All Kinda Classics

 My wife and I are on a cruise. One of my favorite parts of cruising is getting to try a whole bunch of cocktails that I'm interested in, but don't necessarily know how to make (or want to answer 15 questions for the bartender at a regular bar). I've been going in pretty hard on martinis this trip. Last time, they had the Vesper (James Bond martini-- 4 gin, 2 vodka, 1 discontinued apatrif that you sub with a different apartif and a little tonic), which I enjoyed way more than I expected to. I've been going more traditional. I've decided the following (in order of preference): Gibson: THE BEST! The pickled onion really ties it all together, and I don't have to say dry. It's a shame more people don't have cocktail onions in stock. But at least one of the bars on our ship does, so I'm good. Gin: Dry and with a twist Vodka: Olives

Call of the Machine is MachineGames' expansion for the Remaster. It reuses a bunch of expansion content (monsters more than the guns, because fuck you), a little Quake 1 content (because every id universe needs to be forced into being a linear series now), and one or two original enemies. Also one from the Playstation port (but they still left one out?) A common critique of Quake 2  is that it's sort of stuck between two generations of shooters. Quake  is a clear evolution of Doom. Weird maps that exist to be levels, piles o' monsters, blast everything.  Half-Life  and  Unreal  at least sort of try to be realistic, and bring the crazy factor down considerably.  Quake 2  kind of splits the difference, in a way that doesn't satisfy most people. Call of the Machine gives a kind of "what if..." approach, with 6 mini-episodes (your guns reset, it counts) hitting at different places on that spectrum. You start out on a not-quite-as-cool-as- Quake-1 ...

 Those are clearly classics. I was dumb and didn't take any pictures. Here's a picture of an obvious classic: Apparently Azteks have been cool for the last 5 years or so. I always thought they were cool. The SAFETY YELLOW is the canonical color. I went out tonight and saw one!

 I was looking at a game last night, and they had done some of the art with AI. It wasn't very good, but at one point there was some brainwashing/flashback memory/spot-the-difference bullshit. I thought maybe they'd used the glitches in the AI images as the spot-the-difference points. They did not. 

  College of Ben Franklin Heraldry at Yale

I will be an insufferable Harvard fanboy, since that's what the blog is based on. (Not really it's gonna be really freaking cool.)

 Nightdive generally does a pretty nice job with their re-releases. You get the usual concept art, but they often grab stuff like deleted levels, demos, etc. and include them. Quake 2  comes with two such demos. Neither is worth a real post (they're levels from the game with less stuff, yay!) but a couple general observations: 1. The decision (or at least the work) to make every everything as dark as possible was apparently made pretty late in? A lot of these levels are actually visible, which is a cool change. It's fun to look at vintage screenshots and see how everyone yanked the brightness/contrast up (and made everything washed out) to compensate. And the visible levels were there all along. To be fair, a few are actually even darker than in release. 2. The levels work a lot better as a continuous set. There's some debate on pistol start vs full run in Doom , but Quake 2 's interconnectedness is critical. These just felt like weird speed runs (some were very skippa...

 Unlike  The Reckoning  we did have  Ground Zero  when I was a kid. Looking back, I think a fair number of my  Quake 2  annoyances were mostly from it. This is a very traditional expansions, bigger, harder, slightly more technically developed than the base game. Rogue software's stuff is kind of hit and miss, but I don't think they have anything actually bad. They worked closely with id (literally closely, same building), and I'll be looking at more of there stuff as this series of posts continues. Big picture, this is a decent expansion. They looked at Quake 2  found some areas that were lacking and polished them, moved the difficulty up in a mostly appropriate way, and put together a couple cute set pieces. The overall design doesn't quite align as nicely as  Quake 2  did, but it's better than  Reckoning, Evilution , etc. I will note that the remaster team made some substantial changes to this. I think they mostly got it right, an...

 I dunno, was gonna do some more DQ  today, but this felt more timely. I don't think I've ever actually sat and watched a whole futbol game before, so semi-live-blog here we go! I like the way they do the national anthems. They actually sing along, instead of just awkwardly standing there while someone hopefully doesn't butcher it like they do in most US sports. Watching it in the lounge at the campground we go to in the summers. As always, it's very important to get into a pissing match about how much you like soccer. I don't know why, I just feel like this is common when I'm at a watch party. We're 2 minutes in, and the commentators have already gotten awkward. Oop, don't talk about refs. Oop, don't talk about war. 3:30 and the begging the ref for a penalty. This is a real professional sport. Don't ask questions. ~4:00 Spain's first shot on foal, almost immediately followed by a turnover for a second. Argentina gets possession and runs down...

 I beat Ground Zero  and it was better than Reckoning,  but not by much. Will get it an entry later. Quake 2 64  is also included in the collection, and was pleasantly surprising. It's a bit easy, but I did have to scramble for ammo once or twice on hard. It's short. I beat it in one afternoon/evening, and I didn't  no-life it (cooked dinner, did some stuff with my wife, etc.) You get the full Q2 arsenal. It really goes to show how pointless most of the xpack guns are. About 3/4 of the bestiary is there. The Medic is probably the most noticably omission. They aren't afraid to throw what they have at you. I think the first Tank is on level 3. It's nice to see them again after the Gladiator-fest that was GZ . The levels are smaller/simpler, but the AI handles them better as a result. Flyers can get in close, Gladiators don't get hung up on ramps, etc. Lighting is, dare I say, better (aesthetically at least) than in the original, and even with the low poly textures...

 Got approved for TSA Precheck and Global Entry today. Go travel. It's a classic thing. Like Herodotus.

 I've had a nice DSLR for years, but I don't use it nearly as much anymore due to not wanting to drag around so much stuff. I got a nice little durable pocket camera and took some shots this weekend. Went to the beach with some friends and even got a cool shell. Classic stuff: Go to the beach with people and enjoy the nature. Take pictures with a real camera.

 I tried to get into it probably half a dozen times over the years. 5 kind of clicked, but 3 never did. I think the problem is that I started with the random map mode. That's what I often do in turn based games. Pick a faction, pick the big map, build a big silly army, play it like an 8 year old. The campaigns are a lot better, though starting with the generic ass human faction doesn't help. Campaign two is demons and monsters, a big upgrade.

 The Reckoning is the first of the Quake 2 mission packs, dropping about 6 months after the original game. It adds: Enemies: 3 new guards. One with a crappy version of the Hyper Blaster, one with a laser (ugh, hitscan) and one with the new ion ripper. They kind of set the tone for the whole expansion. They're not substantially stronger than the original three guards, they're just annoying. The "Beta class" enemies. Brains (covered already), Iron Maidens (all of about a dozen of them, with homing missiles), Gladiators (with a shield and the shitty phalanx, thus making them weaker overall), and the Super Tank (same as before, but with a plasma shield).  And two actual new enemies. The Gekk, acid spitting xenomorph like things. They're pretty cool, and can climb walls and stuff, but get a little monotonous. Would've loved if they fought the Strogg, just to add some flavor. They seem to gib more easily than most enemies. And Repair Bots, which revive dead Strogg. ...

 I was going to do a post on the Reckoning, but I can't really talk about those monsters without talking about the base monsters, so here we go: The Guards:  Returning from Doom, the "light" (blaster-pistol), shotgun, and machine gun former humans. All have the same HP, putting them roughly in line w/ the pistol and shotty zombies from Doom, with no HP boost for the chaingunner. That goes to... The Enforcer:  Not much more dangerous than the guards, but with triple the health, so they can at least soak a couple shots. Sometimes works gun turrets, in a first for id. Gunner:  The Ogre (Q1) upgrade, with grenades and a machine gun. It's a good filler setup. Enough health to take two super shotty blasts. Most common enemy in the game.  Berserker:  A bit tougher, but limited to melee. Gained a jump attack in the remaster. Mostly just a bullet sponge that gets in your face to disrupt combat. Iron Maiden:  Rounds out the generic mid-tier trio. You'd think a r...

 Someone uploaded the original DooM shareware wad (ordering info and all) to the big 3 distros. There's also Freedoom  which, while I don't love some of their art/level design, is an incredibly cool project. By implementing free versions of every enemy, weapon, texture, etc. they make a base wad that lets you (with a source port) play all the pwads floating around. People are poking at a Quake version as well, but it's not as far along.  Get fragging.

 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...