Diablo

  

         The dawning of the new 3D era has brought among many new design challenges and possible directions I hadn't seen in this blog until Quake. However the older Duke Nukem and DOOM inspired generation of FPS games wasn't done yet. Redneck Rampage was decent and more importantly funny. But just a year ago in blog time 3D Realms blew me away with Duke 3D. The level of interactivity, movement, vertical space in the level design fundamentally changed or at least challenged all conventional FPS design. Despite all that Duke did I still can't help feel there was more left on the table. Quake seemed to jump ahead and in many ways that's good but what had been presented before was never really perfected or replicated with design choices of say Turok or Quake. It's at this point Monolith enters the scene and creates what is easily among the top games on this list. Blood is phenomenal. It's every design aspiration we've seen in shooters pre full 3D perfected. It features some of ,if not the best in certain cases, level design of any game on this list. Quake included. It's spooky horror movie theme and look make the presentation my favorite of any game yet on this blog. Caleb's sadistic and slightly humorous goth personality charms me in a different yet just as effective way as Duke did. The combat loop involves one of my favorite weapon arsenals with my favorite enemies in a shooter so far. By summer 1997 Monolith had created an instant classic while proving that perfectly crafted and atmospheric game play could always find room at the top despite the dawning of the polygon era.
             Blood thrives on the ultra video game violence of the 1990's. With companies like id Software being blamed for acts of real world violence, Blood throws itself right into the cliche to great effect. Blood earns its name sake with just as much if not more than Quake. Blood literally fountains and sprays out of the undead and their demonic comrades, zombie heads can be kicked around to great effect, monks can be set on fire and watch as their flesh melts away. I'm sure playing this in 1997 would have shocked with its imagery. Blood's levels and tone is derived from era horror movies. The Hotel from the Shinning is one of the most impressive levels I've ever seen designed in an FPS game so far on this blog. Rising from the grave to find Crow references, and plenty more. Caleb is pale with red eyes and in some impressive for the time pre-rendered CGI cut scenes he as a cult leader is betrayed by the demon he and his lover worships. If Quake and the NIN contribution embraced 90's alternative edge Blood lived and breathed it. The enemy designs are fun and well thought out video game enemy pulled form the Living Dead or Buffy. The soundtrack with children occasionally singing rhymes or loose horror ambience could be played at a Halloween party. My favorite track a sick take on carnival music in one of my favorite levels, a haunted carnival.Caleb offers sadistic commentary taking pleasure in gore and making the occasional joke.  The atmosphere Monolith created is the best I've played in an FPS on this list. I adore it.
              Blood's many aspects are all extremely well executed. The excellent and fun environments are brought to life by Monolith's outstanding level design. The only studio to challenge them would be id at this time and even then I'm not sure who wins. The game starts out in a creepy and beautiful cemetery and quickly has you on a train ride through the apocalyptic hellscape of Blood's reality. Gargoyles and ghost fly at you, zombies and zealots. All with differentiating attacks and usually some variation particularly the monks. The enemy encounters take more from Duke than they do id created games. Blood's enemy's though remain largely unique and interesting in multiple ways not seen before. The arsenal in which they are gored with really ties into how you fight them and they react. Its very violent but rewarding. The player can literally stab a voodoo doll to gore and turn to dust enemies....its sadistic and I love it. Caleb makes sure he has plenty in common with

the player.
               The flame thrower is a spray can and lighter, the machine gun a Tommy gun, the shotgun is DOOM II levels of good, the throw-able dynamite straight from Duke and a napalm launcher in place of  a traditional rocket launcher. These weapons, ammo and enemy encounters are designed around the way the level flows in a near perfect way. While some levels like the haunted carnival, train ride, garden maze or hotel straight blew me away more than any levels in any other games on this list. Hallways and vertical spaces are all used to the extreme much more so than any other Build Engine game so far. The ambition in creating real world places or life like areas while making them fun and fast to blow your way through is impressive. The secrets are taken to another level as well a great example being the Hotel with its many secret passages and movable book shelves. I have to say Blood stands toe to toe with Quake when it comes to how fun and fresh combat and level traversal can be. Monolith using a technically outdated but more than capable engine are on an equal but different footing of genre leading level design, shooting and enemy encounters.
Despite not using polygon rendering Build Engine by the middle of 1997 still held up extremely well and while the design of a game like Blood must have been pushing it to the limits, the engine is plenty capable of wowing me and delivering some of the most ambitious designs seen in a shooter yet (97). The design direction 3D realms took by having interactivity and physics be so much of the simulated environment is a choice I wish every game took. The amount it adds to the player experience cant be understated and I'm happy to say Blood embraces this just as much. Destructible environments give way to supplies and secret areas. Gore bounces around in meat chunks when disposing of enemies or in the case of ghost their eyes pop out of their skull. Flesh burst and burns off of creatures with fantastically animated and detailed sprites. Blood is probably the second best looking game behind Quake on this list in my opinion. It's easily the best looking Build Engine game I've seen and far beyond what id Tech 1 was not so long ago offering in games like Hexen. The texture and color work are fantastic and while the lighting distance has limitations not seen in polygon rendered games the cohesive art style and more inherit artistic freedom of sprite use give way to a very great looking game. It really brings to life my favorite levels in a game. I think Monolith stands beside RavenSoftware when it comes to delivering excellent art in the FPS genre at this time.

While the game is good in some levels it can be brutally hard .After playing so many games from this era I've found myself not struggling as much but Blood has changed that for the worse again. I found supplies laid out pretty well but not to the near perfect balance Duke Nukem 3D did. I do more frequently in Blood find myself in some near impossible situations no matter how much I've explored the level before hand. Though it's hard to complain much about the game. It really is limited by its older design take while at the same time achieving greatness because it perfected those design choices. The movement and mobility may not be as good as Quake but is much better than anything else. The arsenal while not wholly original is largely fresh and always fun. The way enemy's react and attack is very predefined and varies only between a small set of things but the strength in this is Monolith has balanced all these dependent variables near perfectly when it comes to how player driven interaction is. I remember in my blog about DOOM II and the games following how movement in 3D space was challenging both because of tech but also because of content creators figuring how just what the right way of doing something was. Blood feels like a genre culmination of that. Monolith has obviously learned plenty of the lessons involved in the FPS genre growing pains while not being afraid to be inspired by the kind of things something like id Tech 2 allow. Like other games on this blog Blood and largely the Build Engine family of games have been unplayed for me.
                    However the unifying interactivity and immersive sandbox they tend to provide the player hit a note that makes me particularly fond of them. I think I would have been that edgey nerd in 1997 talking about how Duke and Blood did great, amazing things that Quake didn't. I'm sure I would have regarded id as the top tier studio and they certainly where even considering that now, but I do think my fondness of the Build Engine and the overall immersive sim design choices would carry beyond time. I would have seen Blood in 1997 as further maturing of the genre because of the way it showed how effective different approaches to the FPS genre could be. Blood is easily one of the best games I've played for this blog. I have no doubt in 1997 I would have been floored by how good it was even if I was still eating up polygon rendered Quake. Monolith executed a near perfectly designed game. Blood honestly deserves every bit the same recognition Quake, DOOM or Duke get for being a well designed and timeless game.
                     The gore and look of the game along with a fantastic sound track further cements the fact that the FPS genre no longer solely belonged to id or their tech. Variety and alternate ideas had not just been expressed but now strongly and forever taken root into what was now a full expanded genre of video games not beholden to the design principals of one or two titles. Blood is one of the best shooters I've ever played, for this blog or otherwise. It will forever be a favorite I return to especially on Halloween. This blog gives great insight and I keep finding treasures I never played or properly appreciated before. Blood is a testament to this. Monolith in 1997 made a classic.While not bringing anything ground breakingly innovative it still pushed the bar of quality and excellence to new heights. So much ambition in the horror movie inspired areas to the enemy encounters and gameplay mechanics made Blood some of the best FPS fun I've ever had bar none.

Duke Dynasty

The end of April 1997 would see the FPS mechanics of video games fully realized into a broad and varied genre. Xatrix Entertainment's Redneck Rampage couldn't have existed before this moment and though it's no where near among the best shooters on this list Redneck Rampage shows a comical and creatively free side of the genre only timidly explored up to this point. Growing up in WNC it hits a personal comedic note with me. It's the first game since Duke Nukem 3D that I would laugh out loud at the comedy in a game. Build Engine is another thing Redneck Rampage has in common with Duke 3D, proving that while proper 3D had the video game industry on fire from PC to console, Build Engine was no slouch in the experiences it could create.
 Redneck Rampage takes a lot from one of my favorite games on this list Duke Nukem 3D. The player character is very much his own character. You play as Leonard chasing his lost simple friend Bubba around and later fighting off aliens. Its very much a Mice and Men style relationship but with much more probable inbreeding. Leonard has plenty of one liners after taking damage, finding secrets, unlocking doors or his favorite thing shooting up other rednecks. The enemies aren't short on banter and I particularly love the skinny grunt characters voice and lines. It reminds me of a personal friend's bit that often mocks the daily redneck tendencies we have to endure. The game starts you off in some hazy southern fields that look pretty dated by the standards of more recent games on this list. Finding barns and wandering in and out of multistory houses however reminds me of Build Engine's better qualities. Its not something I even saw in Turok and honestly even Quake is still behind in this regard. I had a dog chasing me had him follow me in a room then close the doors on him and it worked! All while Leonard is going around saying he's "on you like stink on shit" or hollering every time I open the menu to save the game. Your fighting giant overhaul fat rednecks, skinny creepy ones saying "Im gunna git ya" , throwing dynamite to blow them into chunks, the large shotgun wielding redneck sometimes reduced to two turkey legs standing on their own. All this while pigs are screaming and chickens running around...all can blow up and the pigs particularly get hostile. Redneck Rampage has characters and character as a whole in its presentation. It would fit right along side some mid 90's MTV bit. This is a game that couldn't have existed before and certainly not now a real 1997 time piece.

The game mechanics itself are pretty poor and in the health system's case quickly make the game a slog to play through. As many laughs as I've had with the game this is one of my least played games on the blog list. While I often try to get at lest 2/3rd the way through and often finish these games after a couple hours I was burnt out here. Leonard drinks beer and whiskey for his health a pretty funny way of doing health packs and health pick ups are found with pork rinds...its pretty funny for me. Problem is he gets drunk quickly using health packs and soon enough you literally can't walk in a straight line.  Its funny until you need to actually play the game and the effect can last minutes or longer. The game's enemies are basic affair for the genre at this time not breaking from the id influence all too much but stripped down even more. The shotgun is straight from DOOM II but somehow a little worse. The pistol is a lot of fun, throwing dynamite sticks is straight from Duke 3D but the way the fuse is lit and the time to throw makes it worse than the pipe bombs and I could only use them in larger spaces no the corner hallways I'd gotten used too.  Finding keys through the level is actually pretty fun being straight out of Duke's playbook. Build Engine's ability to allow horizontal and vertical 3D areas of play is fantastic to see even if they are always lacking in terms of actual design quality.  These flaws actually make the game pretty challenging and I played it less than the "hurt me plenty" I typically keep for these games.  It's not what I would call a bad game and especially given the context of the time it was released and the other games I've played on this blog. I feel like I would have probably found it rather average but the comedic effect and setting of the game would have made it special enough to really enjoy for some time. One of the strengths of doing this blog is it allows me understand why people remember these games fondly even if they are not the most well designed or playing games of the time.

  Redneck Rampage embodies the width of the FPS genre in 1997. Quake gave us crazy fast, very much id styled adrenaline, Turok let us explore with first person 3D platforming and dinosaurs with lasers, Duke saved the ladies with destructible environments and tons of simulation. Redneck Rampage allows this southern parody to be a fully realized game. It hearkens back to an emerging industry where being different and adventurous where encouraged often sucessful. I'd say it works. This game is remembered for the experience it brought not the perfected gameplay mechanics. It's just fun sometimes and often times not so much however I had plenty of laughs along the way. At this point in the blog its also worth noting Redneck Rampage along with the last several games from Duke on have really driven home just how much of an explosion FPS games had from spring 1996-1997. All kinds of differing design approaches, characters, settings are a far cry from the "DOOM Clones" that populated the earlier parts of this list. Not to diminish the influence of id. It's remarkable this blog started in 1994 and in every game id's inspiration is felt still in every title to varying and different degrees. I commend Xatrix Entertainment having the humor focused ambition they created Redneck Rampage with.

                       

Satan's bastard

                DOOM 64 represents and interesting development in the handling of a first person shooter franchise. id Software allow Midway games to produce a game with the DOOM IP. Studio's often change hands with IPs today but this was a fairly uncommon thing in the gaming industry of 1997 even more so for first person shooters. The creative results of  such an approach gives DOOM 64 its own interesting atmosphere and feel while being visually striking. These departure from some of the core tenants of DOOM took me a long time to get adjusted to but I started to learn to love what had been accomplished here. DOOM 64 is a slower more environmental focused dungeon crawler of a shooter leveraging the power of the N64 it may have shortcomings as a DOOM game but is a solid horror, exploration driven shooter.
                   Despite not being fully 3D like Quake or the N64's own Turok, DOOM 64 is one of the best looking games I've played on this list and holds up well in art and visual retro appeal even today. I think in the context of 1997 as a gamer just getting done with Turok weeks before on my new console, I'd been impressed but not over joyed due to the visual quality shadow of Quake. Indeed the core of many flaws in DOOM 64 is the fact the id formula was so perfected mechanically and then brought to life in such incredible graphics detail with Quake that DOOM 64 was never going to wow anyone. I will say given the visual sacrifices Turok had to make with its fog and performance DOOM 64 seems like an almost better use of the hardware. It renders fantastic high quality sprites than look significantly better than anything in DOOM II. Monsters and guns look much, much better and the environment is rendered largely with 3D polygons. The general art direction that ties it all together brings out the best of mid 90's grunge and sci fi horror. Dynamic lighting is finally able to be used to great effect in level design and atmosphere where as DOOM II just couldn't ever pull it off. While the soundtrack lacks the run and gun metal themes of the first two games 64's moody atmosphere and ambiance almost feels like a quick and cheap Quake impression. It doesn't really suit DOOM but DOOM 64's much slower pacing often makes the art and sound of the game really come together for a unique atmosphere.

                       Video games have an identity stamped on them by their creators. It's easy to tell DOOM 64 is not made by id. In fact due to the name of the game and Midway's attempt at forging their own path I was disappointed in DOOM 64 for awhile. 64 focusing on the 3D environment moving with more doors and platforms changing as you flip various switches, glide over ledges, grab of course key cards and any other manner of environmental navigation. It's a lot more frequently used in the level design of the game than DOOM II and it's no where near as intuitive or built into a high paced flow like Turok does so well. I was often left standing still or retracing my steps several times to figure out how to get to the next area only to have the next fun enemy encounter be brief and I be left exploring again. It's a farcry from the nonstop thrill ride that is Quake's formula and environmental navigation. Its interesting to see just how early 3D environmental design was in 1997 as we have 3 very different approaches in a matter of months. However after my expectations where adjusted and I started enjoying DOOM 64 for the exploration driven shooter it is the flaws while not remedied where more tolerable. It wasn't until levels 7/8 that I started having a real love for some of the design approaches in this game. Combat arena's are filled with less variety and suffer for it, as well as much less free horizontal space to maneuver. It attempts at times smaller areas akin to what Quake uses but without all of Quake's quality of life improvements for such settings. The results are that I felt very constricted in movement as the player and it easily took away even the great feeling of moving around DOOM II had.
                         The absolute carnage DOOM 64 unleashes is my favorite in the franchise up until this point ('97). The way the weapons animate and so do the monsters is a thing of beauty. The great visuals I've mentioned play right into a much more visceral and bloody affair than the past DOOM games. The chainsaw has two blades and is always up for use. A fantastic game play move and its fucking badass to use. The sound design of weapons and monsters is far better than DOOM II. Guns just have so much more of a punch and tactile feel to them as you rip and tear through demonic forces. 64 isn't afraid to experiment with new guns like the Unmaker which adds a pretty unique and fun BFG replacement for the game.  I guess the BFG is sole property of id. The monsters all behave exactly the same and some dont appear that did appear in DOOM II. This makes the overall combat arena more stale and less interesting more quickly. DOOM II never really became uninteresting but the flow of DOOM 64's started to ware pretty thin for me about a third of the way through the game. The pacing issues of course go hand and hand with the level design issues I mentioned earlier. Making for these brutal and fun session of shooting more rare and savory than I'd like. DOOM should be glutenous on the blood lust. DOOM 64 does have moments that flirt with this though. Getting the mingun for the first time or in many small rooms often for instance was one of my favorite moments.
                           

DOOM 64 exist as a very interesting product. Use of the most popular shooter IP in the world for a console exclusive by Midway Games. It feels different and has it's own unique flavor of the DOOM formula. I enjoyed it a lot for some of these reasons. The visual approach of the game and the combat and sound are huge upgrades. The ambiance and the exploration can be enjoyable or a pain depending on the level. Though I had much more fun with Turok's exploration approach. In a post Quake world DOOM 64 just doesn't cut it. It's no where close to the height achieved by Quake and id Software at the end of 1996. However this 1997 console exclusive would have brought DOOM to many homes for the first time and is a very solid and enjoyable dark shooter. I've been spoiled Duke, Quake and Turok in this blog. It's interesting to see how much of 1997's rapid progress is in DOOM 64. Not just the business side but the desing. Everything from the use of sprites and polygons to the exploration of mechanics in 3D space and puzzle solving. There is a lot here to be appreciated as both a good game and a time piece.

Rambo Fights Raptors

By the end of 1996 the FPS genre was expanding rapidly. Playing through this games has really struck home how incredible this time must have been as a gamer then. The genre had for years been known as "DOOM Clones"  and after playing these landmark titles from 94 to now March 97 I can understand why there was this stigma for so long. But games like Duke Nukem 3D and Quake proved even id's formula could drastically change and still be a first person shooter. Themes, enemies, weapons, interactivity drastically changing how each title played. Duke and Quake where the explosions that would set off a dozen other beautiful packages of chaos. Turok exist because the genre had now expanded to accommodate it. Iguana Entertainment would create a project as unique as any shooter before it, applying their own technological strategy all while trying to be fresh on every level and often succeeding. Turok is also special for the platform it launched on. This is the first console game I've played for this blog. A landmark bridge for a genre that largely had been PC exclusive to now the console market. N64 would prove its grit at making experiences technologically on par with PC FPS games and deliver a classic exclusive. I played Nightdive Studios' excellent PC remaster with settings designed to replicate N64.
                     Having never played Turok or anything from Iguana Entertainment I found this game an extremely pleasant surprise. A theme of this blog discovering gems I missed due to being too young at the time. N64 however was my first video game experience and piece of gaming hardware I owned. Seeing Turok really brought a lot of nostalgia and memories of being in awe of what that little box could do. I can imagine any mature gamer of 97' would have been floored by Turok's visuals. After all this is just roughly 4 months after Quake blew the world away with tis 3D visuals. Its apparent to me playing games for this blog. I quickly became accustomed to the retro look and jank of sprites and super limited game play but playing Quake felt like I wasn't even working on this blog anymore and had skipped a decade. Turok evokes this feeling just as much. Its a beautiful for the time 3D game that heavily uses the tech to create massive layered levels. Full of secrets, required items, pick ups, platforming, Turok's level design and layouts are possibly the most complex in the genre for 97'. The sense of discovery and exploration while constantly engaging in fast paced FPS game play is a truly special and wondrous thing Turok brings to the genre.
               

The shooting in Turok is a blast though weaker than Duke Nukem 3D or the divine feeling of running and gunning in Quake. I do love the speed and weapons. The bow is a fantastic one and just so much fun to shoot especially with Tek arrows that explode. An automatic shotgun with exploding ammo also another favorite. At this point it feel like awhile since I've played a game that solely copied DOOM's arsenal. Sure the influence is there to varying degrees but while there are many basic items Turok's arsenal is fun and unique as much as Quake or Duke's. The torrent of 3D blood when knifing enemies or occasional explosion throwing them is pretty satisfying. It's actually a very violent game as much as any other mature shooter of the day. Running around at that speed in 3D space is something Iguana nailed, its fun and for the most part I even enjoyed the platforming. It's not Romero designed meat grinders but movement does feel really good and second only to Quake .
                  Turok's environments and enemy's are pretty unique for the games I've played on this list. You start as a Native American man who has to collect keys to unlock portals to levels. Its straight ripped from id's design philosophy and the portals right after Quake's similar use of 3D level selection. However once you load the first level things change. A vibrant jungle filled with water, trees and bushes. Sure its nothing compared now but its a lot more than I saw in Quake. The color pallet is fun and refreshing along with the hazy look of the air around you. It fits the fact raptors run around here with tribal looking people. Also armed guards some with guns and lasers? I mentioned how disjointed Quake felt thematically and Turok honestly is a far worse offender in this regard. While temples and jungles fit, it has plenty of industrial elements. The game hits this hard with the first real boss fight having him trying to run you over with a Hummer. Its cool. I like it though not as much as Quake's Lovecraftian atmosphere.
                    Its the levels and sense of discovery that make Turok special though in a way its peers are not. These levels are massive. By far the biggest I've played in a shooter for this blog. While Duke experimented a lot in this direction Iguana Entertainment armed with a true 3D engine take this to another level that would inspire games like Farcry and Halo. The game keeps fast pace with respawning enemies. A design decision I soon started to loose love and ammo for. Turok shoots his way through vertically stacked levels webbed with horizontal caves and lagoons to dive into. The game has incredibly complex map design its no surprise some of Iguana Entertainment would go on to make Metroid Prime some years later. They can be confusing though and frustrating to explore with enemy respawn placement. I at one time found myself with nothing but my knife trying to get collectables. The games platforming and completion time requirements to not run into spawning enemies is very harsh. Towards the end of the third level I for instance found myself loosing more lives than I got trying to get collectables that add up to more lives. Boss battles drain these extra lives as well. The checkpoint system would pioneer modern gaming's approach with visible placed save markers once you walked through them. They are few and far between however and don't make up properly for a lack of quicksave. Hard save stations akin to platformers of the era are found but spread thin. I have to give Iguana Entertainment credit for this ambition though and pulling off so well what no one had done to this degree. The sense of curious exploration and accomplishment is bar none in a shooter of this time. Having that curiosity and furious combat driving you around a 3D level is really awesome and still fun today in 97' this must have been a blast. Levels are severely limited by some of the games technical shortcomings though. Particularly the awful fog that worked as a early LOD of sorts. Focusing the rendering on what was close meant you could only see for a very short distance in front of you. Much of these massive levels where invisible to the player having enemies appear out of thin air and activate rather close. This also meant they didn't really chase you far. Its terrible and I wonder if id ever considered it with Quake.
     

  Turok continues the late 90's break neck pace of real time rendering advancements all the same. While Quake gave us a fully 3D realized world on PC ending 1996, by March of the next year we saw a substantial quality jump of 3D graphics with new hardware like the N64.  Iguana Entertainment's engine has the ability to blend various animations together and give characters the sense they have a skeletal frame. It's absolutely crazy to see after fighting the stiff and jerky animated enemies of Quake. Turok's raptors leap and snap at you realistically, enemies legs and feet shift weight according to how they are running at you. While enemies rarely blow up they do have the best death animations of any shooter on this blog yet! Moving and crawling on the ground as 3D blood sprays and splatters across the environment. Its very violent in its own right even without being reduced to small giblets. Again even the blood we see Iguana Entertainment experimenting with the uses of a 3D game engine. Having the blood squirt and splatter on the environment in 3D is something to see. Water in Turok has a 3D surface with saves in it alternating. By 1997 standards this would have been one of a kind and outstanding. Quake's swirling lagoons looked great for the day but this was , like the blood, an interesting and visually awesome way of using 3D rendering. Speaking of 3D objects Turok's has much denser models than Quake overall. The guns are more rounded and significantly more detailed. The games vicious dinosaurs look incredible compared to the things I've seen in games on this list before now. All the small extra details ID Tech 2 just doesn't display as of yet. The game looks better in most ways except for the fact it only renders a very short distance. As I mentioned earlier while the game atmospherically lays swirling textures of haze in the game it has the signature N64 fog effect hiding things in the mid to far distance. This makes it disorienting at times due to the inability to see very much of your surroundings. Even smaller stages can't be seen from start to finish and this gives the game a very artificial limit on flow as enemy encounters have to wait for the fog to lift before being activated.  It severely limits the game's visuals and ability to use its level design and enemy encounters to the fullest. This fog helps reduce the load of what the N64 has to render. Turok's impressive visuals suddenly become a little more understandable once playing around this fog. I did however have a moment of awe as a tree blew apart and fell down due to my explosive shot gun. Its not real physics but it looks incredible for 1997 , ten years before Crysis would make its mark cutting down trees. Despite the fog all these factors I mentioned go into creating the games unique visual identity. It easily stands alongside Quake as one of the best looking games on this blog as of 1997.
         Iguana Entertainment's Turok represents a growth milestone for the FPS genre. Like Duke and Quake before it here you have a wild spin on the FPS formula laying to rest the term DOOM Clone. Turok is a bunch of game design problems solved differently than before along with various technological priorities. It doesn't always make for a better game but it makes for a fun and exciting game. This was my first time playing Turok and it stands as one of my favorite games on this list. It shows the genre was getting quality at various levels and takes on design. 3D gaming had such a profound impact on how these games played. Turok and Quake are special. Rough around the edges and primitive but fantastic to see experience.Turok is also important as it proved badass FPS games could exist on a new powerful console like the N64.

Circa 1997.

              Throughout this blog you have read me mention the canvas for games that is technology. The 1990's is one of the most innovative and impressive decades in human history when it comes to technological advancement. Last year, 1996, we saw this advancement mirrored in our new entertainment medium made possible by this tech. The much faster CPUs availablePrin in the last 18 months had allowed crazy levels of interaction with Duke Nukem 3D and a fully 3D and textured world like Quake. Quake being the prime example of the type of game that just simply couldn't exist before. This was reinforced when the OpenGL version of the game shipped allowing video card acceleration. Cards like the Voodoo1 from 3DFX could assist the CPU in a way that provided much higher resolutions, texture filtering to clear up the textures and much faster performance. Nvidia would soon in 1997 release the Riva 128 and its GPU concept allowing a dedicated processor for real time rendering to handle even more task through bespoke hardware.
                 Computer hardware had been evolving and as a side effect monumental computing task could be done at home and make interactive experiences like video games. However by 1997 we see computer hardware splitting off and specifically evolving for real time 3D rendering. Quake was the very tip of a very large ice berg. Voodoo, Nvidia and with ATi coming back strong later in 97 the markets leaders where shaping the gaming industry. But so was Sony and Nintendo. Sony new to gaming hardware and Nintendo the returning king of game platforms for the late 80's and early 90's. This will be the first year you finally see me incorporate console games into this list. With console's like the PS1 and N64 using slightly scaled down workstation equivalent CPUs and custom primitive GPUs. Both consoles would deliver incredibly high end hardware comparatively to high end PC hardware. These where monster machines built around 3D graphics. The trade offs and features set would be different between them and 3D rendering was very much the wild west still. In its infancy along with the solutions to all of 3D's problems both technically and in consideration of game design.
                     Technology was certainly changing the world. 1997 was making economics and daily life radically different that how it all worked at the start of the decade. The Dot Com boom was in full swing in the United States. Silicon Valley at its center. It was still a very different world from today but the seeds of modern technology was growing fast. 1997 even more so than 1996 would show exponential progress in the world of video games especially first person shooters. 1997 would be one of the best years in the genre's history.

- Classic movies many of us grew up with: Titanic, Jurassic Park, and Men in Black would all three come out this year.
- Princess Diana died in a car crash.
-Shows like King of the Hill and South Park debuted this year.
-Spice Girls was the most popular Pop group in the world.
-Min. Wage was $5.15 an hour.
-Wifi 802.11 was introduced to the world.
- World Population was 5.8 Billion people.

Incurable lover of the grotesque

    

id software may have been absent from this journey for awhile now but no game on this list has escaped the legacy of DOOM.  Romero, Carmack, Willits and the rest of id had crafted a genre that was rapidly growing financially,expanding with creativity and budding technology. Video games as a whole by 1996 was a well oiled, money making tech industry by then bringing extreme competition as we see with Duke Nukem 3D. Within the context of the time its remarkable id had lightning strike twice. Quake fundamentally changes what we could experience and imagine with not just FPS games but video games as a medium. Quake also holds the test of time. By all present day standards the shooting and level design are still lofty design goals. Quake is the first time in this blog where I can easily tell a fundamental rebirth of the genre.
                                               Quake brought a world to video games unlike anything before. Shooting and chopping your way through rusty, grimy sci-fi hallways and arenas. Wading through thick, gray moats to literally storm from the bottom up a massive castle of interwoven platforms and hallways. Mystic Lovecraftian  dark hallways lit up with magic and lava. All tied together by a ghostly soundtrack from 90's icon Trent Reznor. The slow high pitched string tunes, moaning, foreboding bass and occasional ripping of industrial sounds for the main track take you on an emotional and atmospheric roller coaster that makes the varied horror filled world of Quake unique and timeless.
           The immersion is further built upon with incredible physics simulation for the time. Bodies blow into meat chunks that bounced around the environment. A decapitated head may blow off and land at your feet looking up at you. Blood splatters in three dimensions. The amount of brutal carnage this throws at the player makes even DOOM look kid friendly. It's clear id was very much intent on keeping their controversy intact, even relishing it. The breakneck speed of games like Duke Nukem or id's own DOOM was turned up a notch. It allows the player to literally blow through enemies and fly around the level as the gore I mentioned rains down like grotesque confetti.  Quake is one of the best feeling shooters of all time and without hyperbole no game on this blog so far can begin to compare. Romero and company return with genre leading level design.  Allowing plenty of ways to bounced around in horizontal and vertical space, make and gain ground with interwoven platform and hallways along the outside of arenas.
Because of Quake's incredible speed its not uncommon for the game to vertically stack and cross long hallways to blow through and move vertically throughout. I mentioned with DOOM II how the movement system only worked cause of fantastic level design accommodating it. Quake does this along with the gunplay in a way that only could be done from a talented and now veteran studio like id Software. It all comes together and stuns me even today. In the context of 1996 and this blog Quake would redefine my expectations and believed limitations of not just first person shooters but games.  Where even Duke Nukem 3D struggles from uneven parts at times Quake feels like a skilled blacksmith made it. Quake is shocking in terms of how special and unique the atmosphere is.  Its hard to describe the shift from all the games on this blog and then Quake. I don't think we see anything like that in modern games or have in maybe over a decade if not longer.

              The weapons in Quake follow what at this point isn't DOOM as much as it is id's DNA. Almost all FPS games I've played in this blog, bar 3D Realms and Star wars, try to steal this so it certainly was an industry staple by 1996.  Like Duke Nukem 3D though Quake really changes it up. The movement system in Quake , along with its level design, makes it incredibly fluid to play even today. The weapons play just as much a part of this and add to the games most important character, violence. Instead of DOOM Guy's fist you get an axe to chop enemies up with, after enough hits they will explode into meat chunks flying around the room. The nail gun or as it should be called NIN gun. Uses Nine Inch Nails ammo and looks the part. Dual barrels firing on even and odd turns held together with a metal plate. The nails fly through the air in three dimensions as well. This gun is probably my favorite. Another gun to use the NIN ammo is a rotating three barrel nail gun that fires slower but does more damage. The game loves to let you play with explosives. Its a trend I saw in Duke Nukem 3D and love seeing id's take on it. Rockets are plenty and essential to making the game so brutal. Also rocket jumping becomes a thing and getting thrown around the level because of shock force and doing the same to an enemy is just too much fun. The grande launcher is a blast allowing you to kill enemies around corners or arch and pop them with a direct blow.  Quake's arsenal is timeless fun and I think in 1996 it would have thrilled me.        
             The enemies in Quake would drastically change from DOOM II and use the id Tech 2 engine to make combatants not possible before. The grunt doesn't try to hide his function at all and functions very similar to Pig Cops in Duke his sci-fi borg like look could be something out of DOOM. The Death Knight however delivers a very new enemy type to the FPS genre. Fast, hulking, and badass he will either slay you with a powerful melee attack or send out a spread of fire balls. He's my third favorite enemy in the game.  Scrags fly and float but are much more nimble than say the Octobrain or Caco Demon, they also shoot poison darts that are very fast requiring lots of strafing. Enforcers again are just beefed up grunts but layering them in with multiple other hostile characters create for a good flow and they are important to the game. The Orge is my second favorite character dragging a chainsaw arm and grenade launcher around.  The grenades physically bounce around the world and its pretty incredible to see after playing the other games on this blog. Shambler makes it to my favorite as a Lovecraftian nightmare that strikes you with lightning and is much faster than your comfortable with. Fantastic and very much sums up the vibe of Quake. Vore serves similar to the baron of hell from DOOM II but in true Quake fashion is a spider monster with horrible bloody teeth and smile. Quake like Duke Nukem has the most unique enemies from this blog so far and its real nice to see by 1996 the creative design of enemy encounters was branching out as well as becoming more contextually aware.

                 All these design choices I talk about aren't without fault. I bring up Duke a lot because I think 3D Realms made many of the right choices when it came to interactivity and grounding the player in a reactive environment. Being able to push those pool balls or blow apart environments must have been pretty incredible in 1996. It also made the game feel like it respected the players interactive intentions and presence by reacting to it in so many ways. Make no mistake. I love that part of Quake's atmosphere are these dead, foreboding, filled with ambient places. But they feel lifeless in an artificial way compared to Duke Nukem 3D. It feels like a step backward after 6 months and the otherwise massive leap elsewhere. Also Quake feels very disjointed. I love the variation in the environments and being able to select difficulty and levels through 3D space was novel at the time I'm sure. However none of it fits what so ever together or seems barely intentionally together. After having such consistency in games like Heretic, Dark Forces, or Duke not having that makes it feel rather off the entire time even if the atmosphere is great.
                   All this is only possible because of idTech 2. A game engine is the essential canvas for a game. As with DOOM II in order to exist in the form it does new tech had to be made. Quake was one of the first true 3D video games. It was the first true 3D shooter. Using polygons and mapping textures to them idTech 2 was the forefront of real time rendering and would lay the fundamental foundations of what we largely still use today. It makes me wonder if any piece of video game software has ever been as important. All this ambiance and terrible blood lust is only possible because idTech 2 took FPS rendering not just to the next level but several orders of magnitude above anything on this blog before it. The jump here is astronomical and hard to describe. In 1996 this would change everyone's perception about what was possible. The gore, the weapons, the physics, the incredibly immersive visuals. Whatever Quake lacked in interactivity it made up for with that. Jon Carmack is genius of our time with idTech 2 certainly being one of his hallmark achievements.
                        This blog continues to get more and more enjoyable. I've played Quake 1 plenty before it came time to replay it with conextual lenses for this blog.  Its great to be able to look back at industry moments or years and playing games leading up them really just gives you an appreciation for it in a way reading never will. I played Duke Nukem 3D and wrote on and on about how great and innovative it was. Duke did in fact blow me away in the context of this blog. I meant what I said about it by far being the impressive thing since DOOM II. However Quake is light years beyond even that. Its by far the best and most impressive thing I've played for this blog. The entire genre owes its modern life blood to Quake. We see its influence in everything from modern rendering to design. id innovated and problem solved where no one had even had to approach the same problems before. Quake may be a bit off and disjointed but the rest of it is a perfect symphony of its parts backed by what was tech from the future. It was a very real phenomenon in 1996.  A summary of that year in technology and innovation distilled into the worlds new medium video games. Quake is the best game on this list by a landslide as of writing. Forever one of my favorite games.

             



 

Hollywood Holocaust

              

    "I'm going to blow your head off and shit down your neck." Stallone, Schwarzenegger, all 80's angst and 90's edge Duke Nukem shoves his foot up the ass of every alien he comes across. "The mighty foot", dual wielding rapid fire mini missile launchers, Pig cops, interactive strippers and night club combat arenas are the culmination of Duke's tour de force. Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 must have been the most impressive video game yet. It's level of interactivity and grounding of the player, destructible environments, puzzles, first person platforming, combat and weapons would introduce new concepts and experiences for not just first person shooters but video games as a medium. Duke Nukem 3D is the most impressive shooter I've played on this blog.
                        Duke Nukem 3D is great for a lot of reasons and unlike the game I've wrestled on how to introduce them. I think its best and most befitting of this blog to start with the new concepts Duke introduces to video games. Duke is one of the first games to really explore and deliver a multitude of grounding yet pointless activities for the player. Throughout this blog one thing I'm reminded of is how static game worlds used to be. These activities even if seemingly pointless to the goals of the player show the player a simulated reaction to the players actions. Giving a great sense of presence, modern games like Zelda Breath of the Wild or sim shooters like Prey use these interactions to great effect. Even Hexen or id's violent ascetic in DOOM feel rigid and do little to react to the player. With Duke Nukem I paid a stripper money and she flashed me her breast, I can push pool balls on the pool table, blow up toilets and fire hydrants to see a resulting water fountain out of the ground.

Posters rip, secret switches now have dinner tables sink into the ground or change the positioning of giant hollow gears to create a navigation puzzle. Lighting is used to great effect. It very much completes Duke in the same way blood completes DOOM. The Red Light District and porn theaters wouldn't be the same without the Build Engine. All of this was almost completely unexplored in 1996 game mechanics and setting. Duke Nukem 3D pioneers these efforts largely in a way no shooter or game had ever done to this point. The reason its great though is Duke Nukem couldn't exist with anything less. The gameplay down to its core along with it's levels all go around this sandbox mentality Duke introduced. Because of its ambition Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 showed new potentials in interactive games but also used it to be one of the best gaming experiences ever made.
                       I've mentioned Duke's philosophy permeating all aspects of its design.  One of the most refreshing things about Duke is his arsenal and combat approach. Video games like any other medium establish genre templates that are often borrowed from. Hexen was really the first game on this blog for instance to dramatically break away from DOOM II's weapon set even though it wasn't near as ambitious as Duke Nukem 3D. The pistol fires pretty fucking fast and does a low but reasonable amount of damage.

It reloads every 12 shots and is the only gun to do so. It interestingly enough keeps the rapid fire of the weapon from being a bit over powered on lower end imp like enemies such as the Assault trooper or Assault Captain. These enemies more or less act as imps and can even teleport at times. They have a dying animation of being shot in the throat sometimes and its with things like this that Duke enjoys his gore as much as DOOM guy.  Pig cops are similar to DOOM IIs zombies soldiers but shotgun armed and like most enemies in Duke 3D can dodge by lying on the ground. This makes for some dramatic differences in fire fight pacing from other shooters in this retrospect and would introduce reactionary enemy AI to the genre other than simply running into your smoking gun barrel. The shotgun ammo you get from these guys powers one of two DOOM clone weapons. The shotgun itself is nothing special but I am fond of the foregrip, other than that it wears its' DOOM DNA proudly. Duke gunplay and use has a much bigger focus on explosives and the rocket launcher does this well again straight from id's playbook. Octobrains remind me of Cacko demons but after that all the enemies feel new and fresh in game. Battlelord sentry's are so tough at times but so, so satisfying to take out with weapons like the Devastator, a dual wielded rapid fire mini rocket launcher. Like the grande launcher on the Battlelord, Duke uses physics to introduce the concept of proper throw able explosives in FPS games via the Pipe Bomb. All explosives have a chance of literally blowing your enemies to bits that fly around the level. Its a level of cartoon gore that I adore and was pretty incredible for a shooter in this era. There is plenty of other standout enemy archetypes and Duke is the first on my blog to introduce new ones to the fps template that future games even until now would borrow from. The head mounting , life sucking Protozoid Slimer come to mind. However as much as the double barrel shotgun is to DOOM's personality things like the Shrink Gun or Freeze Ray are to Duke. The game allows you to often shrink and stomp on enemies or freeze and shatter them. The guns are fun, sometimes the gimmicks get in the way of the flow of combat but generally I found the opposite to be true.Duke feels his best when running around blowing everything up and very DOOM II speeds. I had the most fun I've had with first person combat and enemies in this blog with Duke Nukem 3D. Its wholly unique and fun while being familiar enough. I would have been floored in 1996 and still in 2020 have newfound heights of respect for this games gun play and enemy designs.

                           The manifestation of 3D Realms' design philosophy successfully nailed the essential aspect of 3D space in a 3D video game. Obviously they lived up to the company namesake. Duke's levels blow its contemporaries out of the water. One of the things I heavily praised DOOM II for was its allowance of the fast strafing and forward/backward movement. While the game played with vertical scale it never did anything like Duke or modern games do. Levels like Flood Zone have duke fighting on dry planes while going underwater dealing with all kind of caverns and planes. Open areas like the opening to Bank Roll leave tons of strafing horizontal space akin id games. Then some of my favorite levels like Raw Meat find some nirvana middle ground employing both sides of the design coin. It's not just design in the ways 3D Realms made Duke's levels. Duke Nukem 3D is the first game I've played in this retrospective look that feels like they could finally visually represent whatever environment they wanted. Dark Forces, DOOM II, Heretic all looked largely the same. The thematic and atmospheric aspects of level design is one of the most important things in video games. While Duke goes to the moon I do feel like he finds his identity at home with nightclubs, porn theaters and city streets. Red Light District, Hollywood Holocaust,LA Rumble, and Movie Set all took me to places not possible in games before. It fits the 90's edge and pop culture hard.A far cry from DOOM II's "city".The levels are big and use vertical movement very much connecting floors of buildings and adding platforming mechanics to Duke's dynamic.  While jumping and jet-packing or scuba diving around 3D space gives you this sandbox feel. Duke's levels aren't without fault. Some of the destruction needed to progress or that gets triggered near the player isn't intuitive or obvious and sometime poorly timed.  It can be frustrating at times and it shows designers wrestling around how to introduce mechanics or signal objectives. Most of the game's puzzles are straightforward enough and don't add much to the experience sometimes they are less obvious and I found them tiresome. These levels are made to be interacted with even with small details and are meant to be explored in 3D space thoroughly. Duke Nukem set a new standard for 3D game level design.

                             The wrapper on 3D Realm's ambition is Duke Nukem himself. I've quoted him several times, talked about paying strippers, and blowing everything up. He constantly delivers one liners that suite his character making me for the first time in this blog feel like I'm actually playing a character. Much of his alpha male, 80s'/90's disposition sits between cheap Water Boy levels of  comedy and actual parody. It really is memorable thus perfect for a 90's FPS character. Duke as a character and the game are memorable in ways the other games in this blog have not been. Broken into episodes akin to id games, Duke has 4 chapters. The first chapter introduces all the themes I love about the game. I feel like unlike the other games I've played on this blog Duke is the first game to have a somewhat cohesive approach to introducing mechanics, enemies and difficulty across episodes of the game. Hollywood Holocaust got me hyped but Lunar Apocalypse is the second and worst episode of the game. Playing much more in DOOM design principals and worse for it. It kind of drags on but then my favorite chapter Shrapnel City more than makes up for it. Throwing in full confidence everything that makes the game great. At this point the game is fine at taking moments to really punish the player but I'd found my skill had grown by this point and it really let the game mechanics shine.
                                 Thinking about Duke Nukem 3D in the perspective a 1996 fps fan is easier than many games on this list. His character is fun, the game is bright and thematically a treat. Its technologically a big jump over anything before it. I think as someone who enjoys the creative output but doesn't design games I would have been playing things I never could have dreamed of. I am personally a huge fan of interactive games like Skyrim or Crysis so this would have been the equivalent at the time. Sometimes a game comes around and just delivers everything, shifting the medium and the genre its part of. I think for 1996 Duke Nukem 3D was that game. This blog is a real pleasure and I've learned so much from this game as it wholly justifies the whole process. 3D Realms' master piece is one of my favorite games and one of the best shooters I've ever played. While game design is still rough, not player forgiving or intuitive it took big forward steps with Duke. Designers where no longer stumbling on the basics but wrestling issues that come about from much more ambition. Duke's high level of interactivity and retro sprite based visuals make it an odd ball of time. It plays and feels more advanced than it looks. No game on this blog so far had came close to the influence and impact DOOM II had until now. While Duke does indeed still borrow some id basics I'd argue this game is just as big a milestone for the FPS genre. Duke was tremendous.