"You might want to reconsider, seeing that you're surrounded by heavily armed, angry rebels." -The DM to the guy who's refusing the plot hooks just to be difficult.
@Drumslav Czechisenko Yeah, unless it’s straight in the neck or heart, you’re gonna be struggling for a while. Still, I fancy my chances against a knife more than a gun.
Does that line only play if you take the “kill Macil first” path? I’ve never heard it in-game, both the Veteran Edition and the original running in GZ Doom. Same goes with the “five feet by four feet” prisoner rant in the stinger but that one I have seen in-game as text only.
I gave the game a go, and found that when someone trains you, it improves the power of the knife significantly. Near the end, I was using the knife more than a serial killing clown you'd see in a slasher flick. Then I got lost for 6 hours and quit.
is that how it worked? i just found i was able to staelthfully kill gaurds from behind in 1 or two hits, even the ones inmech suits (not the giants that fly around and blast you to bits in one shot though.)
@@elgatochurro Your melee damage depends on stamina upgrades, and Veteran's Edition also has a quest to collect 3 talismans to improve melee damage further
Sewers *should not* be maze-like at all. Heck, even mild turns should be avoided. Any architect would design a sewer to be as straightforward and simple as possible. You want sewage to leave as fast as possible. Just looking at the sewers in this game, they would be backed up in a day. No, half a day.
See this is why I kinda like it where sewers are like set up as actual grids, or actual pathing, but you instead take advantage of maintenance tunnels and other openings.I ran into a dungeon enhancing mod for New Vegas that did that, and it was far, far more fitting than your average labrynth tunnels of poopwater you see.
Kinda fits though. Imagine the city this big... under it they just kept adding to it after all the destruction above. Plus if it's anything like a very old city nowadays. You could be looking at a the same scenario over a half a dozen generations. Sometimes people don't design sewers in a smart way overall... They just add lines and tunnels b/c they just need to do it that time around. Screw the rest. So in this game. I'm cool with it.
Update: Played through the Sewers... it's not at hard as he makes it out to be... But I agree, the levels in this game are quite... Would you say... Big & Maze like... BUT it's on Purpose! All of Doom's maps were a maze on purpose. That's the best part of these games. The mazes and the secrets and the surprises were great! As far as your comment about the architecture and reasoning for the sewers... It's mostly caves in the sewers, not a bunch of random pipes all over the place. So from a rational stand point. It doesn't matter.
Marathon is horrific for level design, like shit the first few times I played it I was so lost it was unreal, I just booted it back up and it still confuses the hell out of me
Accursed Farms Seriously, dude, the world geometry was non-euclidean. I shit you not, there is more than one instance of hallways making 360 degree turns and never intersecting, and this is without a slope.
I just bought the rerelease of this game, Strife: Veteran Edition. Great game, and they addressed a few of Ross's issues with the original. For instance, they added a text wall after the intro to tell you what's going on. They also stop you from making it impossible to finish the game a few times. I highly recommend it.
In your more recent episode on Killing Time you mentioned how someone is compiling a list of what's behind waterfalls in video games. On that note, there are secrets behind two artificial waterfalls in Strife, on the level where you have to destroy the power crystal.
I'd like to point out that Strife was recently ported over to the Nintendo Switch, with optional motion control aiming. The reaper of obscurity has been delayed just a bit longer!
Gyroaiming has become one of my favorite things on the switch. I can actually aim somewhat precisely on a console instead steering with my elbows, like Ross said.
I wonder if you still can, I know the original programmers were attached to the re-release, from what I've read. Rogue Entertainment is shut down, but that makes me wonder if there IS a way to pay the original devs. Most of them are working under the name 'Nerve Software' and do additional work for most AAA shooter titles. If there is a way, I don't know how. And I respect your decision not to get the re-release, but it may be a good option for other people looking into the game. Reviving older PC games seems to be a thing now, and I love it. I hope to see more of it.
+John Zombi Shame because the people actually doing the remaster (night dive studios) do deserve money simply because their buisness is acquiring the rights to buried classics and updating them to run on modern systems with some extra feature's I think ROss would approve
The maze-like level design was kind of a necessity because the Doom engine just couldn't cope with large complex areas. You could either have big *sparse* areas, like some of the outdoor areas in Doom, or else you had to add lots of walls to break the lines of sight, hiding everything around the corner, and turning any large level into a maze. It took another generation or two of engine improvements and more processing power before games could really do any kind of justice to big spaces.
Is it an engine limitation, or a 40 mhz Intel 80386 limitation? With 10X the processing power, can't you just display 10X as much stuff in 10X the area?
@@SalveMonesvol Some of both. Modern source ports do lift a lot of those limitations, but they come from hard-coded numbers in the engine - just running on better hardware doesn't change them. The Strife devs probably could have tweaked things up a bit (at the cost of higher minimum specs) but I get the impression that they didn't.
Difference being this plague thankfully hasn't wiped out most of humanity. Although if people keep acting stupid and refusing to follow the health experts advice... it just might before the vaccine gets mass released.
@@Wikloe How could it? Corona kills roughly 1 in 50, and most of those deaths are associated with extreme co-morbidities. The only way society collapses from this is if mass overreaction breaks other over-strained systems. Where I live, and in most of the developed world, "total excess deaths" are currently roughly 2x covid deaths. Meaning that our response to the virus is killing about as many people as the virus itself. The difference is that the non-covid excess deaths are much younger and healthier on average, and are mostly being killed by the psychological effects of lockdowns and endless sensationalized pessimistic media coverage. (Suicides, drug overdoses, etc) Being told to stay home with nothing but an internet connection full of algorithmically distilled nihilistic shit for months at a time is one of the least healthy things you could possibly do to a child or a teenager. (who are, statistically speaking, not at risk from corona in the first place) Ironically, this "expert advice" also cripples the immune system, by eliminating most exercise and sun exposure, increasing those very co-morbidities that are associated with dying from the virus. If left alone, Covid would've swept through nearly invisibly and burned the dry grass, a few extra flu deaths in an unusually rough flu season. Ideally we would have responded by increasing protection for those with co-morbidities, expanding our intensive care units, and encouraging exercise, sun exposure and nutrition. Instead, our authoritarian fear-porn response has turned it into a deep psychological scar that many of our children will never fully recover from, and weakened their bodies defence to the virus itself in the process. "Health experts" have been asked only for aggressive and over-simplified virus-killing advice (which plays into the hands of counterproductive and anti-intellectual authoritarianism), when they should have been asked to balance the net effects on society both physically and mentally and create a proper strategy for maximizing health. They have failed us and obviously so. PS: for what it's worth, I got the vaccine two months ago and have been bedridden with extreme exhaustion and blinding full-body pain (necessitating multiple heavy prescription painkillers) ever since. I have no idea if this is common or not as data on vaccine safety has become such a politicized mess. In any case, "lock down and wait for vaccine" was always going to be a failing strategy and is something we really should never do again.
I love this game so much I’ve secretly used the world as the basis for one of my D&D campaigns. So far the players don’t have a clue. That’s one of the things I love about hidden gems like this 😂
Shame that voiced quote isn't actually in the game, just the text. At least it isn't in Veteran Edition or the DOS copy that comes with the GOG version of Strife VE as an extra.
@@lionocyborg6030 It's TCRF content, in the game but never used/finished. Ross actually modified the prisoner portrait for this video as the one in the game's files is missing a background entirely.
You know, there's a simple yet brilliant trait in this review that too few people pick up on. When Ross was complaining about the level design, he compared it to the level design of Doom. So anyone honestly wanting to know if THEY would like it can use that as a frame of reference. See I love the level design of Doom. So that means that Ross's biggest complaint about this game should be something I'd actually enjoy. Too many reviewers complain about crap they hate, but never compare it to other games doing the same thing. So is it something I'd hate too, or does the review just not like the same stuff as me? But here, Ross cues me in to whether or not I'd hate it too.
That's a very important thing I feel a lot of reviews seem to miss. It reminds me how Total Biscuit would talk about laying bare your biases so that people looking at your criticism can accurately judge whether or not your opinions on something would line up or not.
I also played the game, health is limited, and thus I limited the super weapon to bosses and flying mechs, I didn’t find the grenade launcher quite as useful, just pretty good, might have been my difficulty
Here's a neat bit of trivia - While Strife was the last game to run on the Doom Engine, developer Rouge Entertainment later went to develop Quake: Dissolution of Eternity, Quake II: Ground Zero, with their last completed game being none other than _American McGee's Alice._ They went out of business in 2001 after handing Counter-Strike: Condition Zero back to Valve.
Personally, I still feel like there's not enough compelling evidence to convince me Ross is NOT a Minotaur. Okay, so he doesn't like mazes. There's always an oddball in the family. How about cloven hoofs? Have you dined on anyone's first born son recently?
+Malhekrow He does live on a CURSED farm. Minotaurs are fond of cursing adventurers to always be lost. What if he just likes having adventurers get lost in his infinite barn of red eyed cousins instead of a drab, dirty, grass maze?
Joey Wolf I'm really late to this discussion but... I would argue that him not liking maze is a pretty strong argument in favor of him being a minautor. The minautor was put there to trap him. I wouldn't like prison much if I was put in jail at birth
these are fair points. just cause his top half seems normal doesn't mean his lower half is the same. Heh perhaps we should ask his wife Magda, i'm sure she'd know
Having beaten it earlier this year, yeah it’s bad. The color scheme makes it pretty easy to miss that one corner you need to turn around in to find the objective.
I used to agree with Ross's view on Doom's level design, but lately I've been revisiting the old Doom and I've noticed that in the end its level design isn't that confusing. Occasionally I might've got lost due because I didn't notice a key, button or a teleporter, but I think that's more my fault for not paying attention rather than the fault of the level design itself. Sometimes the levels might seem a bit of a maze, sure, but the automap nicely keeps that from being a problem. Since it draws the places you've already been to you can easily conclude that if there's a corridor that seems to end in thin air or a door with seemingly nothing behind it it's a place you haven't been to yet. I don't know if other people find more difficulty in map-reading, but personally I think it's very comprehensible seeing that everything it draws is colorcoded. I think Doom's level design is just broad, open-ended and sometimes fun to explore, but then again my original frame of reference comes from Wolfenstein 3D which is just a fucking nightmare...
Yeah, most of these games he complained about really don't have that hard of a level design to get through if you just keep up with the map a little bit, I think Ross is being a little bit lazy, the one game that can get really annoying is Hexen though, which coincidentally is one of my favourite games. Most of the time you'll not only have a maze you have to get through but also pay very close attention to not missing an important switch that turns off something or opens a door in a different map, and if you do accidentally miss it, you might wander around in the various levels you can visit for a long time.
It's an alright game. I've played (and broken) it a couple times. There are TWO outright unwinnable situations that are not simply "you die because everyone opens fire" that I am aware of not counting those caused by cheating. The first is the opening "questline" that Ross mentioned (and there is a VERY easily-missed hint that something is wrong with doing that questline), and the second is for defeating a Spectre OUT OF ORDER, which causes a softlock because the game is literally unable to handle you not defeating the Spectres in one of two very explicit orders. IF you do decide to pick it up and play it, use ZDoom or GZDoom (I know Ross suggests the GZDoom fork, but I personally prefer ZDoom proper for anything utilizing the Doom engine.) (And with regard to Ross's comment on Doom's map design being horrible, I do believe that it got worse with each episode. Episode 1 was actually well-done, while Episode 4 I would like to forget even existed. Doom II was notably better than Doom 1 Episodes 2 and 3 [and infinitely better than episode 4])
I think Strife was brave for having weaponry that wasn't just an exact copy of the Doom Model: pistol/shotgun/minigun/rocket launcher. Back in the day I remember so many games just copied it, and badly. Hence "Doom Clone" being such a bad title. Strife was pretty damn good, especially considering you could kind of sneak around some areas.
I very fondly remember playing this game when it first came out, and being blown away by how much you could do in it. I've played it recently, and my nostalgia glasses cracked just a touch, as there are a lot of frustrating elements that I'd forgotten about, but for the most part the game still holds up. I actually really hope that Strife somehow finds a console release, like Doom, Marathon 2, and Wolfenstein 3D. However, I'd be crazy to think Strife would get a modern console port before more popular games like Heretic.
We went on a family trip this one time, and I took my old laptop with me. I had a bunch of old games installed on it, one of which was Quake. Since I didn't take a mouse with me (or because there was no space to use it in on the plane), i remapped the controls to WASD (movement) and the numpad (camera/ aiming). Worked like a charm. I don't, however, for the life of me understand how one can possibly play an fps on a console controller. I sometimes play an online shooter with three of my buds, and I'm the only one on PC. Two of the guys are alright, but that's only because they live in online games, and even then, I'd argue they're not much better than me (and I'm only barely decent at online fps).
People ask me where I got my sense of direction from, why I can read maps so well, and how I navigate somewhere on intuition alone. It's because I grew up playing FPS games in the 90s.
This is my the first of your Game Dungeon video I've watched, and before this I had only seen Freeman's Mind. Clearly you aren't a 1 hit wonder, this video was great. I'll definitely be watching the rest!
+BloggingLP Why is it ridiculous? Since the beginning of time its been the males sole job to protect the women(only way to make children) and children(only way to continue your culture/genes to the future). Protecting women and children is wired into every man, and an integral part of a healthy society. It only sounds ridiculous to your post modern, comfortable brain.
vaporfarts I think you misread my comment. I didn't write _ridiculous_, I wrote _hilarious_. There is a pretty big difference! The quote simply sounds quirky and over the top. That's all I said. Next time please read a bit more carefull before you insult people.
When it comes to MIDI music i think that most composers in the 90s used The Roland SC-55 or Roland SC-88 hardware MIDI modules. If you search on UA-cam you can find the Strife music played on the SC-55 and it sounds awesome! :D
Thanks to Ross's review, I actually bought a copy of Strife Veteran edition on steam because it was sale. So this way, I support the developer, and Ross indirectly because if he never review it, I would never have known. Ross's review makes me want to try the game out.
Actually, the punch dagger is really overpowered...with time, it gets to the point where you can indeed get close to the robots in the stealth sections and kill them in a couple of hits
Strife is my second favorite FPS. The action, the story, the voice acting, the stealth! This is a prove that bad sale scores are not the same of a ad game. (And, hey, sewers levels are usually bad anyway.) Oh, and BTW, it is alive on Steam nowadays, with even better gfx improvements.
Oh my god Ross you are one of the funniest people I've found on UA-cam, I get at least one good laugh out of every video, which is more than can be said for some of my favorite channels. Keep doing what you're doing!
OK, so about 12:00 on DOOM's music (k this was a 9 year-old video and I'm aware of that), I would like to point out something that I learned recently about Bobby Prince that I've never put together before: As a lawyer who made video game music, he knew how to make music suitable for DOOM while avoiding legal trouble at the same time. He could make music that would please the metal-heads at id Software, and keep them out of court. It is amazing that people always say that DOOM should have been sued for the similarities, but surely Mr. Prince knew what he was doing since it apparently never was.
Some of the best voice acting I've heard has been from people who weren't particularly good at it but actually gave a shit about their role. Too bad I couldn't get the voice acting in Strife to work. Probably need to find a better copy.
The Doom Engine was such a nice thing to happen to the gaming and game development communities. To this day people are still tweaking and using it to create really nice games.
This is still your best, most well-rounded episode. Great on-point humour, interesting narrative, very entertaining to watch. Wouldn’t mind seeing this style return for one of your next Dungeons!
25:47 Actually ross. The first guy you talk to in the game tells you to go kill a guy. If you talk to the guy before you kill him. He mentions how he hates the guy your warning about for ratting him out. The game gives a subtle hint that maybe it be best to not do what he tells you to.
One of my favorite games of all times. God I enjoyed this game so much. Loved to buy loads of teleports, place them in for example the castle level and have an all out battle with the enemy. So many allied troops against the enemy. The carnage was good! And the characters and their voice acting was amazing. Very memorable. Loved the setting of the game. Argh... what a great game! Got it on Steam. Have to play it now!
I feel like Ross is the only UA-camr I've seen whose older content seems just like the newest one That's not something bad, I'm not saying he hasn't evolved over time, it's just really comforting to find more and more videos and they're all similar He peaked years ago and has been peaking ever since ^^ It's a bit daunting finding a content creator you enjoy, looking through their backlog of videos and the difference being too jarring, to the point where you might not even like it that much, but not here :D
I was blown away by the shareware/demo of Strife. I think it was on a PC Gamer CD-ROM. I was fortunate enough to play the retail game while it was still fairly fresh. Today, Strife holds a place in one of those special partitions in my brain where I can't ascertain if a particular memory of it was actually in the game or just part of a dream. Thanks for the trip down nostalgia lane!
depends on the game, most fast pace shooters? I need a mouse and keyboard for that. but a game designed around a controller like Halo? I couldn't imagine that without stick aiming and it works fine, allows for diversity with movement shooting and vehicles.
I got Strife: Veteran Edition on GOG this week, and I just completed it. I agree that this is an awesome game, and I think it's worthy of a modern graphical upgrade (keep everything basically the same, but a massive overhaul on visuals). Ross is right, the Grenade launcher is kick ass. Very effective. I don't know how much of the optional content I missed (though, despite what the Game Dungeon implies, I don't think The Mines is optional). I ultimately got the best ending. A great experience overall, but the Doom Engine maze wandering is tedious at times. I actually got lucky with the sewers in that when I found the Rat King, I had unintentionally already grabbed the item he wanted, so accidentally made a welcome shortcut. Also, remembered Ross's warning about the shady looking guy, and I just said Bye and fired a crossbow bolts through his face.
You know, Ross's jokes about "the parable of space marines vs. cyber demons goes back to the ancient Greeks" but if I remember the earliest known Sci-fi, and also spoof, Story "A True Story" kinda had that going on at one point. No, I'm not kidding.
I completed DOOM for the first time somewhere in 2011-2012. I thought its level design was actually pretty fantastic. DOOM II is even better in that regard. Yeah, there's a few stinkers here and there, but I don't recall getting stuck in a "maze" even a single time. If anything, I thought most levels had a really good flow to them, and they often took me from one action setpiece to the next. I did use ZDOOM (or one of the other source ports) to smooth out the controls and give me mouselook of course, so that may have helped? Also, I think its funny that you mention Far Cry in the "sane level design" category. The outdoor levels in the first half of FC are a treat, and I love them to this day. However, remember that around the halfway point the game starts introducing corridor-style levels where you fight against the mutants? Those levels are terrible in every sense of the word. In general I think the games takes a rather sharp dive in quality as soon as you encounter the first mutant.
For those that don't play Veteran Edition, I highly recommend the Strife Uncut mod. It can get a bit out there with certain additions, but it's solid overall.
Sypadizer You simply drag the lights.pk3 file over the GZDoom executable and it will automatically run it. That's pretty much how you run any mod on GZDoom.
I got Strife: Veteran Edition after rewatching this video again. I really like it. That said, level design is way more confusing than anything in the idTech1 Doom games by a significant margin. Also, the audio is just bad. It always, without fail, gives me a headache. Those aspects come across mostly as nitpicks in the grand scheme of the game, though. It's a fun, good-looking FPS action game with an interesting world and story. There's a dynamic, interconnected map with choices, differing endings, and minor secrets to find. It's great. I do also like the option for stealth, even if it goes out the window when a green intruder-sensing doorway or a Reaver/Crusader/Inquisitor blocks your path. Edit: I think I have an idea of three things that would've made the world easier to navigate: 1. a World Map in addition to the automap, with details and labels that update as you go, with your current location highlighted in some way 2. icons/labels on the automap at level loads that signal which map it leads to (maybe it will only say once you've been to that level and will otherwise be a generic ? or ? ? ?) 3. chop up certain existing areas if possible; certain areas might be easier to digest in smaller pieces (it would only really be possible in a few areas, mind, given how open-plan the maps are designed, constantly re-converging all over the place) It wouldn't totally fix Factory: Manufacturing being a bit of a fustercluck, and it wouldn't help with Proving Grounds being needlessly convoluted to get through, *_and_* the maps overall still generally aren't very intuitive to begin with (especially given the tall and claustrophobic lifts, excessive use of teleporters later on, and dynamically opening and closing walls/gates), but it *_would_* certainly help with navigation.
I'm really not a fan of most game-related channels but you earned a subscription because instead of just screaming, focusing entirely on the negative, or focusing entirely on the positive, you offered a genuine presentation of the good and the bad. I like your style.
I don't blame Ross at all for feeling that Doom is a little confusing. It encourages fast paced gameplay but you have to comb every inch of every level in order to find keys, switches, and secrets which were essential if you are on higher difficulties in order to have enough ammunition. Sometimes you would flip a switch and it would do something 3 rooms away so you had to go check every locked door to see if you notice a difference. And even more annoying would be thinking you found an exit switch but it's just a secret. I fucking love Doom, though, lol. With Brutal Doom it becomes a dream game for me.
Perfectly understandable. If you looked at older ray-cast games like Catacomb 3D or Wolfenstein 3D, you'd see how much of an upgrade this was. At least this encouraged you to explore every square meter of the map, unlike most FPS today.
The exit switches in Doom have giant EXIT signs over them, and they almost always use the same door texture. I'm not sure how you would confuse an exit for a secret. Are you sure you're talking about the original game and not fan wads?
Accursed Farms GZDoom should come with a file called "lights.pk3", that indicates you have everything necessary to get it going. If not, get the latest dev version of GZDoom here: devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/gzdoom-G1.9pre-664-g7fedaf9.7z If or once you got the lights.pk3 file, either drag lights.pk3 onto GZDoom.exe, or for easier repeated access, bring up notepad, and in it, type "gzdoom.exe -file lights.pk3" and save it as GZDoomLights.bat, in the GZDoom folder. Once saved, run the BAT file, and it will launch the game with the Dynamic Light definitions loaded. (If it just opens notepad when double-clicking the BAT file, it was likely named "GZDoomLights.bat.txt". If that's the case, hit ALT in explorer, go to tools -> folder options then uncheck "hide extensions for known file types", hit apply, and then rename the file.)
Accursed Farms Oh, aside from the lights, another thing I think you'll like is that you can get a textured automap. Go to Options -> Automap Options -> Enable Textured Display. It'll make the map sooo much less confusing.
I consider the level design in Doom Excelent, but I like mazes since I was a kid, and solving the maze-like levels it to me half the fun of doom. So I understand hot it can feel to someone who does not like mazes
Ok Ross, I've watched/listened to this video at least half a dozen times since you released it. Only now did I notice the Monsanto (Posilac) cow nose at 13:56. You sir are amazing. Keep up the great work, thanks!
I still imagine Gordon Freeman talking (or thinking) in Ross's voice. When I play older games like this I also hear Ross making commentary in my head :P
The true reason that mid-90s first person shooters included warehouse, factory and sewer maps so often is that, back then the 3d graphic was so bad at at handling vast open space terrains, unless its some kind of night scene or void, it often tend to look very bad, and the devs try to avoid putting that type of maps into the game. The warehouse, factory and sewer are just common closed environments that the old 3d graphics handled better.
Strife was a great game, and I thought that I was the only one who knew about it. Oddly enough, I played this game on the Mac! Back in 2009 when I started studying, I bought my one and only mac as a laptop computer, and at one point I was kinda board that I couldn`t play anything on it, so I looked through the apple app store and found strife.
Now this is why I love the game dungeon. These were the games I played in HS and nostalgia or no, still love playing. And now, thanks to Ross, I've got a new old game to play.
Ross i played this game just because of Game Dungeon. Holy shit how have I never heard of this? Also while I respect your opinion about Doom, I can't really say I agree completely. I still love playing it a bit. :3
AtomizerX Thanks, yeah I missed that at the very end initially. I tend to have videos playing on second monitor while doing other stuff and miss things.
I found this (store.steampowered.com/app/317040/) which is the remastered version of Strife on Steam. Aside from the fact that it looks cool (and I bought it) the trailer video shows the same scene with the spectre, both original and enhanced, at about 1:00.
A real good example of fucked up midi music is the Dualshock Resi basement. Some people swapped instruments out and it actually wasn't a terrible song. Unfortunately the choices made for the game resulted in, "sad clown falls down several flights of stairs with his trumpet"
I remember I owned Strife when I was around 14 and loved everything about it, but I don't think I ever finished it, mostly because I started to get way into Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, not to mention War Craft 2 and Command and Conquer. I just had too many games to play. One day I gotta go back and play the released version.
"You might want to reconsider, seeing that you're surrounded by heavily armed, angry rebels." -The DM to the guy who's refusing the plot hooks just to be difficult.
And thus came the cries of 'Railroading!' and a lament of lost verisimilitude
you know sometimes a player just needs a beatdown. And as the GURPS rulebook put it "If the players ask for trouble, let them have it."
Comment section full of DMs
I feel its worth mentioning that the Minotaur is not good at navigating mazes... thats why he was trapped... in the maze...
Technically he was trapped in a labyrinth. Not a maze. Labyrinths have only one way to progress to the center, a maze has many branching paths...
Someone's going to get laid in college
Am related to a Minotaur.
Can confirm.
yes, but in Dungeons in Dragons, Minotaurs can instantly determine the best route through a maze and actually naturally live in them like burrows.
well duh, we just said they get trapped in labyrinths not mazes
"I have to stab this guy 10 times to get him to go down."
Maybe he's just not that into you?
Were you born a winner or did you have to work on it?
Or maybe you’re not that into him?
@@Sosasoundstn not yet he's not.
HAHA HA HA!
HAHAH!
@Drumslav Czechisenko Yeah, unless it’s straight in the neck or heart, you’re gonna be struggling for a while. Still, I fancy my chances against a knife more than a gun.
"You gotta break a few eggs to kill everybody... or something" is a quote that has lived in my head rent free ever since I saw this video.
Does that line only play if you take the “kill Macil first” path? I’ve never heard it in-game, both the Veteran Edition and the original running in GZ Doom. Same goes with the “five feet by four feet” prisoner rant in the stinger but that one I have seen in-game as text only.
mine is the "it's gonna flaw and then shatter and then BOOM. just a thought"
That's deep
"More on that later." -Ross Scott 2014
Hey, he always gets to it…eventually ;)
Jinxed The Admiral in Maabus says that too, but more on that later.
Now things are beginning to make sense
Ruston Toups But more on that later.
really?
I gave the game a go, and found that when someone trains you, it improves the power of the knife significantly. Near the end, I was using the knife more than a serial killing clown you'd see in a slasher flick. Then I got lost for 6 hours and quit.
is that how it worked? i just found i was able to staelthfully kill gaurds from behind in 1 or two hits, even the ones inmech suits (not the giants that fly around and blast you to bits in one shot though.)
@@elgatochurro Your melee damage depends on stamina upgrades, and Veteran's Edition also has a quest to collect 3 talismans to improve melee damage further
@@cdru515 I see
Aah the factory
Sewers *should not* be maze-like at all. Heck, even mild turns should be avoided. Any architect would design a sewer to be as straightforward and simple as possible. You want sewage to leave as fast as possible.
Just looking at the sewers in this game, they would be backed up in a day. No, half a day.
They sure as fuck would if the flow was any heavier.
See this is why I kinda like it where sewers are like set up as actual grids, or actual pathing, but you instead take advantage of maintenance tunnels and other openings.I ran into a dungeon enhancing mod for New Vegas that did that, and it was far, far more fitting than your average labrynth tunnels of poopwater you see.
well im not a plumber so that doesnt really bother me that much
Kinda fits though. Imagine the city this big... under it they just kept adding to it after all the destruction above. Plus if it's anything like a very old city nowadays. You could be looking at a the same scenario over a half a dozen generations. Sometimes people don't design sewers in a smart way overall... They just add lines and tunnels b/c they just need to do it that time around. Screw the rest. So in this game. I'm cool with it.
Update: Played through the Sewers... it's not at hard as he makes it out to be... But I agree, the levels in this game are quite... Would you say... Big & Maze like... BUT it's on Purpose! All of Doom's maps were a maze on purpose. That's the best part of these games. The mazes and the secrets and the surprises were great! As far as your comment about the architecture and reasoning for the sewers... It's mostly caves in the sewers, not a bunch of random pipes all over the place. So from a rational stand point. It doesn't matter.
You don't know shit about ridiculous level design until you've played Marathon. It makes Doom look like a trip to the zoo.
That sounds funny 'cause zoo in my home town is f.cking maze.
The game in which the levels actually defy conventional spacetime.
I'm not joking, there is some MC Escher witchcraft at work there.
Marathon is horrific for level design, like shit the first few times I played it I was so lost it was unreal, I just booted it back up and it still confuses the hell out of me
I tried playing Marathon, but gave up on it after not very long, so you're probably right. It had good music though.
Accursed Farms Seriously, dude, the world geometry was non-euclidean. I shit you not, there is more than one instance of hallways making 360 degree turns and never intersecting, and this is without a slope.
this was already 7 years ago? wow. All I can say Ross is thank you. I grew up watching you, and love your content still to this day.
It warms my heart to know I am not alone.
Didn't find ross till this year, but I can only imagine:)
I just bought the rerelease of this game, Strife: Veteran Edition. Great game, and they addressed a few of Ross's issues with the original. For instance, they added a text wall after the intro to tell you what's going on. They also stop you from making it impossible to finish the game a few times. I highly recommend it.
Yep. Ross's video came out right before we started dev on Veteran Edition so it was a large influence on things we chose to address.
@@QuasarEE that’s really awesome! I hope all of us buying it made it worthwhile lol
i still got stuck at the end cuz i didnt had enough health
14:50 walks past mountains of bodies "nothing especially sad is happening"
holy shit, an official new updated version of Strife just hit Steam
ross are you a wizard
And so went the tale of Ross's Christmas miracle
4:01
"I like how there's immediately a shady guy offering me a shady job with a Humphrey Bogart impression."
What is this, Half-Life?
Sounds like Bogart, looks like Spock. Was that intentional?
@@QJ89 He looks and sounds more like Bones than he does either Spock or that other guy.
This game was it.
This game is still it.
Yeah, I'm gonna give this another run.
Rewatching this years later and: "I won't tolerate that kind of depravity. Not without my cut." - Is still one of the best lines I've heard.
That line would have got laughs and nods of understanding from ancient Egypt or Babylon til today. A universal truth.
@@zivzulanderfunny but great way to measure the "goodness" of a comedic line
In your more recent episode on Killing Time you mentioned how someone is compiling a list of what's behind waterfalls in video games. On that note, there are secrets behind two artificial waterfalls in Strife, on the level where you have to destroy the power crystal.
I'd like to point out that Strife was recently ported over to the Nintendo Switch, with optional motion control aiming. The reaper of obscurity has been delayed just a bit longer!
Gyroaiming has become one of my favorite things on the switch. I can actually aim somewhat precisely on a console instead steering with my elbows, like Ross said.
Strife is on steam, under the name: The Original Strife: Veteran Edition
+John Zombi That is true, but it's nice to have a clean, sleek re-release.
(Plus, with it being on Steam, it could garner a larger following.)
I wonder if you still can, I know the original programmers were attached to the re-release, from what I've read.
Rogue Entertainment is shut down, but that makes me wonder if there IS a way to pay the original devs. Most of them are working under the name 'Nerve Software' and do additional work for most AAA shooter titles.
If there is a way, I don't know how.
And I respect your decision not to get the re-release, but it may be a good option for other people looking into the game.
Reviving older PC games seems to be a thing now, and I love it. I hope to see more of it.
+John Zombi Shame because the people actually doing the remaster (night dive studios) do deserve money simply because their buisness is acquiring the rights to buried classics and updating them to run on modern systems with some extra feature's I think ROss would approve
+Rock Steel And they got permission from the original creators, so it's not just they're stealing it
This port of Strife is also available on GOG, with a bit of extra content. Maybe I should...!
OMG! The voice acting in this game is so over the top, it's worth playing for that alone! Wonderful stuff!
The maze-like level design was kind of a necessity because the Doom engine just couldn't cope with large complex areas. You could either have big *sparse* areas, like some of the outdoor areas in Doom, or else you had to add lots of walls to break the lines of sight, hiding everything around the corner, and turning any large level into a maze. It took another generation or two of engine improvements and more processing power before games could really do any kind of justice to big spaces.
Is it an engine limitation, or a 40 mhz Intel 80386 limitation? With 10X the processing power, can't you just display 10X as much stuff in 10X the area?
@@SalveMonesvol Some of both. Modern source ports do lift a lot of those limitations, but they come from hard-coded numbers in the engine - just running on better hardware doesn't change them. The Strife devs probably could have tweaked things up a bit (at the cost of higher minimum specs) but I get the impression that they didn't.
What about Blood?
@@ladyhm.6748 Blood was made on a different engine.
@@mikerueffer579 Really? I thought it was the same engine as Doom.
Hard to believe this video is seven years old
Bought Strife Veteran Edition based on your recommendation, and I love it. Feels like a perfect combo of Doom, Metroid and Deus Ex. Thanks Ross!
Favorite line:
"It's as if Bach only had a tambourine and a kazoo to work with."
"If we had a plaque...we would be back to a pre-industrial society." Accursed Farms six years before corona....
A prothet
Difference being this plague thankfully hasn't wiped out most of humanity. Although if people keep acting stupid and refusing to follow the health experts advice... it just might before the vaccine gets mass released.
Plague right?
@@Wikloe How could it? Corona kills roughly 1 in 50, and most of those deaths are associated with extreme co-morbidities. The only way society collapses from this is if mass overreaction breaks other over-strained systems. Where I live, and in most of the developed world, "total excess deaths" are currently roughly 2x covid deaths. Meaning that our response to the virus is killing about as many people as the virus itself. The difference is that the non-covid excess deaths are much younger and healthier on average, and are mostly being killed by the psychological effects of lockdowns and endless sensationalized pessimistic media coverage. (Suicides, drug overdoses, etc) Being told to stay home with nothing but an internet connection full of algorithmically distilled nihilistic shit for months at a time is one of the least healthy things you could possibly do to a child or a teenager. (who are, statistically speaking, not at risk from corona in the first place) Ironically, this "expert advice" also cripples the immune system, by eliminating most exercise and sun exposure, increasing those very co-morbidities that are associated with dying from the virus. If left alone, Covid would've swept through nearly invisibly and burned the dry grass, a few extra flu deaths in an unusually rough flu season. Ideally we would have responded by increasing protection for those with co-morbidities, expanding our intensive care units, and encouraging exercise, sun exposure and nutrition. Instead, our authoritarian fear-porn response has turned it into a deep psychological scar that many of our children will never fully recover from, and weakened their bodies defence to the virus itself in the process. "Health experts" have been asked only for aggressive and over-simplified virus-killing advice (which plays into the hands of counterproductive and anti-intellectual authoritarianism), when they should have been asked to balance the net effects on society both physically and mentally and create a proper strategy for maximizing health. They have failed us and obviously so.
PS: for what it's worth, I got the vaccine two months ago and have been bedridden with extreme exhaustion and blinding full-body pain (necessitating multiple heavy prescription painkillers) ever since. I have no idea if this is common or not as data on vaccine safety has become such a politicized mess. In any case, "lock down and wait for vaccine" was always going to be a failing strategy and is something we really should never do again.
I love this game so much I’ve secretly used the world as the basis for one of my D&D campaigns. So far the players don’t have a clue. That’s one of the things I love about hidden gems like this 😂
Five feet by four feet.
Five feet by four feet.
Five feet by four feet.
Five feet by four feet.
I just now finally watched the after credits scene.
THE SKY. I WANT TO SEE THE SKY.
Four Feet by Five Feet
Shame that voiced quote isn't actually in the game, just the text. At least it isn't in Veteran Edition or the DOS copy that comes with the GOG version of Strife VE as an extra.
@@lionocyborg6030 It's TCRF content, in the game but never used/finished. Ross actually modified the prisoner portrait for this video as the one in the game's files is missing a background entirely.
You know, there's a simple yet brilliant trait in this review that too few people pick up on. When Ross was complaining about the level design, he compared it to the level design of Doom. So anyone honestly wanting to know if THEY would like it can use that as a frame of reference. See I love the level design of Doom. So that means that Ross's biggest complaint about this game should be something I'd actually enjoy. Too many reviewers complain about crap they hate, but never compare it to other games doing the same thing. So is it something I'd hate too, or does the review just not like the same stuff as me? But here, Ross cues me in to whether or not I'd hate it too.
The simple yet brilliant trait is... comparison? I'm not sure Ross invented that one.
That's a very important thing I feel a lot of reviews seem to miss. It reminds me how Total Biscuit would talk about laying bare your biases so that people looking at your criticism can accurately judge whether or not your opinions on something would line up or not.
I love how ross shrugs off a superweapon for a grenade launcher
Wouldn't you?
I played the game, the grenade launcher is the real superweapon
@@murdercubes4968 it's amazing as a weapon.
I killed the programmer whit only one fire bomb so i guess it is
I also played the game, health is limited, and thus I limited the super weapon to bosses and flying mechs, I didn’t find the grenade launcher quite as useful, just pretty good, might have been my difficulty
Here's a neat bit of trivia - While Strife was the last game to run on the Doom Engine, developer Rouge Entertainment later went to develop Quake: Dissolution of Eternity, Quake II: Ground Zero, with their last completed game being none other than _American McGee's Alice._ They went out of business in 2001 after handing Counter-Strike: Condition Zero back to Valve.
Ross' content is like the comfort food of UA-cam.
Glad I was here to witness all of Ross's videos pass a million views.
Happy 10th anniversary of this video! Lifelong *Strife!*
Personally, I still feel like there's not enough compelling evidence to convince me Ross is NOT a Minotaur. Okay, so he doesn't like mazes. There's always an oddball in the family. How about cloven hoofs? Have you dined on anyone's first born son recently?
+Joseph Wolf Theres also the fact that he really seems interested into cows.
+Malhekrow He does live on a CURSED farm. Minotaurs are fond of cursing adventurers to always be lost. What if he just likes having adventurers get lost in his infinite barn of red eyed cousins instead of a drab, dirty, grass maze?
Joey Wolf I'm really late to this discussion but... I would argue that him not liking maze is a pretty strong argument in favor of him being a minautor. The minautor was put there to trap him. I wouldn't like prison much if I was put in jail at birth
We've never seen his feet, man! He could have hooves and we'd never know.
these are fair points. just cause his top half seems normal doesn't mean his lower half is the same. Heh perhaps we should ask his wife Magda, i'm sure she'd know
I love the medieval clothes paired with the Chicago gangster/film noir accents.
1:42 "Our _women!"_
-Ross Scott, poet.
"Ross the sewer level can't be that bad!"
*Gets the game and gets to the sewer level.*
"I'm sorry Ross! I believe you now!
First time I played Strife I got stuck on the sewer level and stopped. Now I've gotten past it, but still...
The sewer level forced me to look up the cheats (as a kid), thus ruining the game for me.
Patrick: WHAT IS THIS PLACE!?
Levels near the very end are waaaay worse. Although I'm into that shit so I won't complain
Having beaten it earlier this year, yeah it’s bad.
The color scheme makes it pretty easy to miss that one corner you need to turn around in to find the objective.
I used to agree with Ross's view on Doom's level design, but lately I've been revisiting the old Doom and I've noticed that in the end its level design isn't that confusing. Occasionally I might've got lost due because I didn't notice a key, button or a teleporter, but I think that's more my fault for not paying attention rather than the fault of the level design itself.
Sometimes the levels might seem a bit of a maze, sure, but the automap nicely keeps that from being a problem. Since it draws the places you've already been to you can easily conclude that if there's a corridor that seems to end in thin air or a door with seemingly nothing behind it it's a place you haven't been to yet. I don't know if other people find more difficulty in map-reading, but personally I think it's very comprehensible seeing that everything it draws is colorcoded.
I think Doom's level design is just broad, open-ended and sometimes fun to explore, but then again my original frame of reference comes from Wolfenstein 3D which is just a fucking nightmare...
Yeah, most of these games he complained about really don't have that hard of a level design to get through if you just keep up with the map a little bit, I think Ross is being a little bit lazy, the one game that can get really annoying is Hexen though, which coincidentally is one of my favourite games.
Most of the time you'll not only have a maze you have to get through but also pay very close attention to not missing an important switch that turns off something or opens a door in a different map, and if you do accidentally miss it, you might wander around in the various levels you can visit for a long time.
heck even if you find the switches in hexen it's not like it tells you what door it opened in a different map.
Hexen really is a switch nightmare. Which is really annoying because I do quite like Hexen's level design and more open ended layout like Strife.
e3m2
Butter of Sorrow I have no nostalgiac connection to doom and I still think the level design id great!
Missed this one. Definitely looks like it's worth my time to play through. Thanks for another trip to the Dungeon.
It's an alright game. I've played (and broken) it a couple times.
There are TWO outright unwinnable situations that are not simply "you die because everyone opens fire" that I am aware of not counting those caused by cheating. The first is the opening "questline" that Ross mentioned (and there is a VERY easily-missed hint that something is wrong with doing that questline), and the second is for defeating a Spectre OUT OF ORDER, which causes a softlock because the game is literally unable to handle you not defeating the Spectres in one of two very explicit orders.
IF you do decide to pick it up and play it, use ZDoom or GZDoom (I know Ross suggests the GZDoom fork, but I personally prefer ZDoom proper for anything utilizing the Doom engine.)
(And with regard to Ross's comment on Doom's map design being horrible, I do believe that it got worse with each episode. Episode 1 was actually well-done, while Episode 4 I would like to forget even existed. Doom II was notably better than Doom 1 Episodes 2 and 3 [and infinitely better than episode 4])
Kitsune Zeta It's nice to see a constructive comment on UA-cam but I think you should edit it a little because it's Ross's video, not Rob's
The Captain Michael
...and fixed.
Yeah I think you and Grimith could have some fun with this.
LethalFeline Gosh, I haven't seen Widowmaker's character portrait in a long time.
I think Strife was brave for having weaponry that wasn't just an exact copy of the Doom Model: pistol/shotgun/minigun/rocket launcher. Back in the day I remember so many games just copied it, and badly. Hence "Doom Clone" being such a bad title. Strife was pretty damn good, especially considering you could kind of sneak around some areas.
idk if anyone noticed this, but I always loved the little Cyberdemon statue at 11:52 XD
I very fondly remember playing this game when it first came out, and being blown away by how much you could do in it. I've played it recently, and my nostalgia glasses cracked just a touch, as there are a lot of frustrating elements that I'd forgotten about, but for the most part the game still holds up. I actually really hope that Strife somehow finds a console release, like Doom, Marathon 2, and Wolfenstein 3D. However, I'd be crazy to think Strife would get a modern console port before more popular games like Heretic.
We went on a family trip this one time, and I took my old laptop with me. I had a bunch of old games installed on it, one of which was Quake. Since I didn't take a mouse with me (or because there was no space to use it in on the plane), i remapped the controls to WASD (movement) and the numpad (camera/ aiming). Worked like a charm. I don't, however, for the life of me understand how one can possibly play an fps on a console controller. I sometimes play an online shooter with three of my buds, and I'm the only one on PC. Two of the guys are alright, but that's only because they live in online games, and even then, I'd argue they're not much better than me (and I'm only barely decent at online fps).
12:48: loving the graph of "FPS Level Complexity"
People ask me where I got my sense of direction from, why I can read maps so well, and how I navigate somewhere on intuition alone. It's because I grew up playing FPS games in the 90s.
This is my the first of your Game Dungeon video I've watched, and before this I had only seen Freeman's Mind. Clearly you aren't a 1 hit wonder, this video was great. I'll definitely be watching the rest!
" they destroy our women and children." I seriously want that quote framed and hanging over my bed.
Why?
Turtleshell stuff Why not? Because it is hilarious when you take it out of context and even with context it still sounds quirky. ^^
+BloggingLP Why is it ridiculous? Since the beginning of time its been the males sole job to protect the women(only way to make children) and children(only way to continue your culture/genes to the future). Protecting women and children is wired into every man, and an integral part of a healthy society.
It only sounds ridiculous to your post modern, comfortable brain.
vaporfarts
I think you misread my comment. I didn't write _ridiculous_, I wrote _hilarious_. There is a pretty big difference! The quote simply sounds quirky and over the top. That's all I said. Next time please read a bit more carefull before you insult people.
Fragment (consider revising).
When it comes to MIDI music i think that most composers in the 90s used The Roland SC-55 or Roland SC-88 hardware MIDI modules. If you search on UA-cam you can find the Strife music played on the SC-55 and it sounds awesome! :D
Thanks to Ross's review, I actually bought a copy of Strife Veteran edition on steam because it was sale. So this way, I support the developer, and Ross indirectly because if he never review it, I would never have known. Ross's review makes me want to try the game out.
Actually, the punch dagger is really overpowered...with time, it gets to the point where you can indeed get close to the robots in the stealth sections and kill them in a couple of hits
12:49 "gordian knot bullshit" I laughed so hard when I read that
Strife is my second favorite FPS. The action, the story, the voice acting, the stealth! This is a prove that bad sale scores are not the same of a ad game. (And, hey, sewers levels are usually bad anyway.)
Oh, and BTW, it is alive on Steam nowadays, with even better gfx improvements.
I'd love a strife like immersive sim focused on fast paced combat nowadays.
One of my favorite games of all time! I replay it every couple of years.
Oh my god Ross you are one of the funniest people I've found on UA-cam, I get at least one good laugh out of every video, which is more than can be said for some of my favorite channels. Keep doing what you're doing!
OK, so about 12:00 on DOOM's music (k this was a 9 year-old video and I'm aware of that), I would like to point out something that I learned recently about Bobby Prince that I've never put together before:
As a lawyer who made video game music, he knew how to make music suitable for DOOM while avoiding legal trouble at the same time. He could make music that would please the metal-heads at id Software, and keep them out of court. It is amazing that people always say that DOOM should have been sued for the similarities, but surely Mr. Prince knew what he was doing since it apparently never was.
I'm getting a hardcore Dark Forces vibe from so much of this game, I love it.
Ross' honesty is so refreshing. thanks a lot Ross, always fun with great research.
Some of the best voice acting I've heard has been from people who weren't particularly good at it but actually gave a shit about their role.
Too bad I couldn't get the voice acting in Strife to work. Probably need to find a better copy.
yup, System Shock 2 didnt sound like professional actors either, and yet most of the lines were rather nicely expressive and fitting.
Shodan's voice actress really nailed the psychotic dominatrix robot voice.
The Doom Engine was such a nice thing to happen to the gaming and game development communities. To this day people are still tweaking and using it to create really nice games.
I am playing Strife on Nintendo Switch and love it.
Haven't played it back then, when it came out.
Same, I still get space ants though.
This is still your best, most well-rounded episode. Great on-point humour, interesting narrative, very entertaining to watch. Wouldn’t mind seeing this style return for one of your next Dungeons!
Congrats on 1 million views!
25:47 Actually ross. The first guy you talk to in the game tells you to go kill a guy. If you talk to the guy before you kill him. He mentions how he hates the guy your warning about for ratting him out. The game gives a subtle hint that maybe it be best to not do what he tells you to.
One of my favorite games of all times. God I enjoyed this game so much. Loved to buy loads of teleports, place them in for example the castle level and have an all out battle with the enemy. So many allied troops against the enemy. The carnage was good!
And the characters and their voice acting was amazing. Very memorable. Loved the setting of the game. Argh... what a great game! Got it on Steam. Have to play it now!
Damn. I love the comic style art of the cutscene/npcs in this. Wishlisted immediately 👍
I feel like Ross is the only UA-camr I've seen whose older content seems just like the newest one
That's not something bad, I'm not saying he hasn't evolved over time, it's just really comforting to find more and more videos and they're all similar
He peaked years ago and has been peaking ever since ^^
It's a bit daunting finding a content creator you enjoy, looking through their backlog of videos and the difference being too jarring, to the point where you might not even like it that much, but not here :D
Ross is timeless.
I was blown away by the shareware/demo of Strife. I think it was on a PC Gamer CD-ROM. I was fortunate enough to play the retail game while it was still fairly fresh. Today, Strife holds a place in one of those special partitions in my brain where I can't ascertain if a particular memory of it was actually in the game or just part of a dream. Thanks for the trip down nostalgia lane!
29:43 looks like the unitologists from Dead Space took some inspiration too.
I have NEVER understood playing FPS with a gamepad over a mouse. It has always been hell for me.
same here
For me, it smooths out movement at least. Try walking slowly with a keyboard. It's impossible.
+Helios8170 you can, but we use a key which is kinda cheating. However, after you get used to it actually has some advantages.
depends on the game, most fast pace shooters? I need a mouse and keyboard for that. but a game designed around a controller like Halo? I couldn't imagine that without stick aiming and it works fine, allows for diversity with movement shooting and vehicles.
Aiming with the mouse is great, but then you literally have a typewriter for everything else.
I got Strife: Veteran Edition on GOG this week, and I just completed it. I agree that this is an awesome game, and I think it's worthy of a modern graphical upgrade (keep everything basically the same, but a massive overhaul on visuals). Ross is right, the Grenade launcher is kick ass. Very effective. I don't know how much of the optional content I missed (though, despite what the Game Dungeon implies, I don't think The Mines is optional). I ultimately got the best ending. A great experience overall, but the Doom Engine maze wandering is tedious at times. I actually got lucky with the sewers in that when I found the Rat King, I had unintentionally already grabbed the item he wanted, so accidentally made a welcome shortcut. Also, remembered Ross's warning about the shady looking guy, and I just said Bye and fired a crossbow bolts through his face.
You know, Ross's jokes about "the parable of space marines vs. cyber demons goes back to the ancient Greeks" but if I remember the earliest known Sci-fi, and also spoof, Story "A True Story" kinda had that going on at one point.
No, I'm not kidding.
1 million views
It's not hard to do one touch and subscribe, if anyone deserves a million it's Ross
"Better to have less story thats all good, than a lot thats mediocre."
When will writers ever learn that???
I completed DOOM for the first time somewhere in 2011-2012. I thought its level design was actually pretty fantastic. DOOM II is even better in that regard. Yeah, there's a few stinkers here and there, but I don't recall getting stuck in a "maze" even a single time. If anything, I thought most levels had a really good flow to them, and they often took me from one action setpiece to the next. I did use ZDOOM (or one of the other source ports) to smooth out the controls and give me mouselook of course, so that may have helped?
Also, I think its funny that you mention Far Cry in the "sane level design" category. The outdoor levels in the first half of FC are a treat, and I love them to this day. However, remember that around the halfway point the game starts introducing corridor-style levels where you fight against the mutants? Those levels are terrible in every sense of the word. In general I think the games takes a rather sharp dive in quality as soon as you encounter the first mutant.
This almost feels like a proto-immersive sim
For those that don't play Veteran Edition, I highly recommend the Strife Uncut mod. It can get a bit out there with certain additions, but it's solid overall.
Hey, its you again. What the fuck.
@@audiosurfarchive
I. Am. _Everywhere._ ;-)
And so are you, it seems. Neat!
22:10 fun fact, the white pixels are also in Quake ports, and the term for it actually is "space ants" in the community
You need to revisit this review now that they've re-released it! One of my all time favorites
Hey Ross, you can get dynamic lights on GZDoom (just like Vavoom) by running the "lights.pk3" file.
But how?
Sypadizer You simply drag the lights.pk3 file over the GZDoom executable and it will automatically run it. That's pretty much how you run any mod on GZDoom.
FPSguy2 Thanks.
Sypadizer No problem.
@@FPSguy2 whoa,and i never knew!
I got Strife: Veteran Edition after rewatching this video again. I really like it.
That said, level design is way more confusing than anything in the idTech1 Doom games by a significant margin.
Also, the audio is just bad. It always, without fail, gives me a headache.
Those aspects come across mostly as nitpicks in the grand scheme of the game, though.
It's a fun, good-looking FPS action game with an interesting world and story.
There's a dynamic, interconnected map with choices, differing endings, and minor secrets to find.
It's great.
I do also like the option for stealth, even if it goes out the window when a green intruder-sensing doorway or a Reaver/Crusader/Inquisitor blocks your path.
Edit:
I think I have an idea of three things that would've made the world easier to navigate:
1. a World Map in addition to the automap, with details and labels that update as you go, with your current location highlighted in some way
2. icons/labels on the automap at level loads that signal which map it leads to (maybe it will only say once you've been to that level and will otherwise be a generic ? or ? ? ?)
3. chop up certain existing areas if possible; certain areas might be easier to digest in smaller pieces (it would only really be possible in a few areas, mind, given how open-plan the maps are designed, constantly re-converging all over the place)
It wouldn't totally fix Factory: Manufacturing being a bit of a fustercluck, and it wouldn't help with Proving Grounds being needlessly convoluted to get through, *_and_* the maps overall still generally aren't very intuitive to begin with (especially given the tall and claustrophobic lifts, excessive use of teleporters later on, and dynamically opening and closing walls/gates), but it *_would_* certainly help with navigation.
I'm really not a fan of most game-related channels but you earned a subscription because instead of just screaming, focusing entirely on the negative, or focusing entirely on the positive, you offered a genuine presentation of the good and the bad. I like your style.
I don't blame Ross at all for feeling that Doom is a little confusing.
It encourages fast paced gameplay but you have to comb every inch of every level in order to find keys, switches, and secrets which were essential if you are on higher difficulties in order to have enough ammunition.
Sometimes you would flip a switch and it would do something 3 rooms away so you had to go check every locked door to see if you notice a difference.
And even more annoying would be thinking you found an exit switch but it's just a secret.
I fucking love Doom, though, lol. With Brutal Doom it becomes a dream game for me.
Perfectly understandable. If you looked at older ray-cast games like Catacomb 3D or Wolfenstein 3D, you'd see how much of an upgrade this was. At least this encouraged you to explore every square meter of the map, unlike most FPS today.
The exit switches in Doom have giant EXIT signs over them, and they almost always use the same door texture. I'm not sure how you would confuse an exit for a secret. Are you sure you're talking about the original game and not fan wads?
You can get colored-lighting in GZDoom as well Ross, if you'd like to know how, just reply and I'll explain it. It's pretty straightforward.
Sure
Accursed Farms
GZDoom should come with a file called "lights.pk3", that indicates you have everything necessary to get it going.
If not, get the latest dev version of GZDoom here: devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/gzdoom-G1.9pre-664-g7fedaf9.7z
If or once you got the lights.pk3 file, either drag lights.pk3 onto GZDoom.exe, or for easier repeated access, bring up notepad, and in it, type "gzdoom.exe -file lights.pk3" and save it as GZDoomLights.bat, in the GZDoom folder. Once saved, run the BAT file, and it will launch the game with the Dynamic Light definitions loaded.
(If it just opens notepad when double-clicking the BAT file, it was likely named "GZDoomLights.bat.txt". If that's the case, hit ALT in explorer, go to tools -> folder options then uncheck "hide extensions for known file types", hit apply, and then rename the file.)
Accursed Farms Oh, aside from the lights, another thing I think you'll like is that you can get a textured automap. Go to Options -> Automap Options -> Enable Textured Display. It'll make the map sooo much less confusing.
Striker The Hedgefox Oh wow, I thought that was only supposed to work with DOOM.
Dinjoralo
Works with Doom, Strife, Heretic, and Hexen. :)
I consider the level design in Doom Excelent, but I like mazes since I was a kid, and solving the maze-like levels it to me half the fun of doom. So I understand hot it can feel to someone who does not like mazes
Ok Ross, I've watched/listened to this video at least half a dozen times since you released it. Only now did I notice the Monsanto (Posilac) cow nose at 13:56. You sir are amazing. Keep up the great work, thanks!
This was actually the very first Game Dungeon I watched! What a great introduction.
Is it bad that I think that Ross just *IS* Gordon?
At the rate new videos are bueng realeased, ross could becoming the voice of gordon in episode 3 or half life 3
Z McC or a easter egg...
I still imagine Gordon Freeman talking (or thinking) in Ross's voice. When I play older games like this I also hear Ross making commentary in my head :P
Ross Scott tries to keep clear delineation between himself and his portrayal of Gordon Freeman because Freeman's kind of a sociopath.
Me too.
Fun fact: Strife (Veteran Edition) was released on Nintendo Switch in *October 2020*
An "interesting" port choice.
The true reason that mid-90s first person shooters included warehouse, factory and sewer maps so often is that, back then the 3d graphic was so bad at at handling vast open space terrains, unless its some kind of night scene or void, it often tend to look very bad, and the devs try to avoid putting that type of maps into the game. The warehouse, factory and sewer are just common closed environments that the old 3d graphics handled better.
Strife was a great game, and I thought that I was the only one who knew about it. Oddly enough, I played this game on the Mac! Back in 2009 when I started studying, I bought my one and only mac as a laptop computer, and at one point I was kinda board that I couldn`t play anything on it, so I looked through the apple app store and found strife.
Now this is why I love the game dungeon. These were the games I played in HS and nostalgia or no, still love playing. And now, thanks to Ross, I've got a new old game to play.
Ross i played this game just because of Game Dungeon. Holy shit how have I never heard of this?
Also while I respect your opinion about Doom, I can't really say I agree completely. I still love playing it a bit. :3
I just bought this game thought I'd re-watch the Game Dungeon that inspired me to pick it up, very excited to play it
I'm watching this in 2020 and then Ross talks about if a plague wiped out a large amount of the population IRL. Welp, that got a bit too real.
Why the fuck does everyone on youtube take comments to seriously. And for the record, koolaid isn't available in my region of the world.
holy shit you actually got me with that "this game is raytraced" at the intro. I believed it just for a second.
haha yeah i throught oh i thought its about that old dos game :D
fuck i just realised that i always throught it was strafe and that its about sideways movement
"Some games are classics because they're old" Thats actually the same way I feel about the Beatle's earlier or earliest songs.
So what was the spoiler out of sight?
It's one of the alien spectres. You can see it at 31:32. You don't encounter them (as enemies) until later in the game.
AtomizerX
Thanks, yeah I missed that at the very end initially. I tend to have videos playing on second monitor while doing other stuff and miss things.
I found this (store.steampowered.com/app/317040/) which is the remastered version of Strife on Steam. Aside from the fact that it looks cool (and I bought it) the trailer video shows the same scene with the spectre, both original and enhanced, at about 1:00.
A real good example of fucked up midi music is the Dualshock Resi basement. Some people swapped instruments out and it actually wasn't a terrible song. Unfortunately the choices made for the game resulted in, "sad clown falls down several flights of stairs with his trumpet"
This game is a-*maze*-ing!
+Lab Matt I made this same joke in Marathon review of DWterminator.
+Lab Matt I see what you did there.
It's practically a Ross copypaste at this point.
*slowest clap ever*
Your channel is amazing. I am awed at the consistent quality you've had since you started this show to where you are now. Keep it up!!
I remember I owned Strife when I was around 14 and loved everything about it, but I don't think I ever finished it, mostly because I started to get way into Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, not to mention War Craft 2 and Command and Conquer. I just had too many games to play. One day I gotta go back and play the released version.
20:20 “it’s going to rain!” that got a real laugh out of me