Welcome to Ignite The Light, a channel dedicated to reviewing the good and bad sides of video games both new and old! I cover a wide range of games, ranging from old classics to new releases and anything in between.
I own Quake and Quake II, including the remastered and enhanced versions, thru gog (no DRM). For years I played them on Linux via Dark Places (Quake) and Yamagi (Quake 2), but enjoy their new versions while booted into Windows. Same with the Enhanced Doom and Doom 2, though the Project Brutality mod keeps me firing up ZDoom.
While Quake 2's design and atmosphere might be "generic" (even if that's a very vague and pointless word) I feel like it definitely improved upon the original Quakes appearance by not having almost every level have a brown and grey color scheme. Then I played the Reckoning and it through that completely out the indow by having almost every level have an as you said, olive oil yellow and grey color scheme. Uts definitely not bad but I agree that its a bit if a devolution of what made Quake visually better thab the original game in some ways, even if they arent related.
Little late here with this, but the turrets were MUCH more dangerous in the original release of Ground Zero. They had more hps and their attacks were more powerful.
4:24, Sounds like an advertisement for Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil. 6:24- Incorrect in my opinion, because I remember Sergent Kelly, Malcolm Betruger, and Doom Guy primarily. Yeah, there is also Jack Campbell and Elliot Swan but these two are probably forgettable for most people. My favorite quote from Swan is "Let's go" after having the meeting with Dr. Betruger at the start of the game.
The Quake 2 mod community was probably one of the most amazing ones a game has ever had. I feel so old when I get frustrated saying new games are so corporate because they own all the servers, they make all the mods/alt modes, they make all the skins, they run the competition leagues/ladders. It's truly commercialized to the max. Quake 2 is the epitome of showcasing how a community ran structure will have worlds more depth than any corporation thinks they can innovate on their own. I loved the idea of gaming making it big and in the spotlight of competition. But, it's almost too cliche how much of a turn off it becomes from its grass roots. Nothing like messaging a clan in 1998 to issue a challenge, communicating two servers to play on, submitting demos. It felt so good to be a part of.
Rage 1 specifically is and was a great FPS game. It fully evolved what started with Doom 3. They would even go on to use modified versions of the dame engine for the newer Wolfenstein games, which you definitely need to play. I've been playing through Rage again, and man, it's still pretty impressive in many areas while being a bit dated in others. It had a similar overhyped launch that Cyberpunk, No mans sky, and the likes of Daikatana had. It has a very distinct apocalyptic feel, and it's much more grounded and interesting than Tahe 2, which was a hodgepodge of ideas and rushed together, but it at least had great gunplay and combat overall.
Definitely got a little overshadowed by Half Life 2 around this time. Doom 3 is pretty fantastic, and with my first Doom game and first horror game that I remember. Doom 3 classic on xbox and pc are the beat versions, but BFG is the easiest to get your hands on and is a good enough version. You should check out The Chronicles of riddick Escape from Butcher Bay, especially the version bundled with dark athena. You have to sail the seas to play it these days on pc or a physical copy on the console.
I've played and love Diablo 2 way before the remaster. I do need to play more with the remaster and beat it. Diablo 4 is actually amazing imo. The world and atmosphere are unmatched, and the visuals, gameplay, and soundtrack don't get enough credit just because Blizzard sucks but the Diablo team didn't do anything wrong.
I absolutely agree! I played D4 for a good 200 hours straight around season 2, and as I understand it's gotten much better as seasons and updates have gone on.
I loved this game and really wish we could see more games similar to it. There's so many interesting things about this game that I wish we could see in some new games. I loved some of the aspects that games of that time focused on.
Speaking strictly about the game mechanics themselves; Trepang2, Severed Steel, and Maximum Action are the first three things that comes to mind whenever I think of "FEAR-like" games.
I finished Fear 1 last year and it was.... Unusual experience i never experienced smth like it before and probably never will i got flanked by enemies and i love the ai soooo much. And Famous ladder scene traumatized me from start to the end
This was the game that introduced me to parallax mapping. Seeing bullet holes look like actual wall carvings instead of mere texture decals plastered on flat walls, that's what blew my mind on this game. Monolith is one inspired dev group. The ring meets john woo flick with FEAR. Grindhouse, melee emphasized FPS with Condemed games. Swashbuckling saturday morning cartoon platformer of Captain Claw. 80s mecha anime action of Shogo. 60's chic spy flick espionage game that is the NOLF series... Still has a working copy, and still play NOLF2 and Captain Claw from time to time(thank, F*CKING gods for eastern european fan hacked copies). There's a NOLF fan webpage you could stumble upon (look up 'NOLF revival'). And there's a good, slav hacked compedium ISO of Captain Claw floating about the open seas.
However for me doors wont open , maybe a drm glitch? I couldnt progress the story and I couldnt find a fix online! Same shit with condemned criminal origins, some evidence is impossible to photograph!
Damn that sucks, sorry to hear! There's a couple moments where your allies need to open doors for you in order to progress and they got stuck for me a couple times so maybe it was that?. I also know that this game really breaks when you run it at anything over 120fps so that also could have had something to do with it.
Have you played F.E.A.R.? Get F.E.A.R.: GOG: www.gog.com/en/game/fear_platinum Humble Bundle: www.humblebundle.com/store/fear Fanatical: www.fanatical.com/en/game/f-e-a-r Guide to get F.E.A.R. up and running well on PC: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2835341057
Great review, you explained it in just 10~ minutes! But one important thing, and it's what I do when introducing people to this game: I say that it's a mystery solving game, that tends to set the right expectations while spoiling as little as possible. And it's pretty important to do that I found! One of the biggest reasons people drop this game is going into it with a set of expectations that don't line up with the reality of this game, and since it is very open ended and doesn't hold the player's hand at all, there's nothing to correct these expectations that the game doesn't conform to. So it doesn't really work out unless the right expectations are set or the person playing is open-minded enough. Also, woah, Outer Wilds with high FOV looks like a completely different experience!
Thank you! That is another great way to explain it, this is such a hard game to describe to someone because you want to tell them about what makes it so great without also spoiling its best moments. Also yeah the wide FOV is pretty awesome for games like this, very glad there was a setting for it.
Have you played Outer Wilds? Get Outer Wilds: Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/ PlayStation: www.playstation.com/en-us/games/outer-wilds/ Xbox: www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/outer-wilds/c596fkdkmqn7 Switch: www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/outer-wilds-switch/
hey, just a tip, be way more aware of what "spoilers" are in a game. That whole thing about humans you just spat out is a HUUUGE spoiler. And i'm glad I didn't watch your specific review before playing the game.
Max and Erich Schaefer, co-creators of the Diablo series and lead developers of the first two games, left Blizzard, with some of the top talents, after the sequel. Founded Flagship Studios, which honestly went nowhere. Later founded Runic Games. Which, together with Travis Baldree, another good ARPG dev on his own, created Torchlight. The first game is pretty good, if quaint. The sequel though, much like Diablo II, is a very solid sequel. Your comment regarding potions are solved in these games. First, potions of similar size now could stack up and occupy a single slot. Second, while you can still opt in putting the potions in a hotkey slot of your choice, there's also a dedicated "use best potion" keys. And finally, your comment about frequently going back to town to stock up is also smoothed out with the pet system. Not only are they an adorable companion, a decent combat sidekick, and a good magic support(provided you give them spell tomes), you could also have them carry any surplus items and junk gear, then have them run back to town to sell them off. You could even give them a list of consummables to pruchase and bring back while they're at it. Just like Diablo II though, disagreement regarding the franchise' direction with their new publishing head, Perfect World, once again left them packing up and moving out during the early stages of Torchlight III's development. While Max stayed to oversee the rest of the development, the whole team is basically a batch of fresh faces farmed by the publisher. So yeah, it's practically the publisher taking the helm of the development of the third game. You can guess how well that game's release went. Torchlight II is my go-to ARPG whenever I got the itch for the genre. And, if you're interested, i'd also recommend you get a dive into another ARPG indie studio that I really cherish; Soldak Entertainment. It's as indie as it comes, as it's mainly helmed by one passionate guy. His takes on the genre are quite interesting. From "ARPG, but you got fellow adventurer neighbors to actively compete with/against"(Depths of Peril), to "ARPG, but the stakes of the main quest IS REAL and actually happening. And you could actually lose the town if you're not quick enough."(Din's Curse). And my favorite; "Space RPG, but while you're messing around with your ARPG, the galaxy you inhabit is playing a strategy 4x game. And it's your choice on how you want to get involved in that."(Drox Operative).
A lot of great information here. Torchlight is a series I've been meaning to check out for quite a while now. The furthest I've ever branched out from Diablo is Path of Exile, which is decent but kind of feels like a D2 clone at times, although the second one looks great. I have actually played Depths of Peril before-a fantastic game that I would love to revisit. I've never heard of those other two, but they sound super interesting. Thanks for the suggestions!
I still have a diablo 2 battle chest i bought when i was sixteen and for some reason never played. I don't know how i kept it all this time but now pc doesn't have a disc drive to use it with - will probably go with the enhanced edition instead. Anyway thanks for the review. You've pushed me closer to finally playing it after all these years!
Oh man, that brought back some memories. Those things were awesome. Glad you enjoyed the review, and I hope you like the game if you decide to give it a shot!
Orks are easy to deal with since they are mostly disorganised bunch of fightclub enthusiasts, but when you face anything else your super soldier is as good as your average ordinary soldier, sometimes even worse. And that is how hardcore the 40k universe is.
The thing I distinctly remember playing this one is that...I don't think I finished it. I played it three-four times, but I always get to some point where I just stop, and then I totally forgot I got in on hold as I moved onto some other games.
I honestly cannot understand myself on why I can't get into Risk of Rain. Tried the first game. I can't say "it's the overall theme or the artstyle" since I like games like No Man Sky, and Void Bastards. I can't say "it's the gameplay/genre" since I like alot of rouge-likes/rouge-lites like Brigador, Spelunky, Darkest Dungeon, Synthetik, Nuclear Throne, Rogue Legacy, and Teleglitch. I can't say "it's the combat" since, it's basically Terraria's combat style, but more focused on that aspect, and I really like Terraria. I can't say "it's the difficulty" since, I like games like Far Cry 2, The Surge 2(haven't got into any of FromSoft's Souls games), and the rougelikes I've just mentioned. I can't say "it's the grind" since I dumped heck of alot of gametime on RPG's like Torchlight II, Dragon's Dogma, Rebel Galaxy, or any Soldak Entertainment games. I can't even say "it's the music" since I do also enjoy the vibe it's soundtrack inhabits; similar to the soundtrack feel of Mirror's Edge, Space Rangers HD, and Dustforce... Again, I just can't get into this one personally. One of my strong examples of "Yeah it's great! It's not for me though."
From what I understand/remember, the thing on why the lighting looks so good even today, was because it's basically an incredibly amped up version of Quake III's pre-baked lighting and shadow pass. The whole other big shindig about it was the "MegaTextures". The idea is that, instead of level designers being at the mercy of limited pool, size, and variation of textures, in idTech5, they can practically play around mixing and blending multiple textures as if working with layers on Photoshop. Actively paint detail and texture on world mesh as if painting a diorama. Now, what this all means is that, RAGE could simulate "next gen" lighting and texture on "current-gen" hardware(which was PS3-XBOX360). Of course, there are technical caveats, the biggest thing was the texture pop-in. Unlike most game engines at the time which use and cache in a measured set of premade textures, assigned on what mesh face...in RAGE; see that one big-4ss map? It's using one whole big-4ss texture. Everything, the multilayered texture data, the lighting and shadow pass, all generated into a single gigantic texture map. Then, the game streams that whole texture map, constantly, in-and-out, by chunks, because the hardware at the time simply cannot have THAT whole wad of data in memory. The second thing is lighting. While it generally "looks" better than Doom 3, you'd notice lighting on RAGE is less interactive. Again, the limitation of having pre-baked(read:not made and rendered in real-time) world shadows and lighting. The only real shadows in-game are on the active entities(the player, the enemies, the vehicles...). Moving away from the technical stuff. I remember being absolutely in love with everything about it's core combat feel, both on foot and in-vehicle. Which is why I really hated how limited its "open-world" aspect is, compounded by the part where the game just...ends. Incredibly meager repeatable "quests"(one round of arena and some optional sewers), and not even a new game+. I've heard RAGE 2 is a far better open-world package(as it was primarily made by the folks that made Just Cause games), but I haven't got into that game, so I'm actually looking forward to what you'd think about that one. :)
Amazing information about the technology behind RAGE and how it works, way better than I could have explained it. I'll definitely take a look at RAGE 2 soon!
I loved this game when i was younger playing it on 360, the atmosphere and stylizing of the enemies are perfect for this environment, one thing I didnt like about the 2nd game is that it kinda took the slight comic relief in exchange for fast paced doom like combat, where as the first game had a more survival horror needing to manage resources, and I wish they connected the two games more instead of just a couple recurring characters.
