On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:01:46 -0500, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>> A fascinating tech-demo, but not something that inspires you to play
>> for very long.

>I almost bought that game, but decided not to. It's a good thing because
>it looks slow and boring! They should remake this for modern hardwares.
>;)

It's the controls that really kill the game.

Want to get in a car? There's a key for that (press E)
Want to get out? There's another key for that (press W)
Want to drive the car? First press S (turn on engine), then HOME
(shift into drive), then uses ARROW UP to accelerate.
Every action in the game is like that (and no, you can't customize the
controls). This game was contemporary with Wolfenstein 3D, and
although it had more options than Id's simpler shooter, its control
scheme was outrageous even for its time.

But assuming you manage to memorize that mess, the controls themselves
were clumsy. Your character had the turning radius of a bus (worse
when driving). Targeting was clumsy, meaning shoot-outs were nastily
lethal and incredibly unentertaining. The all-polygon map, although
impressively large (it was miles wide, offering a
reasonable-for-the-time recreation of downtown LA) meant the game's
performance was horrid. Plus, all that space was largely wasted,
filled with innumerable identical buildings that you couldn't interact
with.

To some degree, the slow pace even worked in this gam's favor, since
it was about the hide-n-seek of finding the hidden target and taking
it out unscathed (or locating the target escaping the hunter if you
played Reese). A faster paced game would have made the game into a
more arcade experience, but at a cost to its (attempted) atmosphere.

The core conceit of the game was solid, but the technology just wasn't
up to the task. But even more, it was how the game was built that
caused it to fail; with a smaller scope and better production values
(graphics, sound, controls, etc) the game would have been great. But
it would take numerous iterations before Bethesda had built up the
necessary talent and experience to create a large-scale world in which
it was fun to play.

On Sun, 1 May 2022 11:33:31 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>On 30/04/2022 17:06, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>> Ocean titles were always more trouble, less advanced, and less fun to
>> play than those of their competitors. They may have had a better
>> reptutation on the 8-bits, but by the time I started encountering them
>> on 16-bit games, they were generally a label to avoid.

>My recollection is from the 8-bit days and although the old memory is a
>bit hazy there just seemed a disconnect between what they were
>outputting and how big a brand they were. I don't remember it being a
>quality issue as such but instead one of there were far more interesting
>games out then than ones that seemed stuck in 1982/3.

>Another way to look at it was why would I spend £5.99 of my hard earned
>money from my paper-round on a Ocean game instead of something from a
>developer who seemed to have sat back and decided to do not just
>something different but also making the type of game they wanted to
>play. The Lords of Midnight vs. another arcade type game, no contest there.

Well, it's also a matter of taste. A lot of gamers not only enjoyed
but expected games to be ruthlessly hard challenges, and actively
complained if they perceived a game to be too easy (it's a conudrum
still plaguing developers to this day). Being able to get to the end
of the game without a weeks-long struggle was seen as not getting
value-for-money by some.

One of the more interesting things I've noted during the construction
of my collection of DOS games is how much the hardware influenced the
gameplay (not only on DOS PCs, of course). Consoles - and even many of
the early 8-bit PCs - had built-in hardware support that allowed them
to move sprites independently of the main CPU; a sort of early
hardware acceleration. The IBM PC/compatibilities lacked this
functionality. If you wanted to move a bunch of sprites about, you'd
be brute-forcing it with the main CPU, leaving less power available
for other functions. A similar lack of hardware support for large
color gamuts and sound processing was also problematic.

End result? Console games tended to be those which highlighted the
platforms' strengths: games where there were lots of sprites zooming
about, bouncing and exploding in frenetic action. PC games, on the
other hand, had to be by necessity slower. Their more powerful CPUs
and larger memory banks gave them other advantages, though. The worlds
could be larger and more detailed, and the players were given a wider
variety of ways to interact with that world. Players on NES games got
to shoot and jump; PC gamers could shoot, jump, duck, open, close,
punch, build, pick-up, drop, etc.

These differences created entirely different styles of games, mandated
by the requirements of the hardware: consoles got platformers and
shooters; PCs got strategy and adventure.* And the users of each
platform began to see 'their way' as the epitome of what gaming was
and should be, a divide that is only recently begun to heal.

But had IBM initially added sprite-hardware to the PC? We might never
have seen games like Civilization or Kings Quest because everyone
would have been busy making easier-to-develop (and better selling)
arcade games.

----------------------
* of course, there were strategy and adventure games on consoles, and
action and shooter games on PC, but - at least in the early part of
gaming - these tended to be inferior ports and tended not to sell well
off their usual platforms. It was only in the 90s - when the
advantages in CPU performance and RAM skyrocketed in favor of the PC -
that action games started becoming competitive on that platform.

On 01/05/2022 17:42, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Sun, 1 May 2022 11:33:31 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>> On 30/04/2022 17:06, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>>> Ocean titles were always more trouble, less advanced, and less fun to
>>> play than those of their competitors. They may have had a better
>>> reptutation on the 8-bits, but by the time I started encountering them
>>> on 16-bit games, they were generally a label to avoid.
>
>
>> My recollection is from the 8-bit days and although the old memory is a
>> bit hazy there just seemed a disconnect between what they were
>> outputting and how big a brand they were. I don't remember it being a
>> quality issue as such but instead one of there were far more interesting
>> games out then than ones that seemed stuck in 1982/3.
>
>> Another way to look at it was why would I spend £5.99 of my hard earned
>> money from my paper-round on a Ocean game instead of something from a
>> developer who seemed to have sat back and decided to do not just
>> something different but also making the type of game they wanted to
>> play. The Lords of Midnight vs. another arcade type game, no contest there.
>
> Well, it's also a matter of taste. A lot of gamers not only enjoyed
> but expected games to be ruthlessly hard challenges, and actively
> complained if they perceived a game to be too easy (it's a conudrum
> still plaguing developers to this day). Being able to get to the end
> of the game without a weeks-long struggle was seen as not getting
> value-for-money by some.
>

Of course, a matter of taste but I certainly moved towards the idea that
games should be a challenge but they don't have to be brutally hard.
Over the years I've moved even more away from the idea of games as a
challenge. So it's not that I no longer like my strategy games etc. but
instead I've also started enjoying the rather pretension notion of games
as an 'experience'. For that you can read walking sims. That has even
bleed in how I play CRPG's where I'm far more interested in the story
and my character builds really take a back seat.

Overall although it still comes down to horses for courses and I don't
think there's anything intrinsic in what makes a game concept good or
bad. Saying that I do see some games and I struggle to see how anybody
would enjoy them.

ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) writes:

> I remember those Terminator games. :P

I think I may have played Terminator: 2029. I mostly remember it was
probably the first game I played where you could see the enemies pop in,
they just suddenly appeared as red dots on the mini map. I've never
liked that. Just hiding the pop-in helps with suspension of disbelief.

> Does anyone remember this cheesy basic T2 game? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST7_WqSlQJI ;)

I don't think I ever played it. Amazing Ocean put out that kind of a
game still in 1991! Gameplay looks like it could've been any of their
other games from the 80s. Maybe with slightly improved graphics. I guess
it took a while until games actually advanced from the simple arcade
roots.