I beat the Master Levels! There’s some really good fun levels in there. It’s cool that id took the time to make an official collection of fan created content.
But, and im sorry, all the levels made by Cranium are some of the worst things I’ve ever played
Cover art for Master Levels for Doom 2 featuring a black and white stretched image of screaming skulls fused together
I'm thankfully done with Marathon 2 😭
Now it's time for Master Levels for Doom II (1995)
Unfortunately it does not seem to have improved anything from the first one, this is gonna be a slog to get through 😞
Playing Marathon 2: Durandal (1995)
Don’t worry everyone, it’s only the most fundamental parts of our game that will be completely unoriginal and uninspired!
It's a lot of fun playing these games in release order because I get genuinely excited when they do something new. It was so cool seeing an ice cavern in this game shake and have the floor collapsing and jutting all at once when really its just a bunch of platforms moving up and down
The levels are formed by 'hubs' which have portals to sub levels. Each hub is sort of similar to a zelda dungeon in the way you explore in search of keys to open up new areas
I've been loving this game, it carves a pretty fresh approach to shooters for the time which is surprising considering how much it's predecessor was just a simple doom clone.
This game is the first fps to feature actual cutscenes, it has 3 classes to choose from, and non linear level design
Cover art for Hexen featuring a shadowy figure standing in an arched stone doorway. Red eyes peer out from beneath a dark cowl, the figure holds an emanating green orb. Fire fills the background.
Screenshot of a cutscene from Hexen featuring a low angle shot of a busy medieval plaza during a dark evening. Figures bustle around by torchlight in front of a grand cathedral.
Screenshot of Hexen featuring a first person view of a wielded mace and some stone columns
and I caught up on posting about the fps games Ive been playing! so now I'm currently playing:
Hexen: Beyond Heretic (1995)
Oh and the head of Raven said he would like the studio to reboot the series! Would be so cool to see it come back like Wolfenstein and Doom did
It was a lot of fun but I’m obsessed with its spin-off sequel, Hexen, the 3 classes and fresh take on level design is so good
Cover art for Heretic featuring a masculine cloaked elven wielding a magical staff and facing off against several reanimated skeleton soldiers
A screenshot of Heretic featuring a first person view of two flying imps in a large stone room with square wooden columns
A screenshot of Heretic featuring a first person view of a dark and gloomy stone room lit by burning braziers of demonic figures holding up bronze bowls.
Next was Heretic (1994)
Not too much to say about this game, its basically a reskin of doom with some fresh levels, I enjoy seeing them bring the map back between levels, its a small thing but I love it.
I actually like it more than doom, I think the weapons and enemies are a bit more fun and the maps a bit cooler
Cover art for Heretic featuring a masculine cloaked elven wielding a magical staff and facing off against several reanimated skeleton soldiers
A screenshot of Heretic featuring a first person view of two flying imps in a large stone room with square wooden columns
A screenshot of Heretic featuring a first person view of a dark and gloomy stone room lit by burning braziers of demonic figures holding up bronze bowls.
Next was Heretic (1994)
Looked at past commits and couldn’t figure out what I changed that would cause this so I branched from my last working commit and manually made the changes again and now it works 🫠
My C++ project broke inexplicably moved a file and renamed some mundane stuff, suddenly giving 600 errors in a static library that my project uses 🙃
the only redeeming factor is the somewhat interesting story. I really hope Marathon 2 and 3 make massive improvements because as this one stands I'm dreading playing the sequels
also will activate themselves randomly, so you have to pull and try to identify what it did a few seconds later while these 6 levers are also pulling themselves randomly. This game with its winding maps full of wrong turns and awful lever puzzles was the closest I came to DNF so far on this list
and the resulting event can happen pretty much anywhere on the map, and then it might take a few more seconds for the action to fail so you can know you did the wrong thing. And then they make puzzles involving multiple levers, the worst one I can think of right now had 6. And then these levers...
and the lever puzzles in this game were abhorrent, some of the most mind boggling obtuse things Ive ever seen, and to be clear I love puzzles in games, these were atrocious. This game loved to have levers that when activated take a few seconds to do anything...
I'm eagerly awaiting these games to finally understand that its not fun to wander around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go. It was upsetting going from System Shock which got that to this.
pretty much everything about this game was a disappointment. the guns were boring, the enemies were boring, the level design was awful, featuring tons of dead ends just to make you get lost for no reason.
Screenshot of Marathon featuring a fps view into a gray metallic hangar of a spaceship with the expanse of space beyond.
next up was Marathon (1994)
A screenshot of System Shock featuring a first person view of a dimly lit retro-future hallways with long bunker windows giving glimpses of outer space
Next was System Shock (1994)
This game was incredibly innovative and influenced many games that followed. I was blown away playing this. If you're curious how important this game was you should read the Legacy section on its wiki page
It also was the first fps to feature a rich unfolding narrative that raises the stakes for the player, often in the form of piecing together what happened through audio logs. I really could not get enough of this game, whenever I wasnt playing all I could think about was getting back to playing it
And the level design is a breath of fresh air. During a time where every other fps thought peak level design is just making a dense maze for the player to get lost in, System Shock creates complex levels that are fun to explore and reward you for your time while gently leading you to your goal
System Shock was the first fps to have vertical aiming, but it also has crouching, proning, leaning, reloading, jumping, multiple ammo types per weapon, damage types, looting, hacking, various tools. And they shockingly managed to jam so much more than any other fps at the time into a coherent whole
System's Shocks manual is 40 pages of explanations for game mechanics and systems and reading it is pretty much essential for playing the game, but its extremely worth it. Equipped with a much better understanding, I jumped back in and had an absolute blast
System Shock had a rough start for me, its very complicated with 1000 key binds for different toggles and menus and actions and basically none of it is explained in game. Thankfully, I was reminded on an old reddit thread that games used to come with manuals...
A screenshot of System Shock featuring a first person view of a dimly lit retro-future hallways with long bunker windows giving glimpses of outer space
Next was System Shock (1994)
This game was incredibly innovative and influenced many games that followed. I was blown away playing this. If you're curious how important this game was you should read the Legacy section on its wiki page