All Kinda Classics

 The weapons aren't the only way that Quake 2  shifts to a more Doom  style after Quake 1 . I'm sure I'll miss some, so this list might get updated later, but off the top of my head:  1. Return of the "basic weapon" zombies. Doom's pistol, shotgun, and chaingun zombies were a great source of filler enemies . Quake  has only a single grunt zombie, but Quake 2  returns the pistol, shotgun, and chaingun varieties.  2. Likewise, exploding barrels are back. The delayed cook-off in the remaster is pretty sweet.  3. Real bosses: Every episode of  Doom  ended with a proper boss fight. The bruiser brothers, Cyberdemon, and Mastermind (twice). Doom 2  doesn't really have episodes, but sort of does it with Gotcha! before going to a pseudo-puzzle-boss for the Icon of Sin Quake  has the (excellent) Chthon for Ep 1, then sort of uses Vores in the other episodes, before doing another puzzle fight for the closer. (You'd think they'd use Shambl...

I'm going to work with the theory that Quake 2  is that last game in the "classic id" lineage. I'm not entirely sure how I'm defining that (and I usually whine when people clump  Doom  and  Quake  together as "boomer shooters" or whatever), but I think you can trace a line backwards from Q2 , through Quake 1 , and at least back to Doom  (but probably not Wolf 3d) in a lot of ways. Today, I'm going to look at the guns. Back in the 90s, your guns were a big way you differntiated your FPS from others. Look at something like Duke 3D with it's goofy shrink rays and stuff, vs Outlaws  with more grounded "wild west" weapons. I'd argue, if anything, Quake 2  is a return to form, with a more evolved version of the Doom  weapons, after the weirdness of Quake 1.  Regardless, the relatively large and varied arsenal, is a key tenant of this era of id shooters, and of any modern game trying to ape them. (And you have to be able to carry them al...

 Something I've really appreciated about Quake 2 and Unreal  is the inclusion of the (once standard) Quicksave and Noclip options. Quicksave is a one button save hotkey, usually paired with a one button Quickload. It usually overwrites each time (though a few games will buffer 3 or 4). Makes it easy to keep your progress saved without clicking through menus, or cluttering things with a million save files. It's also a designated, "let me try something stupid" button. Is there a secret in that lava cave? Quicksave and find out! If not, you only wasted about 12 seconds. While I get the appeal of a checkpoint system, allowing the designers to define a narrative beat or whatever, the flexibility, convenience, and accessibility of quicksave is so nice. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised (in the modern age of accessibility features) it's not considered at least "poor taste" to not include one. Great for people with kids, Crohn's disease, or anything else t...

 I've been pretty down on Quake 2  the couple times I mentioned it here. But I wasn't in the mood to slog through a million bot matches for Q3 and UT back to back to back, so I wanted something with a regular single player campaign to break it up. Since Q2 was the closest thing, chronologically, I figured I'd grab it and work on the campaign. It took me three days. It was really good. My memories (and, admittedly, I don't think I've sat down to play Quake 2 in over a decade) were of it just being clunky and frustrating. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm so super pro-FPS player, but I can clear most of the iD games on the highest "fair" difficulty reasonably well. I remember Quake 2 being a lot harder, and just generally annoying to play. Enemies were too spongy, levels were too confusing, weapons were awkward. I don't think it stacks up to Quake 1 (maybe Doom 1 ),  but it's still better than 90% of shooters made by companies th...

 I think I posted about wanting to learn this. I think this is technically just "mending" since I didn't make a full loom. Whatever, still cool. Also fixed a bag. 

As I continue my meander through retro-FPS land, I've reached Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. One of the best "dueling games" scenarios of all time. They're both awesome, and they're different enough that (at the time) they could coexist. But only one of them is still decently active today, and I have a theory on that. Quake 3 was open sourced about 5 years after release. Unreal finally got sort-of released for free (still not OS) in 2024. And today, I can go find a server with real people (not just bots) playing real Quake 3 pretty much any time of day. Unreal Tournament, I've made it into exactly one "normal" match in a weekish of looking. There are plenty of weird servers. People still play instagib for some reason (HAAAATE), made even worse by these assinine "bowling alley" looking maps where you can't really dodge or aim. There was a cool one where the nuke launcher was modded into a jet you could fly. But, basically, it's dead....

 I had Rise  (the middle of the "modern" Tomb Raider trilogy) in my Steam account, so I installed it today. The series seems to be the defacto benchmark games (along with  Cyberpunk , which I don't have). It booted, and gave me a bunch of errors about how I didn't meet requirements, but it ran. I cranked all the graphics settings up and ran the benchmark. It did alright on the first section, but quickly tanked into the high teens/low twenties. I went back and removed all the ugly filters (depth of field, BLOOMFLARE, etc.) and adjusted the anti-aliasing, and was able to get to 29.something average. I didn't tweak the game much. I didn't install a "gaming kernel" just fired it up and clicked most of the boxes. Seems kind of pointless to worry about a top of the line card if a 5 year old laptop (decent spec, but again, not a GAMING LAPTOP!) with integrated graphics can chug through the default benchmark passably. What could I do with even a mid grade ca...

 My main laptop for the past ~6 years was a Gen 1 Thinkpad L13 Yoga. I bought it during COVID, figuring I'd need something decent to work from home (and not strapped to my desk, since I'd built a high power desktop the year before). I don't think I'd go with the Yoga today, it was a little too chunky to be super useful (I like it better on ultrabooks and the like). It got kind of flaky last year, but I refreshed it with Mint, swapped the battery, and it (mostly) seemed to be doing well. It was still old (and it wasn't exactly high spec when I bought it), but it chugged on pretty well for a while. Until I went to turn it on yesterday and it made the "my memory is borked" beeps. Since it has soldered memory, it's probably screwed.  So, goodnight sweet prince, you survived Covid, grad school, international travel, and even a couple drops (oops, that's probably what did it...)  Fortunately, I have an old Samsung Galaxybook my wife passed on to me. I Fe...

 That was a little more than a week... Return to Na Pali  is a classic FPS expansion pack. More levels (but not as many as the base game), some new guns, and enemies, slap it in a box and call it a day. Levels: It's not unusual for expansion packs to recycle cut content from the original game. I don't know that I've seen one quite as reliant on it as R2NP. Something like half the levels are rejects from the original game. On the whole, I think the average quality is about equal, but with fewer highs and lows. Unreal has a couple stand out (and a couple really annoying) levels. This set is just all around decent. The "transition" levels from the first game are mostly gone. Guns: Assault Rifle: A lot of games from this era (see Quake 2) seemed to be wary of giving you a good mid-tier rapid fire weapon. Like Quake 2, this is fixed in the expansion. This is a strong addition to your arsenal, given have poor the Stinger was (along with the ammo hungry minigun) Grenade ...

 Wine is clearly classic. Annoying fact, my favorite wine is a Rougeon. Very few wineries make a straight Rougeon, and just put it in blends. Which means I can't just be like, "Yo, pour me your Rougeon!" the way someone who likes a Merlot can. (I like a lot of Cab Sauvs, but there's too much variety there for it to be "safe.")

 Outlaws was LucasArt's follow up to Dark Forces. It's a historic game, both setting-wise (there are not enough Western FPSes and there never will be) and in terms of innovations (one of the first "sniper-zoom" and active reload mechanics, second game with Jon DeLancey). But tonight, I just want to talk about the intro sequence, and especially the music. Clint Bajakian is the best Ennio Morricone not named Ennio Morricone ever. Go listen to the whole thing. And the cute stuff like the maze for the level designer is great.

 Read this for a reading challenge. It's fine. In some ways, it reminds me of  Sailor Nothing . Nested time travel, multiple epistolary bits, swapping narrators. But, as I tell anyone who will listen: you gotta commit to the bit. Why do Una and Owen have almost the same voice? Why not work the multiple books angle (three in the first half dozen pages) more thoroughly? Why use the cipher only on the last page. Harrow is a more technically proficient writer than Gagnes (at least circal 2000 Gagnes). Her research is there. There are fewer typos (though I'm sure Tor gave her a hand there). But Gagnes worked his weird meta shit more in one chapter than she does in a whole book. Also, lame ass "hubrised by my own petard!" ending.

 Oh boy, Linux things.