Random Gaming Thoughts

[MrPopo]

Yup, that was my experience. Duke 3D had a decent balance that allows most of the humor to still hold up (though the gratuitous boobs don't). And Blood definitely has the best level design of the Build Three.

[Ack]

Yeah, absolutely. Duke had some individual levels I enjoy, particularly Dukeburger, and since it parodies action films, I'm more willing to forgive the ridiculous amount of sprite boobs because the subject material ain't exactly innocent in that regard. Blood's level design is masterful in my opinion, and while it does suffer from hit scan cultists, they can be mitigated with the right gear and knowledge, so it's most punishing in the first episode. Fun fact: fat zombies in Blood can be completely mitigated by crouching. They can't hit a low target.

Shadow Warrior is just.... I don't want to declare it bad at this point, but I'm struggling after the first few levels. I blew a hole in the ceiling to find a secret room with a naked anime girl who was apparently farting on the toilet. I just... Duke ain't looking so juvenile right now is what I'm saying.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Finish it! As the owner of this month’s TR, I declare that it qualifies for bad games month!

[Ack]

Finish it! As the owner of this month’s TR, I declare that it qualifies for bad games month!

Ha, ok. I'll start complaining about poor design choices in there.

[Gunstar Green]

Shadow Warrior as a game is fine with a few bullshit ideas but it's easily the most offensive and juvenile of the "Build Engine Trilogy" of Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood. It's really hard not to cringe your way through the game today.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Weirdly I got invited for the Nioh 2 alpha. So... yay?

I just feel weird because I didn't even finish the first game. I assume the invites are random? Because I don't even have PS+.

[RCBH928]

Now that I've wrapped up Blood, I decided to finally sit down and start playing Shadow Warrior Redux.

Ugh, it's not good. None of it has aged well. Most of the one liners are terrible, racist, or both, the level design sometimes veers to the horrendous, enemy design is often frustrating...this is a mess.

I felt Shadow Warrior is up there with Duke Nukem, basically same graphics style and gameplay. Its DN3D in a different setting.
I played through the game and didn't notice anything offensive. I read about this game and I imagined it would have profanity and nudity all over, hardly. I played the steam version though. Maybe I didn't get the references or something. You have to consider the year of release and compare to what was available back then to appreciate it.

I stumbled upon Blood II at release year and played the demo and stuck with me with its "real" graphics which i still see as awesome. I bought Blood(original) after I read it was supposed to be good-recently- but my understanding it was the more obscure one.

One game I had high hopes and found terrible was Rise of the Triad. Not sure where I read about this game being iconic or good, but its a let down. It looks more like a proof of concept than a game. You basically run in a maze and shoot same enemies with the same gun for the most part. Its more of a puzzle than a shooter. Doom was released 1 year earlier.

[Gunstar Green]

Rise of the Triad is an interesting mess. When Id Software decided they were going to publish Doom on their own they left Apogee with the parting gift of the Wolfenstein-3D engine. This resulted in two projects to follow up Wolf-3D with, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and Wolfenstein-3D Part II: The Rise of the Triad.

Two things happened to shake this up. First, Id decided that they didn't want to compete against their own brand and asked Apogee not to use the Wolfenstein moniker. Second, Tom Hall, their story guy and a level designer left Id and Doom for creative differences when that game started taking a less story driven design path than initially planned.

Tom Hall was put in charge of the now renamed Rise of the Triad and it sort of became a crazy kitchen sink game with a lot of his ideas from the "Doom Bible" and other random musings (like "dog mode") were thrown in. They tried to make the game as grand and epic as they could, while still running on the Wolfenstein-3D engine. The result is a lot of levels that are too enormous and confusing for their own good.

I don't know if I consider RoTT to be a good game, but it's such a weird and zany snapshot of the era that I can't help but admire it anyway.

[MrPopo]

Now that I've wrapped up Blood, I decided to finally sit down and start playing Shadow Warrior Redux.

Ugh, it's not good. None of it has aged well. Most of the one liners are terrible, racist, or both, the level design sometimes veers to the horrendous, enemy design is often frustrating...this is a mess.

I felt Shadow Warrior is up there with Duke Nukem, basically same graphics style and gameplay. Its DN3D in a different setting.
I played through the game and didn't notice anything offensive. I read about this game and I imagined it would have profanity and nudity all over, hardly. I played the steam version though. Maybe I didn't get the references or something. You have to consider the year of release and compare to what was available back then to appreciate it.

A lot of it is just a ton of leaning into racist Asian caricatures that are probably going over your head because of lack of cultural context. Like, if there was a mod for Shadow Warrior that just removed Lo Wang's voice the game would instantly be MUCH less cringy.

Rise of the Triad is indeed a game that shows the fact that it is overambitious for its engine, but at the same time I can appreciate the ambition there. It's definitely a game you want to play with a mouse to circle strafe with, and once you're doing that you get more of a feeling of this grand adventure shooting dudes as an action movie star played straight (as opposed to Duke being parody). And the various things they did to enable the three dimensional play on a 2D engine is impressive on a technical level.

[RCBH928]

A lot of it is just a ton of leaning into racist Asian caricatures that are probably going over your head because of lack of cultural context. Like, if there was a mod for Shadow Warrior that just removed Lo Wang's voice the game would instantly be MUCH less cringy.
.

This might be it, as for Wang's commentary I don't feel the "cringyness" of it simply because I am non-native English speaker. I have noticed this on movie reviews where people would say the "Script" was bad or good but I don't notice it. Native speakers can probably tell the difference of real world use and cheesy cringy dialogue. Maybe other bilingual members of the forum can relate.

I can tell its stupid and silly, but does not bother me. I find it closer to funny.

ROTD might be impressive but not enjoyable, it doesn't help that the levels are large and all look the same and the game has many levels. I can't believe this game was popular enough to have a remake. Best is to read reviews from that era to know how people felt about it