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ion maiden seems great. played the demo and it looks better than I expected. I hope they will be able to finish the game
Also be aware that the game is going to run like shit on older computers It's curious to see Ion Maiden being labeled as a "spiritual sequel to Duke Nukem 3D". The art style is substantially different, in that while DN3D used prerendered CGI assets (All characters, cutscenes, title & intermission screens, etc), IM uses hand-drawn art.
IM's art managed to be of such high quality, that people don't notice how fundamentally different from the DN3D style it is. Ion Maiden is not simply rehashing old approaches. So now that the Early Access version is out, I can talk a bit about Amid Evil. I played a test branch of the Early Access version a week or so ago. I've always been critical of the visual style of the game (didn't really like the color usage that much) and thought the game looked garish and not that great. I got a key because of a semi-rant on Twitter about it, and promptly booted the game to see for myself.
Honestly, the videos really don't do the game justice because a whole lot of detail is lost to video compression. The game looks pretty good in motion, especially the third episode that reminded me of the first Tomb Raider a lot. My only problem with color is found in early Episode 1, the rest of the game looks good for the most part, with some great style at times (E1M2 comes to mind, this map is a real beast and one I wish I had made cause it's brilliant at times). The weapon viewmodels are apparently lightmapped sprites, which is pretty amazing considering how good they look. The level design ranges from good to very good. There was not a single bad level in the version I played. E1M1 is very tame/simple but things get serious as soon as E1M2, which is very open and has vertical layers serpenting around. The game uses very little enclosed, Painkiller-like arenas which is very welcome. The third Episode has a lot of exploration gameplay too which I liked a lot (especially in E3M1). The Episodes only have three main levels and one boss each, but there are 7 Episodes planned total, each with its own style. The game itself is a lot of fun. All the weapons are great to use and pack a punch. Even the base axe feels very powerful. My favorite weapons are the trident thing and the Mace of Torment which I find extremely fun. The weapons have an alternative, even more powerful attack once you gain enough souls from fallen enemies. It acts exactly as the Tome of Power from Heretic/Hexen, but I find it more interesting in Amid Evil since you actually have to fight to trigger it a vast majority of the time (and you can chain it with greater soul pickups). In the version I played the enemies didn't bleed much and had almost no pain frames; I wonder if that was changed because it was a bit distracting and it was hard to tell whether I was actually hurting them at times. Overall, Amid Evil is a cool game. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel but it's a solid Heretic-like in some aspects. It runs well, has cool level design, great weaponry and feels good to play. Yeah, YouTube compression can completely ruin some visual styles, and is way too influential on the public impression.
It looks like Hellscreen won't be funded. Less than 3 days left, and not even 20% funding achieved.
Despite the campaign mentioning classic FPS level design, the lack of any actual classic FPS level design in the videos gives an impression that despite wanting to do it, the developer doesn't know how to do it. It's a shame, as the visual style and the artwork are fantastic, and the music is great. Shitty review. If people are going to criticize devs for not following earlier designs, they should also bash the devs of the original Doom for trashing Tom Hall's design of it.
Let's bash quake because it doesn't have an axe-ogre who pisses on dead bodies =D
https://www.quaddicted.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=100 Got generously donated a spare key for this. It is what you see in the video previously posted. One extremely simple arena with waves of enemies.
Even given those limits it is fairly flawed: disco lighting, terrible music, fairly homogenous humanoid enemies (apart from some ugly demons), a bit heavy on the hitscan enemies, and jumping feels a bit weird and abrupt. Basically feels like a Q3A mod test. On the other hand, at it's core, it does do some crucial things right: Movement is pleasingly slick and precise, weapons feel good and meaty and distinct, and the graphical quality, if not it's execution, is totally good. I'd say it's tentatively worth keeping an eye on, if they add a full game and better bestiary to this, and a stronger, deeper theme, it could well work. Apparently Midair (Tribes-style shooter) is going free today, anyone have experience with it? Not exactly a Quake/arena shooter style game but Starseige: Tribes dates to '98 so it sort of counts? Maybe?
Update on Midair: tried it today, feels really damn clunky menu-wise, also seems to enjoy randomly reverting, deleting or re-locking loadout and inventory options (without refunding the in-game points needed to unlock them). Movement is really damn stiff especially if the last Tribes you played was Ascend- apparently this is a good thing, so sez the Old Timey Tribals, but I'm not a huge fan of the thrust vectoring jetpack system and the lack of natural air control at all feels gross. Uninstalled after it locked out shit I'd just unlocked without giving me the ingame credits back for it.
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