I was a really hardcore gamer back in Pakistan, but I then had to move to Sweden for my Masters level education...and I really missed gaming during the first few months. I had my Core2Duo laptop with me by Compaq, it has 2 gigs of ram, a 15 inch lcd display, altec lansing speakers...its pretty good, but what it lacks is a good graphics card (Intel 945G bleughh!!!). I was kinda short on money when I was buying a laptop, so I had to stick to this one instead of a much pricier option with a better 3D card. But, recently, I decided to try some old school gems on this computer, and have been having serious fun with the lot. I purchased Deus Ex, Homeworld Cataclysm and Starcraft and they run really well on this system (of course hehe).
The thing that struck me the most about those games was that even though their design may not be as overly complex as some of today's games, it still shows with how much love and creativity was used to put them all put together. For example, even though Starcraft is back from 1998 I think, it has such a streamlined interface and games take inspirations from it even to this day. It introduced a lot of "industry firsts" in a RTS. The AI is pretty solid too for its time. Most of the RTS games, when moved to 3D, have had many many issues with pathfinding, but this one uses the traditional isometric view and is not plagued by any such shortcomings. By patching it to the latest version, it also runs perfectly on my Windows XP Service Pack 3 operating system. Another thing that was quite impressive for this game were its cinematics, even though they used some very very basic 3d models and special effects, the camera work is still great along with some really top notch voice acting which make you ignore the limited quality of 3d renders of that time.
Homeworld is just amazing, it was one of the first 3D RTS space games (or should I dare say the first). The story was amazing and it was put together by using some really well made (but simple) cutscenes which look so cool, that they even put some cinematics of new games to shame. The expansion, Catacalysm added a lot of cool features to the original like health bars for the enemies, new units, new commands and even a first person camera view which looks totally cool during dogfights. The game though has a pretty high difficulty level, still I am having a blast playing though it!
Deus Ex, ah what a classic. The sequel, although great, does not even come close to how good the original was. Sure, the levels look and feel very empty and the graphics may be termed "ugly" as today's standards, but when the game was originally released, it was all the rage. It was one of the first FPS/RPG crossover (the other one was System Shock 2). There are just an amazing number of ways you can complete an objective and playing stealthily is a lot of fun. The only other game which makes stealthy gaming a whole lot of fun is No One Lives Forever (I really liked that game but I don't know why they aren't making any sequels after part 2). Deus Ex also puts forth an amazing storyline which actually makes sense and makes you doubt what the media is actually feeding the masses as there might be a bigger, more sinister plan going on in the background which we may not know about...yet!
No comments:
Post a Comment