Ross's Game Dungeon: Strife

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I love this series more than I thought I would, I know nothing about the games he features but he is fun to listen to, I could probably listen to Ross Scott describe a brick wall and still be interested

👍︎︎ 25 👤︎︎ u/ChrisColumbus 📅︎︎ Jun 03 2014 🗫︎ replies

This guy deserves all the love he gets. Been following him since years ago, when he was still doing Freeman's Mind a Civil protection for machinima, and I love this new series as well. He's just so passionate about what he does.

👍︎︎ 19 👤︎︎ u/Bromao 📅︎︎ Jun 03 2014 🗫︎ replies

Oh wow! I kinda fell off his youtube channel/videos due to his painfully slow release of his "freeman's mind" machinima series, but damn this is some great new content I missed out on. Feels a lot like Egoraptor's sequelitis videos, but with his own humor.

Also I get to binge on new episodes of Freeman's mind. A win win for me.

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/SeRiOuS_DuKe 📅︎︎ Jun 03 2014 🗫︎ replies

Strife was basically the precursor to Deus Ex. Amazing game, simultaneously ahead of its time in some ways (hub world, story decisions, basic stealth system, some RPG elements) and behind it in others (Doom 2 engine, which pretty much killed it in 1997).

It's still very much an underrated game and has held up reasonably well. I recommend anyone who likes old-school shooters to try it out.

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/mprey 📅︎︎ Jun 04 2014 🗫︎ replies

Huh, I never knew Jim Molinets worked on this kind of games in the past. I worked under the guy at Disney for 7 months, and he was just so damn serious and straight to business I didn't even consider looking up his history, thinking he's probably just another producer they brought in to run the studio. That said, if you were on his good side (i.e. didn't bullshit him) he was one of the most genuinely nicest guys there.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/goal2004 📅︎︎ Jun 04 2014 🗫︎ replies

Oh man ive been waiting for the next game dungeon. I am a huge fan of his freemans mind series and when he started putting out the game dungeons I didnt bother with them at first. Then offhandedly watched one and wow what a mistake it was passing them by, so damn entertaining to watch. I highly recommend them they are great.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/T3hSwagman 📅︎︎ Jun 04 2014 🗫︎ replies

Strife... actually looks fun.

I don't see myself playing it however. Not a big fan of the maze like design. Trying to comprehend them constantly while I play starts to make me feel sick.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/neutlime 📅︎︎ Jun 04 2014 🗫︎ replies

MARVEL Freeman's Mind when?

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/GarlicSausage 📅︎︎ Jun 04 2014 🗫︎ replies

Is this guy worth subscribing to? Does he just go and review older/lesser-known games? Sounds interesting enough to me. What are these other videos? Freeman's Mind? Civil Protection?

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Azarius 📅︎︎ Jun 04 2014 🗫︎ replies
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["You've gotta break a few eggs to kill everybody! Or... something..."] [Subtitles by danielsangeo] [music] Welcome to the Game Dungeon. This episode is full of Strife. Strife is a first-person shooter/role- playing game hybrid. Not a lot of these. It definitely leans on the shooter side of things, though. As you can see, Strife uses real-time raytraced graphics with advanced lighting and reflect--no, I'm kidding. This is just a cinematic. This game uses the Doom engine. Now, this game isn't really a Doom clone. It's more like Doom's cousin that lives far away where he visited once but you forgot what he's doing and really anything could've happened to him. So, that's what we're looking at today. So, what's this game about? Well, the intro doesn't waste any time and gets straight to the point. So let's hear it. ["The comet struck our planet without warning. ["We lost our paradise in a single violent stroke. ["The impact released a virus which swept through the land and killed millions. ["They turned out to be the lucky ones... ["For those that did not die became mutations of humanity. ["Some became fanatics who heard the voice of a malignant god in their heads ["and called themselves 'The Order'. ["Those of us who were deaf to this voice suffer horribly ["and are forced to serve these ruthless psychotics ["who wield weapons more powerful than anything we can muster. ["They destroy our women and children] "Our women...!" ["so that we must hide underground and live like animals in constant fear for our lives."] "Animals!" ["But there are whispers of discontent. ["If we organize, can we defeat our masters?"] Yes! ["Weapons are being stolen, soldiers are being trained, ["a movement is born! ["Born of lifelong strife!"] "Strife!" Great art style, voice acting with some conviction to it, that's a pretty good start. Gets me fired up to play it. But, whoa, before we hop in, we have an example of some not-so-great storytelling, since the manual fills in the gap between that intro and the start of the game. You're a mercenary, you come to a town looking for trouble, but get stopped by The Man for an interrogation, so you're going to pull out a concealed knife and stab his ass. Sounds good to me. I feel like they could've given me a text wall or something in the game itself, but whatever. Let's start the game. Here's the game. You pull out said knife and start the murdering. This is unfortunately another issue I have with this game. Your first two weapons are essentially garbage. I have to stab this guy ten times to get him to go down! And these are the easiest enemies in the game. So what if he's wearing armor? I see I pretty nice gap in his helmet there. I'm sure anyone who's been to prison would spot at least 10 places to shank this guy. Not that this was uncommon for first-person shooters at the time, but good FPS design now gives you weapons that always have some practicality. Anyway, you escape from the Tarantino Room and--whoa, what's this? A person that's not attacking me? No! TWO people not attacking me! I thought this was the Doom engine! What's going on here? That's right, this game has some RPG elements. Meaning you have characters you interact with and talk to. Unlike Doom, Heretic, Hexen... the goal of this game is NOT to murder every single thing that moves. Now, don't worry, there's still plenty of murdering to be done. Calm down, guys. Let's talk to somebody! ["In a small world, word travels fast. ["I hear you just removed some obstacles from your path. Nice work. ["Are you interested in some more lucrative projects?"] I like how there's immediately a shady guy offering me a shady job with a Humphrey Bogart impression. Unlike other Doom based games, this game was CD only. No floppies allowed. So, in addition to it being huge, it means there's a lot of voice acting in the game and almost all of it is great. More on that later. Now, the basic plot is, if you do this guy's mission, you get contacted by an underground rebel group and join up with the resistance. From there on, you start plotting how to take down the Order and it's not a simple process. ["Frankly the situation is a mess. You must accomplish several missions ["to prepare the way for more attacks on the Order."] Now, the missions are very roundabout towards your main goal, but they all make a lot of sense. Like real freedom fighters, or at least the smart ones, you can't just jump in and declare war on the whole world. You have to take it one step at a time. Like one important goal in this game is to prepare for an attack on the nearby castle where one of the leaders rules the area from. But, you can't just go in there; there's a forcefield blocking it, so you have to disable the forcefield. Well, to do that, you have to sabotage the power plant. Well, you can't even get in the power plant without getting a pass from the local corrupt governor and he wants favors for favors. ["I have two chores that I don't want to do myself. ["One is... messy. The other... bloody."] And even once you do all that and the forcefield's down, you still have to sabotage the controls to the gate because you have move a whole army through there. So, to do THAT, you have to sneak into the sewers and curry favor with the Rat King who sounds like Peter Lorre so he'll let you through. ["Ah, a surfacer in need of a favor. Down here you do a favor to get a favor."] And this is just the first part of the game. So, that might sound like a lot of beating around the bush to get to your main goal, but let's see you overthrow a corrupt government in less steps than this. Besides, the payoff to all this is an awesome battle where your comrades-in-arms fight on the front lines while you head in deeper to take out a priority target. This game really makes you feel like an infiltrator. You go so deep behind enemy lines trying to get to your objectives. On top of that, this game has kind of a half-baked stealth system where if you don't do anything suspicious or if you disguise yourself, you can walk around and talk to people and, y'know, not get shot. I say it's half-baked, though, because it really is. You can't go through this whole game using stealth. Sometimes you'll come to doors that automatically set off alarms that you HAVE to go through. In other places, the AI was inconsistent where none of the enemy troops were attacking me but some of the robots didn't give a shit and open fire on me anyway. Look at this. Everybody's going about their own business, but this robot isn't buying it. It wants me dead. Nobody's reacting to this. Apparently robots kill random people all the time here. What's the big deal? But, if I'm NOT cool with a robot trying to saw my head off, now THAT'S suspicious. Anyway, there's only a couple areas in the game where you can permanently remain undetected. The stealth element is just experimental more than anything. Okay, so the stealth is just kind of tacked on. How's the action? Well, it's Doom with different weapons. Again, the first two weapons are trash. You'll only use them when you have no other options. The assault rifle is great in all situations but you run out of ammo fast. The rocket launcher is one of the weakest I've ever used, and I've used a lot of rocket launchers. The poison bolts let you do stealth kills on non-robots, but robots are your biggest problems in the game anyways, so, yeah... The flamethrower is okay, but you have to get really close to use it and it's a nightmare to control. Yeah, see? The energy-pulse shotgun thing is awkward but good. The alternate fire mode is extremely powerful... and green. The Sigil of the One God is a sentient superweapon that drains your life force for ammo, is worshiped by the theocracy and grants the wielder enough power to control the planet. Oh, and the grenade launcher. I love the grenade launcher in this. It has bite! Not only do these do a ton of damage, but they bounce unpredictably and you can easily kill yourself with them if you misjudge your trajectory. I'm a big fan of overpowered weapons that are unwieldly and really dangerous to use. And hey, if that wasn't enough, you can also get incendiary grenades which burn the ground in a radius for 20 seconds. These will destroy anything that doesn't fly away. Dammit! Dammit! [growls] So, Strife's weapons are all over the map, but they bring on the pain and give you ample opportunities to accidentally kill yourself so I can't complain. Let's talk about the maps. On the grand scheme of things, the level design in Strife is kind of like Metroid. Unlike Doom where every level is its own separate thing, ALL the maps in Strife connect to one another and form a giant world. Unless you've personally destroyed the area, you can backtrack and revisit almost every location in the game any time you feel like it. I think this is really awesome. It helps make the world seem more real to me rather than just a bunch of disconnected level loads. Also, you have quite a few areas that are totally optional that you can explore. Sometimes there are bonuses for going through them. Either way, it's extra gameplay just thrown in there for the hell of it. How many first-person shooters do this today? If Strife was made today, you'd know a corporation would chop up half of this and sell it as DLC months after the fact, just to cheapen the whole experience and milk people for all they're worth. ["You have cut the cancer from your body. But your heart still beats."] Yeah, you said it. Anyway, this game has a pretty decent size. It feels fairly huge. Thankfully, you have teleporters to help with things. Plus, you have your standard Olympic runner speed like in Doom. So, is this the game a shining example of what great map design should be? No. It's not. For starters, while there are definitely some nice and diverse areas, a few levels start feeling bland like they're just filler. But, to be fair, you have to understand that this was the mid '90s, where it was required by law that all first-person shooters include a warehouse, a factory or a sewer. I also would've like to see more levels like the borderlands here. Make it more of a journey traveling between towns instead of just the short stroll it is in the game, but these are just minor gripes. My biggest complaint about the maps, and really this whole game in general, is the maze-like level design. Guys, let me tell you something: I am not a minotaur, I don't spend my weekends hanging out in hedge mazes waiting to kill people. If I'm playing a game for the story or the shooter action, my first thought isn't how great it would be to have a fucking maze to navigate that holds me up from doing anything else for 20 minutes at a time or more. Sure, I get a map, but where's the entrance? I don't remember. Where's the exit? Which one?! Do these lines mean it's just a bump in the ground or an impassable wall? Now, this is not a problem unique to Strife, this goes all the way back to the first... uh... first-person shooters. Strife is based on the Doom engine, and while it broke a lot of new ground, it didn't quite get away from Doom's level design. I know I'm going to get some hate from people for saying this, but honestly, I think Doom is overrated. Now, it wasn't at the time; it was mindblowing technologically when it came out. But, looking back on it now, I can't say I think it's a great game. Now, don't get me wrong-- Doom still has some good action and it has space marines and Cyberdemons from hell. And that's timeless. I believe the parable of space marines versus Cyberdemons goes back to the ancient Greeks. Possibly earlier. So, that's good, but Doom's music would be sued for plagiarism if it came out today and Jesus Christ, the whole game is a maze! You start off playing a small maze and you work your way up to a large maze. Mazes and more mazes. Who cares about progressing through the level or focusing on the combat? You're going to spend half the game wandering aimlessly because that's fun, right? I'm not talking about exploring. Exploring, you wander because you want to. Mazes, you wander the same area over and over again because you're lost and you have to. Now, some people consider Doom's level design to be brilliant. But not me. It's intricate, but so is a giant knotted up ball of wires. I think a lot of people get blinded by the nostalgia of Doom and forget that, once you take away the demon shooting, the game turns into a chore. So, the levels of Strife borrow some pages from the Doom playbook, but it falls squarely between Doom's design and a sane design. Lots of levels are totally navigable and not hard to follow. Others are just a maze designed to torment you. The most striking example of this is the sewers. Not only is it a giant maze but you're under constant attack from the sewage. If you don't wear an environment suit, you start taking damage from all the toxic gas and these suits only last a few minutes. Now, they did sprinkle a decent amount of them in the level, but, seriously, who wants to wander around trying to solve a maze while under constant threat of dying if you take too long to figure it out? This is from the James Bond villain school of level design. Ironically, the music here is really appropriate as it conveys the sense of hopelessness and desperation as you keep wandering the sewers aimlessly. Huh, which way? Is it here? No... No...! No...! AAAAAH...! Let's talk about the music. The music in this game is a mixed bag in every way. Well, not LITERALLY. The game didn't ship in a bag. It had pretty awesome box art actually. Anyway, not every track is a winner. Some of these feel like the composer phoned it in. [simple percussion music] Others repeat over and over during the maze wandering and I flat out found them annoying and thought no music at all would be better than what they included. [synthesizer loop] [dirge] This one sounds like a funeral procession... [dirge] ...even though nothing especially sad is happening in this part of the game. In fact, this game doesn't really have sad moments, just "OH GOD!" moments. I'd say about half the tracks are totally forgettable or you WISH you could forget them. But then, the other half is really damned fitting. I mean, from the very beginning, I love the town wandering music. [jaunty percussion music] It has this odd "Caveman" like feel to it. But I like the mood it sets and it doesn't get tedious like some of the other tracks. This track you hear midway through the game and it makes me want to reflect on things... [strumming guitar music] ...like, damn, I had to kill so many people to get here. Makes you think. [strumming guitar music] The big battle music is simple but nails the "We're going to war" vibe. [driving synthesizer music] RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! So, when the music isn't garbage, it's very atmospheric and creates this great mood that really goes well with the dystopian landscape of Strife and it's one of the reasons I find the game memorable to this day. And, to complicate... everything: all the music is in MIDI format. This makes a mess for me because some of these tracks I like a lot have the potential to sound MUCH better. With MIDI music, you can swap out the instruments and fine tune it the way you want. The problem is, MIDI music for games back in the day were the wild west in terms of standards. Everybody did something different. Like the MIDI track may SAY it's supposed to play a trumpet, but of course, it would sound like "wah-wah-wah-wah" and nothing like a trumpet. So, jump to the future where you can have the instruments sound like an actual trumpet and some old game music will start sounding fantastic, others will sound really off because the composer was COUNTING ON that instrument sounding like crap. Unfortunately, Strife's music definitely leans towards the latter, which makes it a pain in the ass trying to make this music sound better. I'm just going to throw this out there: if there are any MIDI experts watching this who want to create the perfect sound fonts and custom-tuned old DOS music like this, go ahead and contact me. Then we can convert it to MP3 or something and be done with it. This is an ongoing offer-- not just for Strife. There's a lot of great MIDI music that's completely buried under crap renditions. It's like if Bach only had a tambourine and a kazoo to work with. [kazoo] And while I'm on the topic of improving things, it's worth mentioning I am NOT playing the original version of this game. I am playing this on an engine port. This way, it can play on modern systems, has good widescreen support, high resolutions, lots of graphics tweaks, just about everything you can think of. But there's one feature above all others that made me seek out this port instead of the original, and that's mouse aiming. The port I'm using allows full mouse control like you'd expect from a modern game. For first-person shooters, I need this. In the early days, your options for aiming in an FPS were usually the keyboard and it sucked. Sometimes you have a wonky joystick or mouse solution, but they usually sucked, too. A lot of games had some level of auto-aiming because developers knew it was always a partial disaster trying to aim with a friggin' keyboard. I'd say it wasn't until '98 until mouse aiming as we know it today became mainstream for first-person shooters. Before that happened, I used to think I didn't really like first-person shooters because it doesn't matter how good a game is, if the controls feel like you're steering with your elbows, it can ruin almost any game. In fact, I never beat Strife until years afterwards once I was finally able to aim with a mouse. For people out there who play first-person shooters with a gamepad, I don't know how you do it. For me, that's almost as bad as keyboard aiming. First-person shooters originated on the PC, but they later got ported and even developed for consoles that only had a gamepad to use. And gamepads were designed for platformers or 2D games first and foremost. I used to think that really sucked for console players because their options were to play a first- person shooter with a crappy control scheme or don't play the game at all. What kind of choice is that? It felt like a step backwards. I thought as the popularity of first-person shooters increased, consoles would come up with a better control scheme for these types of games, but, besides some debatable exceptions, that just hasn't happened. If you had told me fifteen years ago that not only would gamepad aiming be dominating first-person shooters, but many of them would be DESIGNED for the gamepad and not even CONSIDER a mouse until after the fact, I would say that's insane, but here we are. This doesn't mean I think mouse and keyboard is the end-all perfect control scheme, I could envision many better options. I mean, hell, the keyboard doesn't have analog controls for movement, but, man, going back to keyboard or gamepad aiming, to me feels like playing basketball with one hand. It's harder and, even if you get skilled at it, you're always going to be at a constant disadvantage. There is a small downside to using modern aiming in the game, however. In the original, you could only look up and down just slightly, so you could never see the top of the sky. Now you can! It's going to rain! Also, there's one scene you were never meant to be able to look up in, and there was something always just out of your line of sight. Now you can look up and you see a small plot spoiler just hanging up there. Anyway, the engine port for this is amazing; it really breathes new life into the game. I'm using one called GZDoom. But I should at least mention another one called Vavoom. This is significant because, a few years back when id Software released the source code to Doom, it became much easier to make a port of the Doom games to run on modern systems and add more features. But not Strife. Strife had a lot of advanced code in it compared to Doom and a simple port of it just wasn't possible. To make matters worse, this had become an abandonware game since Rogue Entertainment went out of business years ago. Well, the original developers of the game were tracked down and while they were fine with somebody making a port of it, lo and behold, they lost the source code to the game! Whoops. Well, Janis Legzdinsh, whom I'm probably mispronouncing, did it anyway! Working off the Doom code, he reverse- engineered the whole damned game! And got it working for his Doom port Vavoom. After that, he shared his work with everyone which is why we have Strife working so well today. Thanks Janis! So, why am I using GZDoom instead of Vavoom? Well, it offers a few more graphics options and the widescreen support is simply better. Also, when I tried running Vavoom, I got these dancing white pixels appearing frequently. I read this is due to how the computer rounds off the polygons and appearing through the architecture into the sky. I don't care, though. This was driving me a little bit crazy, like my monitor was being eaten by space ants. This happens in GZDoom, too, but it gives you the option to fix it, so GZDoom means no space ants and that's important to me as a gamer. What does suck, though, is Vavoom has awesome lighting and added colored lights for all the torches. A lot of eye candy is pointless for a game as old as this, but DAMN, that adds some atmosphere to the place. So, I talked about the shooter portion of the game, but wait! This is a first-person shooter/RPG. How does that do? Well, it's a little bare for an RPG, but it's all good. Gameplay wise, you have a basic inventory, you can buy supplies, and as the game progresses, you can upgrade your health and accuracy. So, pretty basic, but it only enhances the murdering. What's more interesting is the story. You get it primarily through talking to other characters in the game, though occasionally you get these slideshow cutscenes with slick comic art to them. I found the story to be pretty good and it compelled me to want to keep playing more of the game. ["There's a lying sack named Derwin who has been selling children to the Order. ["I won't tolerate that kind of depravity. Not without my cut."] I just wish there was more of it. They could've tripled the amount of dialogue and it wouldn't have hurt anything. But, hey, if you have to choose, better to have less story that's all good than have a lot that's mediocre. ["Hey, leave me alone. ["If they catch us wasting time, we get dead. Or extra work."] The characters really add to the atmosphere. And the voice acting! The voice acting is stellar in the game! ["Here's a crossbow. Just aim straight and --SPLAT--."] Almost all the lines feel like the actor really gave a damn about what he or she was doing. ["Listen. If this comm unit is working that means you're still 100% human."] The voice acting really helped me become more interested in the plot and the whole game world. There's some 20 or 30 speaking characters in the game. Finding new ones was always a highlight while playing. ["I don't mean to sound alarmist, ["but if they keep pushing the power crystal this hard ["it's gonna flaw, and then shatter, and then *BOOM*!" ["...just a thought."] Seriously, the voice acting in this game is better than some of the big budget production ones I've played. The actors simply put more emotion and energy into their roles and the whole game just shines as a result. ["Oh, you cut off his hand! And I thought you were a nice guy. Kinda. ["Huh. Let's go."] I honestly couldn't tell if all the dialogue was even that good or not. But the performance was so great I became kind of hypnotized by it. ["Fight for the Front and freedom. Move out."] Yeah! Go kill the bad guys! Let's do it! Now, you do have choices in this game, but a lot of the time, it's a choice of whether or not you want to die. Say I reject this gentleman's offer. ["Fool! Guards, rid me of this meddlesome peon."] Oops. Okay, I'm leaving... And I'm dead. No, I do NOT wish to join the Resistance because I suck. ["You might want to reconsider, ["seeing that you're surrounded by heavily armed angry rebels."] No! You're a stranger! ["Then die in shame and dishonor."] Huh... And, yeah, I'm dead. Most of the "decisions" in the game are like this, but you have a few that totally change the outcome of the game. Now, I'm trying not to give too many spoilers here, but you guys NEED this one. Take a look at this guy. Remember that face. I know he looks like a totally upstanding citizen but I would recommend NOT following his advice. He's kind of like the friend that gets you into so much trouble, like, really serious trouble, that you start wondering if your friend is just more stupid than you thought, or if he KNOWS he's going to end up in prison at some point and wants to bring you along with him for the company. Anyway, if you do what this guy says, you literally cannot beat the game, and you'll probably be gunned down like the insurgent you are. And there is NO WARNING this is going to happen. It feels like a mission you SHOULD do. While that's creative, that's pretty mean of the game. That's the sort of shit old-school graphic adventure games used to pull on me. I don't miss that at all. This is the only instance of this, too. If you use common sense, you'll get through the rest of the game fine. So that's your first choice: whether or not you want to ruin your life. The others determine how the story unfolds and which levels you end up playing. Though, one of the decisions you have to make in the game is pretty huge and affects the game in a way you may not realize at the time. This reminds me a little bit of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where, depending on one choice you make, you can miss a BIG chunk of the game. Like, at least 30%. If you combine that decision with the optional areas and don't explore at all, I want to say you miss maybe as much as 50% of the game. I respect it when games do unconventional things like that; it keeps you guessing. But, yeah, this game has multiple story branching points, though it's really just the one major one and has multiple endings based on that. Now, without saying what happens, while the ending concepts are pretty good, they're as lame as most PC games of the time. I think each one clocks in around thirty seconds. I have no idea how long it takes to beat this, maybe a dozen hours or more if you take your time, so all of that gameplay, lots of great characters, a nice engaging storyline, and a thirty-second ending. Yeah, fuck you, too, game. ["Give you a hint. When I stop talking to you, you leave."] Well, at least you get more cool slideshow art, especially if you get the worst ending. Mehnenenenenenen... So, how is Strife looking to you? This game really was amazing for the time. There were not that many first-person shooter/role-playing game hybrids before this and not that many since, considering how there's only been a billion first-person shooters. Ultima Underworld and System Shock are two hybrids that come to mind before this, but those games were a little daunting. If you started them up, you had something like 50 controls, whereas all the RPG elements in Strife are pretty easy to digest if you're used to shooters. This game often gets compared to Deus Ex with good cause. It's Deus Ex-ish gameplay in a Doom world four years ahead of time. Unfortunately, this game didn't do well and is largely forgotten compared to other Doom games. Now, a lot of people blame the dated graphics and, while this was behind the curve in 1996, it doesn't look THAT much worse than other sprite-based shooters at the time. I think the real reason was that, not only was the market saturated with first-person shooters, but Strife came out right in between Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Man, talk about bad timing. Strife is going to get buried even further since there's a MOBA game coming out with the same name since apparently the company's other MOBA game wasn't MOBA enough. MOBA. So, Strife was great for the time, but how is it now? Well, despite the shortcomings, Strife remains one of my all-time favorite first-person shooters. I love the characters, the voice acting, the gameplay was very good over all, and it made me give a damn about what I was doing. Also, since we're living in the future, the Doom graphics kind of add to the atmosphere because everything is very angular making it a little surreal. Huh, maybe the Gears of War people like Strife, too. Plus, this game gets a bonus with me because it's part of a subgenre where you have modern or sci-fi technology existing within an otherwise medieval environment. I've only played a handful of games with that theme. But, it's one I like, and it's actually not such an outrageous concept. If we had a plague that wiped out almost all the populace today, after a generation or two, we would be back to a pre-industrial society, with advanced technology existing only in small pockets. Think I'm wrong? Well, can you build the computer or device you're watching this on from scratch? Yeah, didn't think so! It's back to farming for you. I played through the whole game again for this review and I still love the hell out of it. Because, a lot of games that are classics, you go back and try to play them and you wonder what the hell you were thinking. Some games are only "classics" because they're old. They just wouldn't be good games today. Strife I think still holds up. What do you think? Am I being blinded by the nostalgia? I try not to be. Being the perpetual cheap-ass that I am, I didn't even play this game until several years after it came out. And you can, too! The game is abandonware now, and with a Doom port, you can have an even better experience playing it than when it was released. If you like games like Deus Ex, you're not put off by the graphics, and can live with some maze wandering, you should absolutely play this game. It does have its problems, but it also has aspects that are so good, they PERMANENTLY stand out among other games I've played. You can't really put a score on that. Different games resonate with different people and DAMN, this one hit a note with me. This is not an above-average game, this is lifelong STRIFE! FIGHT FOR THE FRONT AND FREEDOM! MOVE OUT! [music] Five feet by four feet Five feet by four feet Five feet by f--
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Channel: Accursed Farms
Views: 804,961
Rating: 4.9102011 out of 5
Keywords: Video Game (Industry), strife, doom, fps, moba, dota, ross scott, abandonware, dos, amiga, dosbox, game dungeon, Freeman's Mind, review, games, mouse, keyboard, gamepad, maze, maze war, aimpad
Id: oPrU7LSqiX0
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 32min 3sec (1923 seconds)
Published: Mon Jun 02 2014
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