I was late to Star Wars, but I fell love with its PC games like X-Wings, TIE Fighters, Dark Forces, etc. I never saw the original movies in theaters until their SEs in college. Better late than never.

Yeah Myst wasn't for me too. It's pretty, but boring to me. Too bad Rebel Assault series were linear. Cutscenes were cool though! Ah yea, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, etc. Don't forget Dark Forces and others. DOOM obviously for me. Descent! On Kali. Ha. Did you know about the new Descent game, Overload? https://playoverload.com/ if you haven't seen it! It was pretty and nice. I never got into Wing Commander and Homeworld series.

Anyone else remember stealing the plans for the Death Star in Dark Forces? It seems to be inspired by that game, including the titular dark troopers. . . hehe hehe, titular.

http://moviepilot.com/posts/3859966

I was 13/14, games back then were magical. Anytime I was on a plane or in the car I was reading PC Gamer or CGM drooling over the demos (or shareware!), ads, previews and reviews. Remember those days? When information on gaming was largely through print?! I still remember those Dark Forces previews, I could have shot a load. PC gaming at that point really was fucking cutting edge.

1997 & 1998 also hold a special flame in gaming for me - 1997: Ultima Online (actually learned HTML and had a website for UO cuz I was a NERD), Fallout, GTA, Age of Empires, Dungeon Keeper, Quake II, Myth (incredible multiplayer component probably even still).

1998: Starcraft, Half-Life, Baldur's Gate, Thief, Grim Fandango, Fallout 2, Tribes, THIEF, Unreal, Commandos.... so many innovative games back then. Now we just build on them over and over and over again

those are some dark forces

I could have sworn that there were different colored lightsabers in semi-cannon material (all the extended universe stuff is licensed and authorized so I consider it semi-cannon) prior to the prequels. Dark Forces II for example, and the extended universe books (Mara Jade). By Knights of the Old Republic (which did indeed come after the prequels) multi colored lightsabers were a bit more common...

The explanation of the color is from the crystals that make up the lightsaber (Lea's is red so it isn't side alignment, then again her kid...), and during the official universe time frame the empire controlled the crystals more which limited the colors out there... but that is more of a retcon...

Still interesting to hear how and why we got a new color in the official universe.

Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, The Dig, Loom, Dark Forces, Grim Fandango... Shit man. We have been missing LucasArts for a while. :~(

I remember being a little kid in 4th grade, I loved the Monkey Island soundtrack so much that I recorded the songs with my little boom box cassette recorder from the Tandy. That game was one of those magical sorts where as a little kid I fantasized about actually living in that game world.

Before Dark Forces came out I remember staring at previews in PC Gamer for months at a time. When it came out it was unbelievably AWESOME. Really special company, really special times. Will be forever in my mind with LOVE.

That said there is still hope. Telltale, which consists of former LucasArts employees has been doing a fantastic job of innovating upon adventure gaming; the future is still bright.

I wasn't a fan of ROTT. I loved DOOM, Dark Forces, Quake, etc. This new ROTT looks decent.

While they are reviving things can we have Dark Forces 4 or Jedi Knights 3 (whatever), Republic Commando 2 or failing that how about a new X-Wing game? Tie Fighter HD would do nicely. Get on it Disney.

Westy hits on some good points. The reason so many games end up looking so similar is that the developers are constrained by the code and examples of work they see done with engines like this and as a result they don't explore the engine further to make the game their own. There are some exceptions. The Quake engine was notable for powering games like American McGee's Alice (which looks great to this day), the Star Trek: Elite Forces games, and the Star Wars: Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games. So developers can definitely come up with some unique looking games, but the have to spend time learning and understanding the engine they're using, and with all the extensive stuff in modern game engines, it could end up being a lot more work than just writing your own game engine (even if it doesn't look quite as fantastic.)

Deus Ex, which is my favorite game of all time, displays the weaknesses of this method. Because the developers were so reliant on another team's engine, they had to hack a lot of the stuff into the game to get the results they wanted. As a result, the game sometimes felt a tad clunky. (But it's still the best game evar!)

But the most important thing is that graphics like this don't make a game better. I was recently talking to a buddy and comparing the original Unreal Tournament from 1999 to UT3. While UT3 is a gorgeous game, it's just nowhere near as fun. It's distracting in fact. To me the old graphics are more appealing because I can see what I'm doing.

The point of all this is that while a tool like this can be a boon to developers in some areas of game creation, there are just as many detriments that can have a negative effect on a game that could be better done by the developers writing the engine from scratch.

Ok so what about the early Microprose flight sims? Or Jetfighter? Or even Descent? Are those too 3D to be included? I realize they wouldn't be categorized as FPS today.. but they had to had to have influenced the genre.
And c'mon where's Dark Forces?
Daikatana? (ok.. that maybe pushing it).

I really liked Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

My brothers and I would play it through LAN against each other, so it's probably just the fond memories and nostalgia.

>> ^mgittle:

>> ^Deano:
>> ^dannym3141:
Personally i never have, but i could throw a stone at my university and hit 7 people with the same stone who would tell you "i only do it to try out the game, if it's good i buy it, but i'm sick of being cheated out of my money"


"Cheated"? I never understood this incredible sense of entitlement to excuse not paying for games.

When demos of games don't exist and the majority of previews come from sites like IGN and gamespot...AND don't say anything negative about games, can you really blame people for wanting to try before they spend $50+? Everyone's been burned at some point by buying some shit ass console port made by a company that used to make fantastic stuff. For example, Lucasarts made X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and the Dark Forces series for PC, but also made The Force Unleashed, which is one of the worst pieces of saleable software ever made and one of the worst console to PC ports to date. There was no demo.
Since when is demanding a decent product a "sense of entitlement" for a consumer?


Mentioning X-wing and Tie fighter in one comment gets an automatic upvote from Kalle... here you are

>> ^Deano:

>> ^dannym3141:
Personally i never have, but i could throw a stone at my university and hit 7 people with the same stone who would tell you "i only do it to try out the game, if it's good i buy it, but i'm sick of being cheated out of my money"


"Cheated"? I never understood this incredible sense of entitlement to excuse not paying for games.


When demos of games don't exist and the majority of previews come from sites like IGN and gamespot...AND don't say anything negative about games, can you really blame people for wanting to try before they spend $50+? Everyone's been burned at some point by buying some shit ass console port made by a company that used to make fantastic stuff. For example, Lucasarts made X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and the Dark Forces series for PC, but also made The Force Unleashed, which is one of the worst pieces of saleable software ever made and one of the worst console to PC ports to date. There was no demo.

Since when is demanding a decent product a "sense of entitlement" for a consumer?

Violently? Sheesh...

Most atmospheric games ever? Hardly. Yeah, it's different than Deus Ex. And I don't think every FPS has to be like Deus Ex to be good. But if I have to understand Russian to fully enjoy the game, as you say, then all I can do is take your word for it that it makes the game better. My experience was that it was boring. While THQ claimed the PC was the lead platform for the game, the XBox version was nearly identical. There is just no way to develop a FPS for both XBox and PC without dumbing down or limiting the PC version. I've been a PC gamer and PC game fan since I first fired up Space Warp on my TRS-80. But they ain't what they used to be. And it is because of consoles. I am so "extremely and violently" sick of this shit that I refuse to buy Diablo III when it comes out for the teeny-tiny reason that they made health potions an instant power-up when you walk over them instead of a carry-able item (yeah, I got "issues"), and THEN tried to explain it away as making gameplay more seamless for PC gamers. Read: "we had to make fewer things that console players needed a button for". That's right, they took one of the simplest PC games with one of the simplest control schemes ever and they STILL had to dumb it down for console gamers. Fuuuuuck you, Blizzard!

Anyway, you liked Metro 2033? Fine. I didn't. We disagree. I just used it as an example of my bigger bitch.

In the spirit of staying somewhat on-topic here, the video was of a cut-scene, not the fucking game. Yeah, it looked cool. But, gameplay-wise, I'll take Jedi Knight or Dark Forces over this dreck any day.