition and went on sale…

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Gaming

Blog 714: SiN

Rao Dao Zao


My brother gave me five games for crimbo, but I’ve been so busy working on my own that I’ve hardly even looked at them. I played open-world RPG Two Worlds during the festive holiday but didn’t have much to say about it; it’s a bit janky, sometimes interesting, couple of nice ideas but ultimately bland.

Sometimes, though, you need to recharge your batteries with a classic late-90s first-person shooter, and it seems we have one in the pile — SiN.

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Film

Blog 694: Quake 4 Is Not a Bad Game

Rao Dao Zao

I’m actually a bit late to playing Quake 4. See, ever since I first bought it, replays have been oddly coincident with Simply Red and/or Mick Hucknall having a new song out. I’m not a fan of Simply Red and/or Mick Hucknall by any means, but I generally play games with the radio on in the background and… this kept happening.

I say I’m late because Simply Red had a single out over the summer, but I didn’t replay Quake 4. It must have planted some seeds though, because here I am now with that Quake 4 feeling in my guts. Come on, then.

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Gaming

Blog 688: Turok

Rao Dao Zao

I wish I could have been a part of the late-90s shooter boom, but we could never afford a PC or any of those early 3D consoles at the time. Luckily gog.com exists in the present day and is slowly but surely unearthing all the shonky PC ports of strange games I glimpsed on billboards and in magazines but never imagined I would ever get to touch.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter here is not the original game, but a (slightly?) remastered edition that was actually cranked out fairly recently. Generally I aim for purism — all official original patches and expansions but nothing more — but that’s not an option here so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance of the Original Version and take my review as being of… whatever they’ve changed/fixed/upgraded in this new version.

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Gaming

Blog 676: Bulletstorm

Rao Dao Zao

Ah yes, remember all those tirades about DRM, and how these services are invariably disabled long after the fact, making playable games unplayable by mere disconnection of their activation gateways? Sigh.

Luckily, there’s a hacked Games for Windows Live DLL floating around that shoves it out of the way to let you get on with playing Bulletstorm. No more achievements, alas, but at least we can get in. It’s long past time for another trip down this rollicking foul-mouthed rollercoaster romp…

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Gaming

Blog 671: Boredrlands 2

Rao Dao Zao

Oh Claptrap.

I’ve been playing Borderlands 2 for something like a month now, around my busy social calender and, you know, having a job. It is the gift that keeps on giving, with endless hours of dramatic scenery to blast through with an infinity of guns. However — and you might hate me for this, but I’m going to go out there and do it anyway — I’m going to accuse Borderlands 2 of having too much content.

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Gaming

Blog 667: An Ode to Claptrap

Rao Dao Zao

I never understood why people didn’t like Claptrap. He’s warm and welcoming, a generous soul in a broken world full of murderous lunatics and viciously territorial wildlife.

I haven’t played Borderlands for ages, but I got the itch after crimbo and figured I’d reinstall it and have another go.

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