Environmental hazards, such as a giant rock tumbler and an overloading power generator, cause you actually unavoidable damage, which combined with new nightmare's 50HP cap were maddening and frustrating. Where the issues come in, however, are with some of the new traps and some of those very same setpieces I wanted to praise. ![]() The encounter design was also pretty good, almost as good as Quake's is, and I had very few moments where I was truly frustrated or couldn't have improved with simply better gunplay. Two new guns shake up the action and find some actual use if you're clever, and the new enemies are entertaining and balanced-gremlins who can steal your weapons and use them against you, and scorpion robots equipped with deadly nailguns, but who can't aim up and have safe spots between their claws. Half Life wouldn't come out until a year later and Armagon beat much of what it was going to do to the punch. The environment design is actually stunning for 1997 hot off the heels of what was essentially the first true 3D environments in video games, Scourge of Armagon opted to swap out Quake's often abstract and labryinthine sprawls with locales that looked physical and believable while being no less fun to navigate-mineshafts, castles, complexes, fortresses-with fun "setpiece" moments such as collapsing tunnels, rolling and deadly debris, moving skilifts and more. I'd never been so torn on an FPS campaign in my life. VERDICT: A+ even with all its hanging chads Scourge of Armagon ![]() ![]() Trent Reznor's soundtrack is still fantastic, though the remaster mutes it slightly-turn that music volume up and those sound effects' volume down. Despite each one being directed by a different principal level designer, each episode contains levels which are unique, fun to traverse, interesting, and tend to interconnect within themselves in interesting ways, as if to say "we're truly 3D now, check out what we can do!" Spaces are sometimes cramped, but rarely are they a hinderence to combat, and speaking of which, the episodes also contain thoughtful and challenging encounter design, outside of a couple of "fuck you" gotcha moments (like a shambler spawning with no cover in Door to Chthon for example). This is a cross-post of an old Twitlonger I made at the beginning of the year after playing through the Quake remaster on Steam, now even easier to read because THROUGH THE POWER OF MARKDOWN I can divide the text into sections.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |