Patient Gamers

Background

The nostalgia is strong with this one. As a 90s kid whose parents would never think of spending money on violent fare such as Doom, the otherwise adventure game focused LucasArts Archive was the Trojan horse that delivered my first FPS experience in the form of a demo disk containing the first level of Dark Forces. I had countless hours of fun blasting away at pixelated Stormtroopers, with authentic blaster sound effects and John William's film scores reinterpreted in MIDI adding to the unmistakeably Star Wars soundscape. Though I vaguely recall getting the full game at some point and skipping through the levels with cheats on, the game has long since been consigned to the Sarlacc pit of my memories since the turn of the millennium. That is until Nightdive Studios announced this remaster.

The remaster

Nightdive Studios has a good track record of lovingly remastering retro classics for modern platforms, and this remaster definitely lives up to their reputation. Playing on the PC, the default WASD mouselook controls are in line with modern FPS games. A quick weapon select wheel is a great new feature to help players manage the large arsenal. The remastered 2D sprites and textures do an excellent job of recreating in HD the game as you remember it, rather than the pixelated 240p reality of the original game. The cutscenes have been well remastered with hand drawn and rendered art that closely follows the original spritework and pre-rendered animations, while avoiding the telltale flaws of lazy AI upscaling. Art galleries and behind the scenes content is also included, as well as an easy achievement set to round out the remaster.

The game

While the remastering work is excellent, the underlying game itself has not aged well., particularly weapon design. While there is a good number of weapons, 10 in total half of which includes a secondary fire function, most feel redundant, offering only minor variations in functionality. The Stormtrooper Rifle, available within seconds of starting the first level, is sufficient for most of the game due to its plentiful ammo, while the next couple of weapons are mechanically similar ranged rapid fire weapons. While there are more interesting weapons like the grenades and concussion rifle, they suffer from awkward mechanics or inconsistent performance. Additionally, the game's vertical aiming system is frustratingly imprecise, which detracts from the experience given the significant verticality in many levels.

The roster of enemies suffers from a lack of variety, with map data showing that over half of the enemies count across the game are Imperial Stormtroopers. Most other enemies are simply variants of ranged attackers, requiring little adjustment to the standard run-and-gun approach, despite large hordes that appear in the later levels. Even the boss fights fail to introduce meaningful variety, often boiling down to similar tactics against enemies with larger health pools. The only combat hazards that do force you to stop and think are laser turrets and mines, although their fixed nature ultimately limits the threat they possess.

The game’s levels successfully capture the atmosphere of the original Star Wars films, clearly attempting to depict locations and facilities that feel grounded in the Star Wars universe, as opposed to the more abstract level designs of Doom. Each level is structured as an individual mission that includes a mission briefing, and occasionally a cut scene, providing an objective for the player to pursue beyond shooting enemies and finding keys. The original game engine includes features that were not present in Doom, such as platforms that can move and rotate, rooms that can be placed above other rooms, allowing for in game puzzles can get quite complex. Individual levels are huge sprawling affairs and since the game doesn't include mid-level saving or checkpoints, some of the longer levels can be quite a slog to get through in one sitting. The game does include a generous extra life feature that allows you to respawn in the level if you die, and this gives some motivation for the player to scour the levels for secrets to find extra lives or ammo caches. While the single player campaign clocks in at only 5-6 hours, it still verges on overstaying its welcome due to the repetitiveness of the core combat loop.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Dark Forces is a product of its era, riding the mid-’90s wave of Doom clones while also offering a unique chance to explore the Star Wars universe during the long hiatus between the original and prequel trilogies. While Dark Forces introduced some technically innovations to the FPS genre, it fails to match the timeless gameplay of Doom (1993) and was quickly overshadowed by genre-defining titles like Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Quake (1996), and Half-Life (1998). Today, amidst a deluge of Star Wars content and retro-inspired “boomer shooters,” Dark Forces Remaster is a perfectly mid game that can provide a few hours of nostalgic fun, but little else.

5/10

Scoring explanation

I'm hoping to start this series of reviews to share my opinions on "mid" games, which are not all time classics but still manages to entertain. 7/10 - Every gamer should try this 6/10 - Worth it if you're a fan of the genre 5/10 - Fun to be had but there are better options 4/10 - Has its moments but mostly a waste of time

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18054199

Considering the Switch 2 (with those pretty joystick well covers to protect from drift, omg) and the Ryzen Z2 Go announcements, the low cost and availability of Steam Deck & parity level APU machines for purchase now, and the giant 1080p gaming install base represented by current gen consoles, it sure seems like low spec & 1080p gaming is going to have a pretty sunny future. I am hoping this gives small and medium sized development teams a chance to show up what is left of AAA gaming.

What are your favorite low spec gaming setups right now? I'm enjoying a 5700g APU system the most these days. Mainstream wise, I've been playing Elden Ring and Injustice 2 and Vampire Survivors. The last Indie I played is this beat-em-up / horde survival game An American Werewolf in LA which was pretty cool.

I hope this post is still allowed as League of Legends is like 15 years old.

As I've been posting on [email protected] , the game seems getting quite enshittified lately, making especially difficult for new players to join.

As a potential consequence, the game got quite difficult lately. Before, you could still win a game as a casual player. Nowadays I feel like casual players left and there's only "serious gamers" around, especially in 5v5 normal games.

Anyway, all of that to say that Marvel Rivals has been on my radar as a replacement. Not the biggest fan of hero shooters, but gameplay seems fun and engaging. Is anyone here playing it?

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18062356

An indie dev's response to NYT's "Games Can’t Afford To Look This Good" and the meme of "I want smaller games with less graphics and I'm not kidding".

Basically, title.

Looks like this could be a good fit, but curious to see what other people think.

Hearing that Civ 7 is going to have Steam Deck support is tempting me.

Also, I’m playing around with what day of the week to post this, and seeing what days get the best interaction. If you have a preference, please let me know!

I love the idea of getting older AAA titles for free, but hate the idea of installing the Epic Games Launcher on my computer. Where do you guys stand on this?

It also makes me sad that Epig Games has fallen so far. I grew up on Unreal Tournament and now I don't want them anywhere near my computer.

You will need a bit of patience with this one 😇

I don't think the game is all that good or fun(personally).

I'm a pretty seasoned SoulsBorne player playing all of the games aside from Elden Ring. I've only had trouble on two of the bosses so far. But my big issue is I'm just not having a good time like with the other games and I'm almost done with it.

I know the combat is much faster paced which I appreciate but its also very dull. Its the same Dark Souls combat with most of the creativity removed and a looooot of parrying. And the parrying isn't even rewarding, it makes it like a rhythm game.

Problem with it being a rhythm game though is that I expect to know when I need to parry but the timings are all over the place. I also just don't think the enemies are all that different to fight, most of them are the exact same in this game just different timings or tells.

I mean I see the reviews, everyone loves this game and I loved all the other games but is it just the fast paced combat and grappling hook that helps it? Having a visible story is nice so far too I suppose.

I'm just curious if other people do or don't like it and why or why not.

I made the what's next after Half-Life thread and received many awesome recommendations, thank you guys! During the Holidays a game caught all my attention: Pentiment. It hooked me and I played it non stop for three days, now that I finished it, I may do another play through to unlock all achievements and try other choices, but in the meantime I am in quest for similar games!

What I'm craving :

• the mystery / investigation was great, for context I have already played Outer Wilds, Obra Dinn, Golden Idol, Frog Detective, Disco Elysium... they immediately came to mind once I started puzzling what I had to do. What are similar games with a murder mystery at their core, that reward investigation?
• the effort to provide historical accuracy, this is a time and area of Europe I only briefly learned about in middle school, so it felt nice having a glimpse of what life was like in 15th century Bavaria, are there games that try to portray life and folklore of people I may not know about? For context I am an average western European.
• the sense of progression struck me, I saw kids become teens, then adults, I got to know these families, attach myself to some of them, saw their evolution as characters, are there games that make you get close to characters and see who they become over multiple years, over generations ? I can't remember any game that made me care that much for NPCs as this one.
• I enjoyed the art direction a lot, medieval illustrations have this quirkiness that just endears me, I had already played the Rock of Ages games, are there similar games with this feeling of playing through pages of a book? Or any game with a really nice / stylised illustration style? I already played Gris which was beautiful.
• After finishing the game, I was left unsatisfied with the explanation and wanting more, I mislead myself in thinking the dialogues animation and typos / font switching had a bigger impact and were hiding some 4th wall breaking. Are there games that play with this kind of meta mystery (I don't know what word best describes it) where you have a glimpse that there's something bigger behind the scenes? Inscryption is one of my favourite games for this, I also really liked the demo for 'is this game trying to kill me' and am planning to get it during the Steam winter sale

Thanks !!

I saw this question asked in another gaming community and thought it might be a good discussion here too.

My personal stats:

My games with over 1k hours (approximately):

Skyrim - 5,300

HITMAN - 1,350

Forza Motorsport 6 - 1,200

Other games with > 400 hours: Fallout 4 (mostly modding), Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Oblivion, all the Bungie Halo games, Red Dead Redemption 2, Battlefield 4, Minecraft, Dark Souls III, Elden Ring

I’d love to see what this community plays the most.

PS: to all who celebrate, merry Christmas, and I hope it was a lovely day.

Do you have a game you play over and over, when nothing else fits your mood? That game that is infinitely re-playable, somewhat the same every time and somewhat new and interesting?

For me it's the games in the Orcs Must Die series. But mostly OMD 3. I play the mode called Scramble, where you have to beat 5 rounds of orcs, and they get harder and harder as you progress. There are random things to make it harder (nerfs) and you can choose 1 thing per round to make it easier (buffs). I've probably played that something like 300 times now since I beat the main game + DLCs a long while ago. I go into a special mental state while playing, since I know it all so well, and just zone out for about an hour each time.

Patient gamers, what's your "I will keep playing this game for the rest of my life" fallback?

Lots of people have traditions for their favourite Christmas songs and Christmas movies, but I don’t see games get talked about as much. It makes sense, there’s not many Christmas video games, but does anyone have anything they like to play specifically around the holidays? For me, I always go back and play some Elder Scrolls games. I also tend to play a lot of racing games around Christmas (tradition with my dad), and of course most of my playtime in hockey games are during the winter. Does anyone else have anything they like to revisit, or any genres they save, for this time of year? I’d love to hear about it

Last December I did an end-of-year recap thing that got a lot of fun comments. Thought I'd do it again this year! What games did you complete (or just play a lot of)? What did you think about them? Highlights? Lowlights? Might be a good chance to find some hidden gems while the Steam sale is on too.

I finished a surprisingly large number of games this year. Sorted by date completed, oldest first...

A Short Hike | 8/10

Cute, short, and fun. Perfect game to start the year.

Inside | 8/10

Limbo was the very last game I completed in '23, and I definitely preferred Inside overall. I liked the atmosphere, visuals, and puzzles more here.

Hook 2 | 7/10

NABOKI | 6/10

Up Left Out | 6/10

I bought these three as part of a bundle. Short and fun puzzle games, nothing super memorable.

Firewatch | 7/10

Definitely an enjoyable time, great voice acting, but the ending was kind of underwhelming.

Cyber Hook | 7/10

I really like this style of 3D platformer, but there aren't a lot of them. The only other one I can think of is Grapple, which was hugely underrated.

Lunistice | 6/10

Cute art style, but I remember the controls feeling a little bit janky.

Slay the Princess | 8/10

Fuckin' weird, I love it.

Unpacking | 6/10

I was disappointed that I didn't vibe with this one very much. Telling the story through the items you own is a super cool idea, but I just couldn't get myself to really care about where to place the items which is the entire gameplay loop.

Hades | 10/10 (Top 3 of the Year)

I don't like roguelikes, so I skipped Hades for a long time, but I finally gave in. I LOVED my time with this. The meta progression was done well enough that I felt like I was still making progress overall so the roguelike-ness never bothered me, and every other aspect of this game is perfection. My highest rated game of the year because I cannot find a reason to take a point away.

Trail Out | 7/10

Something something imitation, something something flattery. This is a Flatout game, but it's honestly a pretty good one. I had a fun time with it, but I'd never take this over Flatout 2.

art of rally | 7/10

I'm not a huge fan of top-down racers but with some tweaks in the camera settings it's bearable. What really hurts this game is the penalty/recovery system, it's so eager to reset your car the moment you go off the track, even if only by a hair, it destroys the flow. Graphics are beautiful though.

Hot Wheels Unleashed | 6/10

It's fine. Super repetitive, lootbox-esque progression is stupid, but it's mechanically sound. I would only recommend if you're desperate for arcade racers like I am.

Loddlenaut | 7/10

I love how cleaning games have become a genre. This is a short and sweet game about cleaning the ocean, I had a good time with this one on the Steam Deck.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 | (the PS2 one) | 9/10

There's a decent chance this was the first video game I ever played. If not the first, it's at least among the first couple. I've started so many saves but never actually finished the career mode until now. Aside from the career structure being a bit boring, it's still a highlight of the franchise for me. Beautiful tracks, beautiful cars, top tier early '00s soundtrack, great handling, I love this game.

Gear.Club Unlimited 2 | 6/10

Look, I'm really desperate for arcade racers, okay? This one isn't a live service, isn't always online, no lootboxes, no battle passes, I'll take it.

Toem | 7/10

Cute, but there were several times throughout my playthrough where it felt like what should've been the solution wasn't, and the actual solution made less sense than what I was trying to do, which was a bit frustrating.

Hi-Fi Rush | 9/10

The score went up an entire point when The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die started playing. I really hope this gets a sequel.

Burnout Revenge | 9/10

Another game I've started many times and never finished. NFS:HP2 may have been a nostalgia-driven 9/10, but this is a genuine 9/10. Absolutely puts everything from the past 10 years of this genre to shame.

DiRT 4 | 6/10

Painfully dull. DiRT Rally is a way better sim, DiRT 2/3/5 are way better arcade racers, there is no reason to ever touch this. I finished it because I am desperate for racing games.

Ghostrunner II | 7/10

This one didn't vibe with me as much as the first, and I'm not really sure why. The bike levels were a bit janky but were still fun for variety, and I still liked the game overall, but I'm more likely to replay the first than this.

SPRAWL | 9/10 (Top 3 of the Year)

If SPRAWL didn't have a soundtrack, it would be an 8/10, good time, recommend. However, I have had this goddamn soundtrack on repeat since playing it. This is my favorite video game OST and it's not even remotely close. This is a neurofunk album with a video game tie-in.

Blur 8/10

The fact that when I first played this I instantly got a message from a friend I hadn't talked to in years asking "HOW DID YOU GET A STEAM KEY" says so much about the legacy of this game. It existed for such as short period of time and was horribly underrated. (I wish I owned this game on Steam, but it was a non-Steam copy.)

Webbed | 7/10

Cute platformer, don't really much about it at the moment besides skateboarding spiders.

Bastion | 8/10

Played after putting many more hours into Hades to see where Supergiant came from. I was impressed by how well it holds up, fun to see earlier concepts that Hades would perfect.

Old School Rally | ?/10

Technically an early access game, but I finished all the available career events. Very promising PS1-style rally game.

Stories: The Path Of Destinies | 8/10

You ever have one (or hundreds) of those games you got in a Humble Bundle 5 years ago and just never touched? This was one of those, I randomly decided to play it, and it was great! Fantastic voice acting, fun story, fun combat, I wish I played it sooner.

Exo One | ?/10

I don't know what's going on and at this point I'm too afraid to ask. I think I launched a marble at Jupiter?

Hardspace: Shipbreaker | 8/10

This was my podcast game for a while. Not very deep, but it's fun to gradually tear ships apart. Definitely recommend playing on the lower difficulty, having to worry about O2 and stuff kills the vibe.

To the Moon | 5/10

Explaining why I don't like this game involves major spoilers. To keep it vague, I really don't like how they handled one of the characters in the story. If you've played the game, you either understand or think I'm insane because apparently this is a masterpiece.

ExoCross | 6/10

Very basic offroad racer. Used to be named "DRAG" but then the developers were bought by iRacing. The game seems like it was frantically rushed out of early access after that. The native Linux port is excellent though.

RUINER | 7/10

10/10 vibes, 5/10 gameplay.

Furi | 8/10

"That final boss sure was easy... oh? oh! OH FUCK!" followed by many deaths until I finally won.

Pseudoregalia | 8/10

10/10 movement/controls, but the environments felt a little bland. There's an accessibility option to put pants on your character.

Guacamelee!: Super Turbo Championship Edition | 6/10

It's fine, but nothing especially noteworthy compared to other metroidvanias I've played.

Redout II | 9/10 (Top 3 of the Year)

(I played with the assists off because I am a stubborn bastard, I have no idea how the assists change the gameplay.)

Redout II will repeatedly punch you in the face until your brain wraps itself around controlling these 2700km/h deathtraps. But trust me, once you get good, it's euphoric. One of my favorite gaming experiences this year was missing out on a gold medal in a time trial by several seconds and thinking "how the fuck is this possible"? And then I tried again. And again. Going faster, and faster, until I had beaten the gold time by several seconds. Every time you think you can't go any faster, you're wrong, just be better.

Crayon Physics Deluxe | 5/10

Great idea for a puzzle game, but the janky physics made it more frustrating than fun.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | 7/10

It's fine, but doesn't really feel like it lives up to the hype surrounding it.

Mini Motor Racing X | 6/10

Painfully dull career mode, but I'm desperate for arcade racers.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit | 7/10

Short but fun.

Minecraft | ?/10

I haven't beaten Minecraft in probably 10 years, so I started and new save and beat the game again for the hell of it. I'm not sure how to rate Minecraft out of 10 at this point.

Jusant | 9/10

Super beautiful and chill, I recommend avoiding spoilers and just playing it.

Dome Keeper | 7/10

Trying to keep the Hades "maybe I don't hate roguelikes" thing going, so I got Dome Keeper. I feel like it's too easy and there's not enough variety in runs, but I still had some fun with it.

Dead Cells | 8/10

And finally, one more roguelike. I've "beaten" the game, as in I've reached the credits, but only 0BC. Still playing it, but won't be chasing 5BC or anything like that. I do wish there was more meta progression with this one, a lot of runs feel like a complete waste of time which is my main problem with roguelikes, but the core gameplay is excellent.

0% new: from 2024 (average 15%)
0% recent: from the last 1–7 years (average 47%)
100% classic: older than 8 years (average 37%)

I am helped by being limited to an 8 years old notebook laptop currently.

The 5 games I have played this year, all for the first time: Stardew Valley, The Darkeness II, Star Wars Battlefront II 2005, Outlast, Oblivion.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/29503020

Could be a console startup, title screen, intro cutscene, etc. I just got wired off an energy drink so I apologize in advance if this post is unhinged.

I personally associate it with Kirby Super Star's intro, the Sega CD boot screen (non-US, I associate the US ones with Christmas), and the original Xbox startup.

Beautiful cover of a beautiful song. Still haven't beaten the game myself, one of these days I'll figure it out.

I just tried it yesterday with a friend. Survival/crafting game in the LoTR universe. Okay for an evening, not sure we'll spend much more time on it, but for what we paid, it was definitely fun.

Completely noob tip: hammers are not considered weapons, only swords are. Learned that the hard way when we spent all of our iron on hammers to discover those were only used to build, and not attack.