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Post by Xeogred on Jul 19, 2021 12:38:15 GMT -5
I played Unreal Gold with this... kentie.net/article/d3d10drv/Thought it looked pretty good when I played it. Doesn't seem like anyone else I know online likes this campaign though, oh well. |
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Post by Sarge on Jul 19, 2021 12:40:48 GMT -5
I'm going to roll back around to it soon. I often hear some comparisons with Metroid Prime, which makes it interesting to me. From the bit I played, it does seem like a slower-paced game than others of that time, and more built around exploration and atmosphere.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 19, 2021 17:07:53 GMT -5
I'm going to roll back around to it soon. I often hear some comparisons with Metroid Prime, which makes it interesting to me. From the bit I played, it does seem like a slower-paced game than others of that time, and more built around exploration and atmosphere. Halo (1) too. Unreal's weaponry and combat isn't up to par with the Quake's or Half-Life, but I loved exploring its world and lush alien environments. It felt like an epic journey when I rolled those credits and I played it somewhere around 2014 with no nostalgia. It took me ages to even realize Unreal had a campaign and expansion pack.
And I don't say this lightly, one of the best OST's I've ever heard in my life. Alexander Brandon from Deus Ex fame did a lot of it, along with the MOD format just being incredible and too short lived...
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Post by Ex on Jul 19, 2021 17:14:28 GMT -5
I don't know, maybe I'd like Unreal more nowadays then I did way back when it first released. The game does have atmosphere. I just recall large annoying levels and bosses with wayyy too much health, that's what sticks out in my memory.
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Post by paulofthewest on Jul 19, 2021 17:52:26 GMT -5
Wait unreal had single player? The only thing I remember from unreal is trying to play multiplayer an everyone backstabs you.
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Post by Ex on Jul 19, 2021 18:38:07 GMT -5
The only thing I remember from unreal is trying to play multiplayer an everyone backstabs you. Interesting. That was my experience with this entry. Now THAT was a great FPS, even against bots.
I did beat Unreal 2 on Xbox via co-op, it was a 6/10 at best. |
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 19, 2021 19:43:11 GMT -5
Yeah, Unreal 2 always looked and sounded pretty average.
You mention bullet sponge bosses... hmmm, honestly I feel like I can picture only one or two bosses. I'm drawing a blank otherwise. So maybe they were bad or forgettable to me. I did think the final fight with some human marines at the end of the expansion pack was some serious BS though. Most of the alien enemies in the game are kind of large, slow, easy to hit with those weapons and all. But the marines were these tiny specks and zooming all around, with insane hit scanning. I'm murky on the rest of the expansion pack, if I ever revisit Unreal Gold I'll probably just do the main campaign only again.
Couldn't tell you a thing about the "story". I think some of the alien tribes had logs and stuff you could read though. I'm just always a sucker for games where you're completely lost in some foreign world without much extensive context. Again, also a very Metroid-y thing about it haha... all about that atmosphere and visual storytelling.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 20, 2021 16:19:37 GMT -5
I beat Turrican 1 with the rewind feature today. Took about 1h25m or something. The alien levels here looked cooler than the Genesis/SNES variants. It wasn't a pure HR Giger ripoff, haha. Was kind of cool how those levels actually had some minimalistic, atmospheric tracks. The music in general is just alright though. It's early Amiga stuff, while Turrican II is the one with the insane OST. Probably a better game by a long shot too, so I'll hit that up next. That one has horizontal shmup stages I think.
I liked the look of the 2-X stages a lot. Reminded me of Blaster Master.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 21, 2021 8:56:56 GMT -5
I did beat Turrican II "The Final Fight" last night. Took about 1h15m for this one. The music is a HUGE upgrade and a stellar OST than any retro VGM enthusiast should check out. Gameplay wise, it did seem like things were a little more smoothed out but I'm not sure if it was as big of a step up from Turrican 1 as I expected. I didn't miss the vertical jetpack stages though. In place of those, were three horizontal shmup stages and they were okay, but nothing too wild. Across both games, it's the underground water/organic tech bases that I love the most and probably give off the strongest Metroid vibes. The alien maze levels are kind of drab and not that interesting to navigate, but they're fine.
So I've beaten:
- Turrican (Amiga via PS4 Turrican Flashback) - Turrican II: The Final Fight (Amiga via PS4 Turrican Flashback) - Super Turrican (NES, very different from the SNES game. This is a bizarro take on Turrican 1)
- Super Turrican (SNES) - Super Turrican 2 (SNES) - Mega Turrican (Genesis, considered Turrican 3)
As a fan of Turrican II's OST for over a decade now, it was cool to finally play these original games, even though as I guessed they don't reach the heights of the 16bit console games to me. I love those the most and they were arguably a bit Western/Japanese influenced, for the better to me. Those OST's are equally as mindblowing too. Kind of wish Chris Hulesbeck scored a few more games on the SNES and Genesis...
Maybe I'm the only American in 2021 that still cares about the Amiga games. I never see much talk of this series in general outside of European circles and articles where the Amiga had a strong foothold. I can see how a lot of people aren't that into this style either, but I can get into them after a bit when I adjust. They're like if Sonic levels had you playing a character with a gun. Huge labyrinthine areas with verticality. If someone isn't sure about the Amiga games, I'd say play Gunlord from 2012, later released on newer platforms as Gunlord X. It really pretty much is Turrican 4 in all but name and a smoother more fun experience to me. The 16bit console games are more linear and different but I've still seen some people like here on HRG, not that hot on them. Either way this is kind of just a report to myself, that I have finally finished the Turrican journey, or the fight! I'll always wonder, what would have happened if this series leaned more Contra, or more Metroidvania. The aesthetics are ace in all of them, but I maybe would retool some of the game design and ideas into something different. But overall, this is a cool series to me and I still see myself revisiting the SNES and Genesis entries along with Gunlord X down the road.
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Post by anayo on Jul 21, 2021 9:14:51 GMT -5
XeogredI beat Mega Turrican in 2018. Its strong points were its soundtrack and graphics. Plain ‘ol Turrican is in my Sega Genesis library somewhere. Whenever I get it out to play it I don’t like the way it feels kinesthetically so I always quit after a few minutes and put it back. I’m one of those Americans who has a hard time getting into Amiga games, too. They often look and sound amazing but feel weird when I actually interact with them. Maybe the Amiga appeals to me less as a gaming platform more for how it put powerful creativity software like music composition and animation in peoples’ homes. I guess not unlike how I like Macintosh computers but wouldn’t want to game on them.
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