PC Game Review: Need For Speed 3 - Hot Pursuit

GAME: Need For Speed III - Hot Pursuit
DEVELOPER: EA Seattle
PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts
RELEASED: 1998
PLATFORMS: PC, PS1

When I grew up, I was pretty fortunate to have a father who not only was a PC enthusiast, but also a gamer. And one of his true passions was racing games, something that I of course shared as with many things. And one of the games I ended up playing the most growing up, and still do to this day, was of course the original Need For Speed games, with the third one, Hot Pursuit, being one of my absolute favourites to play. This was back when Electronic Arts were known for releasing pretty solid racing titles, and with this and Moto Racer they pretty much crafted some of the best racing experiences of my childhood. So since this game is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, I felt it was time to take a look at one of the defining racing gamers from my childhood!

I've never had a ton of experience with the first two titles in the series, and in many regards, NFS 3 was my first entry into the series. One of the key aspects that drew people into the series was of course the fact the games had real life cars and some fantasy cars, which helped set the series apart from other racing games of its era. For me, the main reason I love playing this game is the ability to race 2 Lamborghini cars; the Countach and the Diablo SV. Though while these remain my favourite cars for purely aesthetic reasons, there's a lot of other luxurious sports cars to drive in NFS 3 including the Italdesign Schigera, the Ferrari F1 Spider, Chevrolet Corvette and a few secret bonus cars to unlock. All the vanilla cars have complete showcases with voiceovers presenting the cars and their technical specs, slideshows with amazing car pictures (basically car porn) and the ability to tune the car to your liking (and of course to the track you want to drive on).

A rainy day in Hometown

The game offers 4 game modes to choose from. The first is Single Race, which is self explanitory. You drive a single race on a track of your choosing with a car of your choosing against the opponents of your choosing. Everything is customizable, from the cars you drive against, to whether you want oncoming traffic, weather to deal with or to drive during night time (combining all 3 makes for a rather challenging drive). The second mode is the game's namesake, the Hot Pursuit. In this mode you race against a single opponent, although you will also be competing with the police who will chase after you. If you get caught enough times, the race is over as you're arrested for your reckless driving. This was the first Need For Speed game to do this kind of concept and especially back when this game was new it was an incredibly exciting game mode and by far my favourite mode to play. To this day I still love the simplicity of it and it remains rather exhilarating to play.

The third mode is Knockout, a tournament variation where you drive a set amount of races and for each race, the last placing car is knocked out of the tournament, so in the final race you end up with a duel against the remaining car. It's a good mode and exciting for sure, but probably not as good as Hot Pursuit in my opinion. The fourth and final game mode is Tournament, where you race on on all of the game's tracks on either a Beginner or Expert difficulty in succession. In this mode you cannot choose which track to play and once you have chosen a car you have to stick with it during the entire tournament. Between each track you can save your progress in case you wanna pick up again later. It's recommended to do the Single Race mode to practice the tracks before tackling Tournament, especially on Expert difficulty.

Most of the tracks feature some memorable scenery, such as this underwater tunnel in the appropriately titled Aquatica track

All of the modes can also be raced with a friend in Two Player mode, where you play in a splitscreen view against each other. The game also offers online multiplayer in the form of "Connect Player" which I have never tried but it's an option if you don't have any available local friends to play with.

During gameplay the game records your race, so after a completed race you can go back and view a replay of the race from different camera angles which you can choose from. Leaving it set to Auto can give some exclusive camera views from the track which you cannot access manually. You can also save your replays to watch again later. The game can also save your ghost data if you wanna do practice sessions against yourself or a friend. It also saves your Knockout and Tournament progress as I mentioned earlier. All of these can be loaded from the Load menu.

Damn. Busted.

Graphically the game looks absolutely amazing for its time. Especially with the night time lighting and the weather effects where at night time you can see lightning shoot across the sky. The world reflects in the cars as you drive with a very convincing chrome effect, dust and water splashes around your tires leaving trails behind you and the game has some rather amazing looking backgrounds. For its time this game was absolutely cutting edge graphically and running it with a 3DFX Voodoo graphics card or a modern emulation of such really shows how good this game looks with hardware acceleration, although I did run into a few bugs with the emulated voodoo graphics so beware of this when trying to play the game on a modern system. It's a 20 year old game after all, so running it on modern hardware can be a bit of a hassle and you may get some mixed performance.

The best part of the game for me is without a doubt the sound and music. Driving in Hot Pursuit mode is a spectacle unlike anything at the time, with the police radio constantly feeding you information into your left and right ear, the incredibly realistic car engine noise constantly murring in the background and the sound of screeching metal stabbing your ears whenever you crash or rub against the opponents. On the tracks themselves, you can hear dogs barking or seagulls calling depending on your location giving that additional layer of environmental audio to really draw you into the game's tracks.
And the music... good god the music... while the rock tracks you can choose from really do a good job, the standout tracks on offer here is definitely the Techno selection. Done by primarily Saki Kaskas and Rom Di Prisco, the tracks on offer here are outstanding. Tracks like Aquila 303, Hydrus 606 and Knossos are still on heavy rotation in my playlist now and then and it's worth playing the game just to hear these tracks. They really help give the game a hi-tech futuristic feel that I absolutely adore and they truly add to the feeling of speed and freedom the game offers. In the audio settings I always leave the music set the highest cause if I had music like this while driving in real life, you can be I would be blasting this shit as loud as possible. :D

The weather option will even add snow fall on this winter themed track instead of rain. The game's attention to detail is amazing in this regard.

All in all, Need For Speed 3: Hot Pursuit is a true racing classic in every sense of the word. It's definitely still worth playing today and while it may seem a bit simplistic compared to modern NFS games, it still holds up perfectly fine in terms of graphics, gameplay and sound. I swear, Rom Di Prisco's music sounds as fresh and futuristic today as it did back in 1998 and I honestly cannot find anything negative to say about the game. It's a feature packed solid racer that is surprisingly fun to play. If you can, pick it up on eBay. It's a bit of a hassle getting it to work on modern systems, but it's definitely worth it. It's a shame EA has never re-released this and the earlier NFS games, but if they do I would definitely grab it. And if you ever get tired of the game's vanilla cars, there are multiple places on the web where you can find more cars to mod into the game. NFSCARS.NET is probably my favourite place to grab extra cars. So if you want a classic late 90's racer, NFS 3 is probably the one I recommend the most!

GAMEPLAY: 9/10
GRAPHICS: 9/10
SOUND: 10/10

TOTAL SCORE: 9/10

PC Game Review: Duke Nukem

GAME: Duke Nukem
DEVELOPER: Apogee Software
PUBLISHER: Apogee Software
YEAR: 1991

Hello, followers and fellow gamers! Today I'm taking a bit of a brief look at one of my favourite DOS games, the first Duke Nukem.

Duke Nukem is a game that brings back some of my earliest gaming memories. It's 6 o'clock in the morning, my dad is asleep on a saturday morning when I walk over to his computer and turn it on. Using a simple to use DOS menu, I navigate to the game I love playing the most. Duke Nukem. I load up the game and I am greeted with the familiar PC speaker sound effects and the EGA 16 colour graphics.

To this day whenever I play Duke Nukem, those memories come flooding back and I'm instantly back in that room, only lit by the glow of the CRT monitor, surrounded by the sounds from the PC speaker below me. It is probably my earliest gaming memory as far as I remember and during a lot of my childhood, Duke Nukem became a borderline obsession for me. It was my first encounter with a sidescrolling shooter (this was before my mother had gotten any video games) and it blew my young mind.

A typical level in Duke Nukem. Duke surrounded by barrels of nuclear waste while gathering footballs, flags and floppy disks of his own game.

The story in Duke Nukem is pretty simple. Doctor Proton, a mad genious, has created an army of advanced "tech bots" to take over the world and it's up to the pink shirt wearing special agent Duke Nukem to put a stop to his plans. The game is divided into 3 episodes, with the first episode taking place on Earth, the second episode taking place on the Moon and the third and final episode taking place back on Earth in the future. All the episodes have distinct visual styles and unique levels.

Gameplay wise the game plays like a run'n'gun shooter, with focus on collecting things for points and killing enemies, as well as finding keys to open doors in the level (a game mechanic that survived through the entire franchise). However, there are some things that helps keep the game interesting. For one, the health items can often be interacted with, an example being turkey legs you can shoot to get a whole turkey (which makes no sense but just roll with it), and soda cans which you can either pick up for 200 points and a health point, or you can shoot them, causing them to fly up in the air and if you catch them before they are gone, you gain 1000 points but no health points (I guess since the soda vaporized). This offers a little bit of tactical choice since you can either go for points, or go for health. Another is the various upgrades you get throughout each episode, like the robot hand which can create bridges to walk across, the grapple hook which can let you hang on to ledges, high jump boots which allows you to jump much higher. These upgrades may seem a bit similar to Metroid though given the linear design of the game, they're more there to mix up the gameplay a bit as you get further into the levels, and less to give additional options for the player.

The game makes good use of static bakgrounds upon which the gameplay moves, keeping it visually interesting, and fairly impressive for the time.

The level design can be a bit obtuse at times. Especially in some of the later levels. At times it's downright maze-like and relies a lot on making the player perform tricky jumps, which the somewhat blocky movement sometimes can work against. That's not to say the game is entirely unenjoyable, just that it hasn't aged all that well in some regards. Each episode ends with a showdown between you and the mad doctor himself, usually all you have to do is just shooting him until his floating chair blows up. It's not really that interesting and kind of an anticlimatic boss battle in all honesty.

Graphically the game looks alright. It utilizes the 16 colour EGA graphics to a fairly decent degree and offers a lot of variety in the level designs, giving different backgrounds and settings to explore. Granted a lot of it was ripped from other games, but it all does feel somewhat cohesive in a strange way. The sprites are very easily visible against the background and there's nothing I can really complain about. The scrolling effect is also very effective for the time and shows off what Apogee could do with strict limitations given the game had to run in EGA and with PC speaker sound effects only. And the PC speaker sound effects are all pretty good. It's a shame the game has no soundtrack unlike Dark Ages and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure which came out around the same time, but I guess you could just put on something in the background while playing the game and it'd work fine.

More barrels of nuclear waste. And a space ship being refueled in the background...

All in all, Duke Nukem is a bit of a flawed classic and looking past my own nostalgia it's really not the best game in the franchise. But it definitely is significant in that it was a successful character for Apogee and a shareware hit for the time, eventually leading to Duke Nukem 3D which itself was a bit of a reimagining of this game, and it's easy to see why. The gameplay is addictive, the sound effects and graphics work well together for being so limited and it's still really playable today, although it does feel dated and a bit aggravating in terms of level design (which is sadly a bit of an Apogee staple). Even so, I would easily recommend Duke Nukem as a classic DOS game to try out if you haven't, even if that's largely due to my own nostalgia with this game.

Now, Duke Nukem is a bit difficult to get a hold of these days. It was possible to get it via the 3D Realms Anthology, but after Gearbox Software bought the rights to Duke Nukem, any digital copies of the game have been pulled from online stores. It's still possible to get hold of the game if you do a google search, but be aware that obtaining free copies of the full game is still illegal.
Finding the full game on eBay can also be a bit tricky. That's not to say it's impossible but it may be expensive. Though keep in mind that some copies of Duke 3D (the big box version) contained full versions of Duke 1 and 2 as well, and those are really easy to find on eBay so if you want a legal way to play the game, just get one of those.

STORY: 8/10
GAMEPLAY: 7/10
GRAPHICS: 8/10
SOUND: 5/10

TOTAL SCORE: 7/10

Build Engine Retrospective Part 2: Shadow Warrior

GAME: Shadow Warrior
DEVELOPER: 3D Realms
PUBLISHER: 3D Realms
YEAR: 1997

Note: Screenshots are from the Classic Redux version of the game.

Riding on the immense success (and soccer mom notoriety) of Duke Nukem 3D, and despite Quake's massive success with its fully 3D engine, 3D Realms decided to utilize the somewhat less graphically impressive but still versatile Build engine for several more projects, of only one they ended up releasing themselves in the end. A horror themed game (which ended up being the Monolith published Blood), an Egyptian themed game (which ended up being PowerSlave aka Exhumed) and a game spoofing Kung Fu movies (Shadow Warrior), which is the game I'm taking a look at today in the second part of my Build Engine Retrospective.

The overarching theme of the 3D Realms Build Engine games seem to be that they all take inspiration from other genres. Duke Nukem 3D was a spoof on action movies (and sci-fi to an extent), Blood was more of a horror/slasher movie spoof and thus Shadow Warrior is a spoof of Kung Fu movies. Granted, this is not to be confused with spoofing Asian culture (although it does that to a fair degree as well) but rather spoofing the kind of Asian culture typically depicted in Kung Fu movies. Like Duke Nukem 3D the story is rather thin and mostly consists of spoofing movie clichés and tropes.

She looks happy to see me...

The game puts you in the shoes of Lo Wang, a reference-spewing hunk of one-liners of the Chinese persuasion who is pitted against an evil corporation named Zilla (get it...?) and finds that his master has been killed by their henchmen and goes after them for revenge. What follows is a rampage through numerous levels of elaborate castles, volcanoes, construction yards, facing a couple of bosses before finally facing down Zilla himself. So needless to say the story is practically on par with pretty much every shooter of the era and it serves just enough to give you a backdrop for the game's levels, but never gets in the way of what really matters, the gameplay.

Truth to be told, I've never really been a huge kung fu movie fan, and while the game does contain some anime references, most of them are of stuff I've never seen so it felt a bit difficult for me to really "get" a lot of the references and such in this game (outside the ones that aren't strictly kung fu movie references). But that's not to say I didn't enjoy it as this game still offers some classic 90's FPS charm in spades, at least for the most part. And while a lot of the silly stuff in the game might be considered slightly culturally insensitive nowadays, it's not really meant to be taken seriously.

Konami would love this game.

The gameplay is pretty much identical to that of Duke 3D and other similar Build engine shooters, so if you've played those games you will most likely feel right at home in Shadow Warrior. It does however do its own spin on things and even does some things that could be considered upgrades from Duke 3D (which we will get back to in a bit). Most of the things are pretty much equivalent of the same things from Duke 3D. For instance, the main gameplay still consists of hunting keys to unlock doors, and the inventory items function have some of the same functions (such as the medkit and the night vision goggles). The weapons are also somewhat similar to Duke Nukem 3D, though with the similarities out of the way, let's focus on the differences and what makes Shadow Warrior unique, and so much fun.

The first thing you will probably notice is that you actually have a melee weapon in this game (you still have fists if you absolutely wanna karate-chop enemies to death), and it's actually a fairly powerful melee weapon too (befitting the game's title a fair bit). Another thing you will also notice is that enemy death animations are also dependent on which weapon you use to kill them as slicing them with a sword will give a different result compared to peppering them with UZI's or splattering them across the room with a Missile Launcher. Speaking of which, let's discuss the other weapons. In addition to the sword, you have Shuriken/darts (which you throw 3 at a time of, and can pick up from the environment again), the Riot Gun (basically a shotgun), the UZI (which can be dualwielded once you find another one), the Missile Launcher, the Grenade Launcher, the Sticky Grenades, the Railgun, a Guardian's Head (yes) and a Ripper Heart (an actual beating heart). As you can see, some of the weapons are fairly standard for the time while others are... let's say, more unique. Especially the Railgun since it's probably the earliest FPS to use one as far as I know, a whole year before a similar implementation in Quake 2. Given the movie Eraser came out around this time, it's easy to understand why Railguns became such a hot topic in shooters for a while.

The game is fairly bloody for its time with unique death animations depending on the weapon used.

Now in addition to the more unique weapons, a lot of them also feature something new for the time: alternate firing modes. For instance, you can activate an auto mode on the Riot Gun, turning it into a pretty devastation auto-shotgun that fires several barrels instead of just one, and you can obtain "heat seeking cards" for the missile launcher, granting you missiles that home in on targets, as well as FREAKIN' NUCLEAR WARHEADS! If anything isn't a sign this game was made in the 90's, that definitely is, because this makes the missile launcher the most devastating weapon in the game (mostly to yourself mind you, but still...).

The game is fairly difficult, even on easy mode... at least early on. Once you get into the further levels, ammunition is fairly common to come across for pretty much all your weapons, and weapons like the Railgun completely OWN smaller enemies, at times gibbing them in single shots, and ammo for the Railgun is surprisingly not that scarce, I don't think I ever encountered a single instance where I ran out of ammo on that thing (I was playing on Easy difficulty mind you and I was using it somewhat sparingly). Not to mention fortune cookies (which function as the game's equivalent of the Nuclear Health pickups from Duke 3D) are increasingly common in later levels as well as medkits. This kind of makes the game's difficulty curve a bit uneven as you'll start out pretty weak with weapons that aren't capable of dispatching enemies quickly so on the higher difficulties where the enemy count is higher you'll most likely have a really bad time in the beginning of the game, but then the game almost becomes too easy once you get your hands on the more powerful weapons in the game.

Splat!

Some of the inventory items are also fairly unique to the game, giving you smoke bombs (which function as invisibility powerups and increase your fist damage), repair kits (can be used to repair broken vehicles (yes the game has vehicles...)), gas bombs, flash bombs (kinda useless), and Caltrops can be tossed onto the floor to hurt enemies (these are kinda useless too).

For most of the game I ended up not really using much of the inventory items and mostly stuck to the riotgun, UZI's, Railgun and the grenade and missile launchers. The guardian head is a cool weapon but most of the time I just kinda forget it's there. The ripper heart is kind of useful as it summons a secondary Lo Wang who goes around killing enemies using a railgun but these are kinda rare pickups anyway. I mean, it kind of suffers the same issues as Duke 3D in that sure, the unique weapons are unique and cool and gimmicky, but when it comes down to it, you'll most likely use the other weapons since ammo is much more common for them. I don't think I ever used caltrops a single time because the enemy AI isn't really that smart and will just kinda wander around aimlessly or shoot at you.

A giant sumo wrestler using farts as an attack. Classy.

And as has been mentioned in other reviews, yes, the game features a fair bit of platforming but it never really got to the point of tedium for me, and moving into third person mode (using the F7 key) really helped with these parts of the game anyway. So I don't really consider it a negative aspect of the game and it does bring some additional challenge to the levels without being overbearing like in the modern remake of Rise of the Triad.

Graphically the game looks fairly impressive for a Build engine game, featuring some 3D objects in place of sprites for stuff like weapons, powerups and keys. It achieved this by using voxels (3-dimensional volumetric pixels) to give objects a 3-dimensional appearance without actually using polygonal 3D models. But for the most time, the palette looks kinda brown and ugly (not sure if this was done intentionally) and while I like some of the more urban industrial looking levels, a lot of the other levels just look kinda bland and a bit drab aside from the numerous Chinese style buildings and such. I can remember some levels standing out a bit to me, like an airport with a crashed airplane, a train station early in the game and a volcano as the final level, but a few of the levels just kinda blend together in my head. That's not to say the level design is bad or anything, I just found that a lot of the time it felt a bit uninspired and a bit of a product of its time. Most of the time, navigating the game was a breeze.

Jesus, Lo Wang, can't you let a naked Anime lady with diarrhea have some privacy?

What I really love about these Build engine games is just how visceral some of them feel and using the game's arsenal feels incredibly satisfying. Hearing the chunky shot of the Riot Gun, the peppering bulletspray of the UZI's, the intense ZAP of the Railgun and the slashing of the sword all brings to mind classic action movies and you just don't feel this kind of combat in games anymore. It definitely has its own style from this era. I also love the delivery of Lo Wang and while he may come off as a bit annoyingly stereotypical at times, his somewhat dopey delivery kinda makes some of his lines pretty funny. The music is thematically fitting, and was probably the first Build engine title to utilize CD Redbook Audio for its soundtrack rather than relying on MIDI. It's not that memorable for the most part compared to some of the tunes from Duke 3D but it's there, sets the mood and gives the game the kind of Asian vibe it needs without feeling in the way. Andrew Hulshult also remixed the title theme for the Classic Redux edition of the game and it sounds suitably rocked up, giving it more energy than the original.

I'm sure this scenario has occurred in some Tomb Raider fanfics...

With all of its naked Sailor Moon influenced girls, protagonist constantly trying to sound funny, and somewhat bigger reliance on fart jokes and scat humor, I can't help but feel like this game wasn't really made for me. I find it a bit harder to get through than Duke Nukem 3D, and a lot of it doesn't hold up as well today in my opinion in regards to both content and level design, but I was still having a good time for the most part when the game wasn't making me cringe too hard, but it was still a bit of a chore at times. I had never finished this game before doing this review and I doubt I ever will again. I had a few moments where I giggled a bit, sure, but I wasn't enjoying myself as much as I wish I was. With that in mind, I still recommend this game. Out of all the Build engine games, Shadow Warrior isn't really that high on my list and for that reason I can't really score it as high as Duke 3D, but if you love oldschool FPS's, especially using the Build engine, it's worth a shot, and hopefully it will click with you more than it did for me.

STORY: 6/10
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 7/10
SOUND: 7/10

TOTAL SCORE: 7/10

PC Game Review: Fallout 4

GAME: Fallout 4
DEVELOPER: Bethesda Game Studios
PUBLISHER: Bethesda Softworks
YEAR: 2015

Disclaimer: All of the screenshots are using mods.

It's kind of hard to imagine but it's already been 3 years since Bethesda's official sequel to Fallout 3 finally released, to somewhat mixed reviews, except my own. I guess I've needed this much time to truly make up an opinion on the game to be honest, and in my opinion, Fallout 4 does improve immensely on its predecessor in a lot of ways, but also still brings on a lot of the same problems that typically plague Bethesda titles. But before getting ahead of myself, let's discuss Fallout 3 for a bit since it's impossible to talk about Fallout 4 without mentioning Fallout 3 and a little about the franchise as a whole...

Fallout 3 was a game that was, most of the time, at odds with itself. It wanted to be a RPG but compared to the earlier Fallout titles was fairly simplified to the point a lot of perks didn't matter that much, traits were done away with entirely and SPECIAL points didn't really matter as much anymore, putting you in a position where having a single point in a SPECIAL attribute would inconvenience you, sure, but it wouldn't outright cripple you like in Fallout 1 and 2. While this did make it a more player-friendly experience, it also made it impossible to make characters with serious disadvantages.

It also wanted to be a FPS but the combat system employed a fair bit of randomness (in an attempt to add realism I would assume, or just as an RPG gimmick), resulting in the player being unable to hit something despite aiming dead center at it. A higher Luck skill would improve this somewhat, but even at medium Luck it would make it at times really frustrating to play the game. The game also lacked ironsights, sprinting, and the FPS mechanics were so barebones it didn't really feel all that satisfying.

*cue badass music*

Despite this, I would be a liar if I said I didn't like it. In fact, I love Fallout 3 and I've spent countless hours with it. But it has a lot of grievances, specifically in terms of plot. It has a very clear cut "bad guys" faction and "heroes" faction, without taking into account that in earlier games the Brotherhood of Steel was practically a secretive cult that rarely or never seeked contact with outsiders, making their entire presence in the Capitol Wasteland highly questionable. It was also a highly linear story, making any player choice regarding story events miniscule, forcing you to pretty much do things that could potentially be out of character for you. Calling it clumsily written is an understatement.

Thankfully, in my opinion this is where Fallout 4 improves the most, although in all honesty the story is almost verbatim the same as Fallout 3's, except the roles are switched. Where in Fallout 3 you're a child searching for your parent, in Fallout 4 you're a parent searching for your son. I mean... not exactly being original there, Bethesda... But at least it has a lot of improvements. For one, it doesn't try to set up too many relationships during the intro sequence which is thankfully a lot shorter than Fallout 3's. It sticks to the core, the family, setting up your relationship with your spouse and your son before throwing you into the nearby vault when a nuke nearby goes off. As it turns out, this vault is actually a cryogenic storage, and you're chosen to be frozen for an indefinite amount of time. During your time being frozen the vault is broken into by an unknown person who kills your spouse and takes your infant son. You wake up again later and this is your main quest. Finding the asshole who killed your spouse and finding your son. It's dead simple but it works wonderfully as a setup and doesn't go into too much detail, making it much less of a chore to get through for players like myself who create a lot of new characters.

*sniff* Did someone fart?

And it also foregoes the "good vs evil" mantra of Fallout 3 entirely. Instead of having a good and evil faction in the game, it has 4 main factions, and it's largely up to the player to judge whether they are good or evil, but all of them clearly has their own convictions and their actions can be good or evil depending on your viewpoint, because it is clear that all of the factions have good intentions. It's insanely refreshing to see this juxtaposed with Fallout 3's contrived scenario of Brotherhood of Steel vs Enclave. It's also less focused on strictly good or evil actions, and some of the side quests have morally grey areas where you might not be sure what is morally correct to do (though never to any extreme extent that I can remember). It poses questions like "can machines be considered human", "are the Brotherhood of Steel truly the saviours" and what you will do when you find out who your son is. So all in all it's probably the best story I've seen in any of the Bethesda released Fallout games (and yes, that includes New Vegas, sorry for all you New Vegas lovers out there). I actually did connect very well with the main character and was on a pretty emotional rollercoaster for most of the game and I loved it. It's really well done compared to the dud that was Fallout 3.

Companions have also been fleshed out a lot more compared to Fallout 3 and also made invincible so that they cannot be killed (which I am HUGELY grateful for...), only downed in which case you can stimpak them to get them back up. They're also given way more personality, given more proper backstories that are revealed to you as you talk to them over time, and also give you unique quests, in which you can assist them to gain their loyalty (a note taken from Mass Effect that I like). They're also a lot less 2-dimensional than the companions in Fallout 3 which were usually, well, pretty one-sided and would pretty much judge the character based on their current karma level. And sure, these companions will judge the player based on their actions too but it's less because of them being good or evil characters and more because of their own convictions. It's also possible to romance some of them, giving you a permanent perk, and this is NOT restricted by gender either.

DAMNIT, DOGMEAT! Get out of the damn way!

Of course, how can I forget the most important part of the story, Dogmeat... Dogmeat has been way more fleshed out in Fallout 4, given its own unique dog model (modeled after a real life German Shepard, although a female one, nice bit of trivia for you) and playing a much bigger part in the story than he did in Fallout 3, leading some of the major plot points in the story and serving as the first companion you come across that can be hired. He's also unique in that he follows the player regardless of their actions and will always remain loyal to you. Though at times he can be a bit of a nuisance, sometimes getting a bit "up in your face" and such though this really counts for all of the companions in general...

So with the story bits out of the way, let's get into the gameplay. Where Fallout 3 felt at odds with itself, Fallout 4 feels more like it has less of an identity crisis and knows what it wants to be. It has much smoother combat and the VATS system has been changed to not stop time and only slow it down (which feels a lot more believable in my opinion), making it feel less like a remnant from when the games were turnbased and more like the character being imbued with faster reflexes. The FPS elements take more of a center stage, adding a sprint button, ironsights, leaning and generally feels a lot less clunky to play. The game also adds weapon mods into the mix, allowing you to craft and add weapon attachments and upgrades to your guns, sometimes allowing you to do as much as upgrading a pistol to a sniper rifle depending on the parts you choose to install. In all honesty, it feels like playing Fallout 3 with the mods that made it actually playable, and even going a step further from there.

You know... I may have to lay off the irradiated water when I start seeing flying ships with rocket engines...

This also ties into the RPG elements. Instead of trying to be a RPG and kind of failing at it, well... the bad news is it still fails completely at being a true RPG, but what I mean by "less of an identity crisis" is that the RPG elements now feel like that. RPG elements. They're not so much an essential part of the game anymore and now play more of a "choice" role in the game, allowing you to choose which kind of character you want to play in a lot more shallow sense. There's no deep choices, it's downright impossible to make a flawed character and thus the roleplaying aspect has been even further dumbed down from Fallout 3. But here's the thing, this is only a bad thing if you EXPECT a RPG out of Fallout 4. If you expect a FPS with RPG elements then that's what you'll get and you know what? I'm fine with that. I'd rather have a game that KNOWS what it wants to be than a game that tries to be two things and fails at both. Fallout 4 feels way more cohesive in terms of gameplay design as a result of this and while I can totally agree this might not be the direction the series should go in, it doesn't necessarily make Fallout 4 a bad game, but it makes it less of an RPG than Fallout 3 and especially Fallout 1 and 2 which I wouldn't even consider in the same genre anymore.

The most notable change from Fallout 3 is undoubtedly the removal of the karma system. In Fallout 3 the karma system was a carryover from Fallout 1 (in Fallout 2 there was less of a karma system and more of a general reputation system reflecting less bad vs good and more reactions from people to your actions), and made the game unnecessarily focused on extremes. You either had to play a saint or a mass murdering psycopath, creating an intense disconnect at times where there was no middle ground to choose. Fallout 4 drops this entire idea in favour of a system where you're either altruistic or self-serving, focusing less on being good or evil, and more on whether you think people are worth your time or not. I will admit I kind of prefer this as your player actions flow much better and you're never in situations where you could have nuked Megaton for instance and then given water to a beggar until you were the saviour of the wasteland. Fallout 4 also gives you a lot more choices regarding the main quest and your actions have lasting impact on the outcome of the game, though it never feels like you're doing something evil, but something you believe is good but that WILL have consequences.

A possible hobby in Fallout 4: Maintaining power armor.

Another huge aspect about the gameplay is undoubtedly the crafting and the building and managing of settlements. And pretty much the entire game plays into this aspect as well. Garbage that used to be, well, garbage, now has an actual use as you can now use it for crafting materials to craft everything from gun parts to armor and even entire buildings, giving you much more incentive to loot the places you raid for vaulable trash (something the companions annoyingly will constantly get on your ass about as they seem as oblivious as ever to the fact trash is actually useful in this universe). It can be a HUGE timesink to build and improve settlements constantly and create trade routes between them. It's almost its own little minigame within the game and gives you plenty to do when you're not out looting and raiding outposts. What I love about it though is that this is never really important in the game and it is up to you how much you want to get involved with it. It also feels like the game world is a lot more dense than Fallout 3's world and there's a lot to explore and see, and it doesn't feel like as much of a drab wasteland as a result, giving way more incentive to actually walk around than fast travel everywhere, and I kinda love that it makes exploration itself a lot more interesting.

Power armor is also treated very differently in Fallout 4 compared to earlier games. Where in earlier games it was pretty much just a really powerful armor that required special training to use, in Fallout 4 you can (somewhat inexplicably) use any power armor without much special training and it's treated more like a vehicle that requires power cells to be used effectively. Of course, you can customize it with custom paint jobs, changing out parts, giving it special enhancements and upgrade the hell out of it so even if it does at times feel completely at odds with how power armor was established in the franchise, it's still interesting to see power armor be given more of a unique position in the game in its own way.

The dialogue system has been a bit of a controversial topic regarding the game as the amount of choices has been limited to 4 categories of answers, similar to games like Mass Effect. An inquisitive response at the top, a negative response at the right, a neutral response to the left and a positive one at the bottom. Mods have been released that make the dialogue system more like the old games though, if this is not to your liking. Having played a ton of Mass Effect and understanding that the game doesn't really wish to be a true RPG I didn't and still don't mind this system much personally and never got too worked up about it. I mean, yeah, it's not really giving you much flair to your options but considering your character is voiced in this game and considering its focus, I am completely fine with it. I also think overall the conversation system is HUGELY improved over earlier titles where conversations would freeze time and have you simply standing still with a person as you talked to each other, making conversations feel entirely static. In this game, people will still do things around you as you talk, conversations can be interrupted and you can walk around as you talk, and the camera feels a lot more active and dynamic too, making conversations feel much more "alive", especially with your character finally having a voice as well.

Of course it's worth mentioning that much like Fallout 3 and New Vegas the mod scene for Fallout 4 is as active as ever, despite Bethesda's continued attempts at stopping modders from adding free content to the game and completely refusing to work with the mod scene in any helpful way, even going as far as launching their own mod store and trying to monetize what is essentially free on PC. Bethesda's recent attitude towards the mod scene really has to be mentioned as pretty appalling and it disgusts me that they treat modders with such contempt when they are practically the people who keep breathing life into their games. Anyway, there's probably a lot more about the gameplay I could go into detail about but I think I've covered the broad strokes of it and what I wanted to comment on.

To be fair, I've woken up with my pillow like that too.

Graphically the game definitely is a massive improvement once again. It foregoes the somewhat drab and monotone hue of Fallout 3 and goes for a far more colourful palette (something that I instantly noticed when the game was revealed and had me sighing in relief). It also has a graphical style all of its own, going for less of a rusted decrepit look and more of a colourful look. It may stretch the suspension of disbelief a little that things would look this pristine after so much time has passed, but it does make the game look rather gorgeous. Of course, facial animations are improved but still fairly janky and a lot of characters still have this dead eyed stare about them, giving quite the uncanny valley effect a lot of the time. I mean, it doesn't really bother me enough to not play the game but it IS noticable and worth commenting on. The game also runs fairly well on my system on fairly high specs, but does stutter a fair bit, especially in areas with a lot of detail such as urban areas. I honestly can't wait to get a new PC so I can truly pump up the graphics to ultra settings without sacrificing all that much framerate, especially in these areas. Of course, there exists mods like ENB that adds a lot more graphical options to the game and can make it look even more gorgeous, as well as texture mods to enhance the game's textures further, so if you're not happy with how the vanilla game looks there are ways to customize it more to your liking. I will admit though that compared to Fallout 3 which I find impossible to play without several graphical mods, Fallout 4 looks a lot more presentable out of the box.

The music is mostly forgetable sadly, most of it falling into the same trap as most modern AAA game music and just sounding like background noise. And while the radio stations offer up some variations with some classic oldies, it does get fairly repetitive after a while. The voice acting is pretty good for the most part, with props going to the protagonist voice actors who do a pretty good job voicing the protagonist of the game. I did notice some voice actors from Mass Effect here though, like the voice actor for Garrus who pops up in several minor roles, and the voice actor for the companion Caite would go on to voice a character in Mass Effect Andromeda (which I am getting around to reviewing eventually...). Together with the dialogue system and companion loyalty missions and romance system I can't help but feel like Fallout 4 is more of a spiritual first person Mass Effect sequel than a Fallout 3 sequel, in all honesty. Not that I mind...

I guess the roach found some armor...

So all in all, what do I think of Fallout 4? I mean, yeah, it's hardly a RPG series anymore, and it still has a fairly linear story and not much room for actual roleplaying and playing a flat out bad guy is still impossible. And you STILL cannot become a pornstar or use sex to persuade people. But in all honesty, none of these things would actually FIT in Fallout 4 because it has a much stronger vision of what it wants to be than Fallout 3 which had much stronger ties to the older games (in all the wrong ways though). All in all I consider Fallout 4 an excellent game, but not an excellent RPG and not an excellent Fallout game. It is what it is, take it or leave it.

STORY: 8/10
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
GRAPHICS: 8/10
SOUND: 6/10

TOTAL SCORE: 8/10

Build Engine Retrospective Part 1: Duke Nukem 3D

GAME: Duke Nukem 3D
DEVELOPER: 3D Realms
PUBLISHER: 3D Realms
YEAR: 1996

When it comes to first person shooters, the most groundbreaking games in the genre undoubtedly came out during the 90's. This time period was truly the golden age for the genre, releasing a ton of classics in the genre that laid the groundwork for much of today's titles in the genre. Wolfenstein 3D started it all but then we got titles like Doom, Rise Of The Triad, Blake Stone and eventually a game would come out that really carved its own unique place among other so-called "Doom clones". With its groundbreaking engine, impressive amount of interactivity and one-liner spouting titular action star protagonist, Duke Nukem 3D managed to create quite a few ripples in the gaming community despite the incoming Quake which would make its technology look a generation behind in comparison. So today on my blog I'm starting a new series called Build Engine Retrospective where I'm taking a look at games that utilized the now legendary Build engine, many of these released in the years between 1996-1998. What these games often share in common is a unique theme, scripted events and a ton of other features that for the time and given the limitations of the engine make them quite memorable to play even today. And I'm starting with the first commercial game to utilize the Build engine, the king himself, Duke Nukem 3D.

I practically grew up with Duke Nukem so the character holds a very special place in my heart. The very first game I remember ever playing was the very first Duke Nukem, an EGA platformer for DOS that was a really popular shareware title around '91. Already then Duke Nukem was established as a gun-toting badass who was Earth's only hope. In the first game he went after the evil Dr Proton and his army of Techbots, and while his personality was a bit derivative and referencing pop culture like watching Opera Winfrey show, it wasn't until Duke 3D his personality as a woman-loving pill-popping ultra-macho amalgation of 80's action heroes came into play. And in a way, Duke grew up with me. When Duke 3D came out I was about 8 years old and just about to enter my teens and with Duke 1 being my first game, it felt as if the character had grown up with me. I was always interested in a lot of typical boy stuff at that age, watching a lot of movies that I wasn't allowed to, playing games I wasn't allowed to and generally showing more and more of an interest in the kind of masculine entertainment that there was a lot of when I grew up. And a lot of it really influenced my tastes and shaped me to be the person I am today. I of course also liked feminine stuff, I hung out with other girls a lot, played with dolls and did all of that stuff, but I was also into guns and shooters and such things, and always have been. And something about the Duke Nukem games almost embodies all of those core interests. There's a dystopian and almost cyberpunk future feel to the games, and this carried on very well into Duke 3D although it has a distinctly more realistic feel than the first two games.

I can't let you rip off that movie, Duke...

The story is pretty simple. After returning to Earth after defeating the aliens in Duke 2, Duke finds that another alien race has wiped out most of Earth's population and taken most of our women, and turned all the police into pigs. His mission becomes to wipe out most of the aliens on Earth and take the fight to their mothership in space, culminating with a battle with the one-eyed commander of the entire fleet and the alien queen in a bonus episode called The Birth.The story never takes itself seriously, with Duke at one point saying he'll shit down a boss' neck after killing him. And promptly does so. So yeah, it's not a huge story or anything but it's funny, works for setting the game's derivative tone and there's nothing really bad I can say about it.

What really set Duke 3D apart from its contemporaries such as Doom and Quake was its environments. Up until that point, levels in shooters were often very abstract and maze-like. Duke 3D's levels on the other hand almost had a bit of an open world feel to them and were often much more urban in nature, giving them a very realistic feeling. They felt like locations that could potentially exist in real life as you moved through buildings, underground tunnels and visited everything from brothels and strip clubs to a burger restaurant. Of course, all of the levels still have an exaggerated look to them and feel like something out of an action movie, but compared to the levels of Doom for instance, the difference is night and day. The exception of this is obviously the second episode which takes place in space and has more of a Doom-like sci-fi influenced level design that pays homage to H.R. Giger's Alien environments among other things.

Episode 2 features some pretty cool sci-fi esque levels.

The game really does feel like an homage to the 80's and 90's, with its plentiful references to everything from Aliens, Evil Dead and They Live to OJ Simpson's car escape. It ends up feeling a little dated but in today's nostalgia-driven retrowave culture it still holds a lot of appeal and it's easy to see why this game continues to be so influential to a lot of modern oldschool shooters. Control-wise it was pretty ahead of its time allowing for not only mouse aim but also remapping the movement keys to WASD makes it feel surprisingly modern in terms of controls. It even allows for jumping and ducking (which was actually a fairly new idea at the time). Another new idea it added was an inventory with different items, which could be activated at your leisure and adding some tactics to the game in when you used these items. The idea of an inventory would be used again in several other Build games, often copying Duke's item selection, which consists of a portable medkit (which can be used to heal up to 100 health points), Night Vision goggles (that really don't work as you'd expect, they mostly just put a green filter on the screen and make enemies into glowing green figures), Boots (give protection against acid, lava and other harmful substances), Steroids (pretty much turns you into Sonic and I think they give you additional melee strength), and Scuba Gear (lets you breathe under water). The final one is the Holoduke, which I probably end up never using as it is far more useful in multiplayer matches than single player. It projects a fake version of the player but most of the AI simply doesn't give a fuck about it.

Dem titties! Shake them!

The weapon selection is also pretty classic but also has some guns that are pretty unique to Duke 3D itself. You have the expected Doom-style loadout with the melee (Duke's mighty foot), pistol, shotgun, chaingun and rocket launcher, but then we get into the somewhat more iconic weapons. The pipebombs are throwable grenades that explode when you click the button a second time, meaning they explode exactly when you want them to which is perfect for not only getting rid of badguys but also blowing up parts of the environment to reveal secret areas You then have the shrinker which does what it says on the tin, it shrinks your enemies to action figure size and allows you to step on them. Of course the reverse is also true and if you get hit with a shrinker beam you yourself become tiny and will have to watch out for enemies stomping on you. The Atomic Edition also adds the Microwave Expander, a gun that does the exact opposite, blowing up your enemies literally until they explode. You then have the Devastator, a really powerful dual rocket launcher that fires miniature rockets at a high fire rate. It's probably my favourite weapon in the game and fits its name as it makes short work of most enemies in the game sans bosses and larger enemies, but its major caveat is that it burns through ammo like a fat guy through a donut shop. You then have the laser tripmine which is pretty good for multiplayer matches but like the holoduke rarely comes into play in single player. Finally you have the Freezeray, which freezes enemies and allows you to break them easily with a kick or fire from any of the projectile based weapons. It creates this unique tactical combat where some of the weapons give a basic combo attack, like the shrinking and stepping on enemies, or freezing and shattering them. I can't really think of any shooter at the time who had this kind of combat.

Can't a man enjoy a flat martini and a looping animation in peace?

As varied as the guns are, so is the enemy roster. You have your basic grunts, the assault troopers who do little more than shoot lasers at you though some of them have the ability to temporarily teleport out of experience before appearing behind you. Some of the may even fake their death (if you see them going into their choking animation upon death there is a chance they will get back up again). You then have the iconic pig cops, who wield shotguns and take a little more damage before going down. After that you have the Fat Commander (officially called the Assault Commander), a flying slob firing rockets out his ass while grunting "suck it down". They can be a right pain in the ass but using the shrinkray on them makes them surprisingly easy to kill (a trick that also works well in Duke Nukem Forever). In addition to these you have the larger enforcers who shoot chainguns at you, and the Battlelord, a hulking monstrous alien firing miniguns at you and launching grenades. You also have the iconic Octabrain, a flying brain with tentacles shooting sonic waves at you, and the Protozoid Slimer born from alien eggs who attaches to your face, similar to the facehuggers from Alien.

Boss fight time!

Most of the gameplay revolves around grabbing keycards, much like in Doom, and reaching the end of the level. Interestingly a lot of the levels seem connected as you may seem parts of an upcoming level near the end of the current level and so forth, a concept that further evolved into the level structure of games like Half-Life. You also have babes scattered around a lot of the levels (particurarily the alien environments) who are trapped in vines. You can choose to mercy kill these poor women, though doing so will provoke the enemies and spawn in additional reinforcements. Of course, killing babes that are NOT trapped is NEVER okay and the game will punish you for this by spawning in enemies.

Should've been the title of the game, lol

Graphically the game looks pretty good for the time. While not as good as Quake, it still looks like a pretty logical evolution of the kind of technology used in Doom, and allows for more advanced level geometry, larger levels and a lot of the levels are pretty good at giving the illusion of rooms above rooms. The most fun part of Duke 3D is the interactivity though and it's what truly set the game apart from its contemporaries at the time. You could blow up parts of the level (indicated by cracks in the textures), you could drink from fountains, use toilets, break toilets, drink from said broken toilets, play pool, oogle women, oogle yourself, you get the point. This helped a lot in making the game world feel real and believable in addition to the realistic level design. It was also one of the first games to rely somewhat on scripted events (something that would be greatly expanded upon in other Build games), with parts of the levels being restructured in a pretty impressive fashion, a great example being when Duke blows up a building in a level and climbs into the ruins, or creates and earthquake in another level to reveal more of the level. This kind of interactivity in the levels made the game feel much more alive and explosive than something like Doom and even Quake.

How about no.

In addition the game featured some pretty nifty lighting for its time, featuring light switches that could dynamically light up an area and coloured lighting that directly affected the player's sprite and everything around it. The developers really made sure to push as much as they could out of the engine and it shows. The screenshots in this review are from the latest version of the game which is the 20th Anniversary World Tour edition and it's probably the best looking version of the game so far.

Sound-wise the game presents some pretty cool MIDI tracks (in modern source ports like the aforementioned World Tour edition these have been remastered as ogg files) that have more of a rock feel to them than Doom did. None of the tracks aside from the main theme can really be called memorable though and most fall into the category of being pretty much background music. And of course, Jon St. Jon's portrayal of Duke is now legendary with the game's many one-liners being classic quotes even today, so not a single bad word about his performance. Although his re-recorded lines in the World Tour edition does lack a bit of their original punch. The weapons all sound really cool, ranging from the beefy shotgun and peppering chaingun to the satisfying explosion sounds makes the game a joy for the ears.

Slurp. All space stations should have water fountains.

So a question remains, which version of Duke 3D should you get? Well, at the moment there is only a single version available and that is the World Tour edition. It comes with re-recorded lines from the Duke himself, improved graphics, as well as some rather lazy developer commentary (and most of it coming from Randy Pitchford himself, who isn't exactly popular among Duke fans nowadays), but for the most part is kind of lacking as it does not include the 3 expansions Duke It Out In DC, Nuclear Winter and Duke Carribbean: Life's A Beach. It does however include a new fourth episode which is worth playing. The earlier Megaton Edition did include these expansions and multiplayer but lacked some polish, especially on consoles, and the original DOS version was included as part of 3D Realms' Anthology pack but this pack has since been discontinued as well as the Megaton Edition, since Gearbox claims to own the IP and won't allow 3D Realms to release any of the original Duke Nukem games (which is highly ironic considering 3D Realms gave birth to the franchise...). So that's a kind of sad affair altogether. However due to how well the game has sold it's not hard finding physical copies online on places like eBay (which is where I bought my own boxed copy) and most of these physical copies work fine with DOSBox so however you obtain the game, it's definitely worth playing, cause even 22 years later, Duke Nukem 3D is still one of the most badass shooters in existence. I mean, it may seem a bit dated today but when this game came out, there was simply nothing like it.

Hail to the king, baby!

Stay tuned for part 2 of my Build Engine Retrospective where I'll be taking a look at what many consider the spiritual sequel to Duke 3D, namely Shadow Warrior!

STORY: 10/10
GAMEPLAY: 10/10
GRAPHICS: 10/10
SOUND: 8/10

TOTAL SCORE: 10/10