I love physical media because it’s so easy to get rid of it whenever you want. Are you sick of a game or don’t want to touch it ever again? Resell on the used market for a few bucks or give it to a friend or a young neighbor that might appreciate it. I like to keep a lean collection of games that I actually care about and might replay eventually.
Another World had the whole cinematic gaming figured out back in times the floppy disk, lengthy intro included. Took about 15 years for the rest of the industry to catch up.
Elite procedural open world universe in 3D all the way back in 1984. The sequel in 1993, Frontier: Elite II even let you land on planets.
Magic Carpet, fully destructible terrain in 1994 along with an interesting mix of (very light) RTS and FPS. Later on Red Faction and Red Faction: Guerrila offered even more destructibility. While we have some modern games like Teardown that focus on destruction, it’s still not a commonly seen feature in games. Magic Carpet is also still the most “3D” game I am aware of, supported almost everything, VR headsets, red&green glasses, even MagicEye-style auto stereograms.
EF2000, flight simulation with a full dynamic war simulated in the background. Falcon 4.0 improved on it. Carrier Command might be an even earlier example of similar mechanics. Mainstream gaming still hasn’t really had anything similar as far as I can tell and relies on scripted events instead of a simulated world.
Boulder Dash Construction Kit (1986), might not have been the first, but one of the early games including a fully featured and easy to use level editor.
I’ve never played Total Annihilation or Supreme COmmander back in the day. This game is so amazing that it makes me sad that I never did. But the good thing is, I can enjoy it right now. It’s still technically in beta, but it’s already a complete game that you can enjoy, and I strongly recommend you do.
They called it like “alpha+” or something. But yeah, I think I’ve only had a couple of bugs over the two+ years I’ve been playing. I’ve had more bugs in fully released AAA titles.
Why are they being called "boomer shooters"? My boomer parents didn't want anything to do with them. The older millenials were the ones playing them. Most boomers don't even like video games.
Which probably lifted it from the 1992 movie "Army of Darkness", starring Bruce Campbell:
Ash: Alright you primitive screw heads, listen up. You see this?
This...is my boomstick! It's a twelve-gauge double barrel Remington. S-Mart's top of line. You can find this in the sporting goods department.
That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids,Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt steel barrel, and hair trigger. Shop smart, shop S-Mart.
I have so many fond memories of Jurassic Park Trespasser. I remember my dad picked it up for me right around launch time. I had read the previews in PC Gamer magazine and was fully into the hype.
The game was really attempting VR before we had VR. There was no HUD. Your lifebar was a heart tattoo on your chest that emptied as you took damage. There was no ammo counter for your guns. Your character would say things like, “feels full” or “feels a little light” to give you an estimate of ammo remaining.
The biggest flaw, apart from the broken AI for dinosaurs, was just like VR, you had to aim manually. You could turn and twist your gun freely which meant you had to aim down the sights. In VR, in 2023, with motion controllers, this is amazing. But in 1998, with a mouse and keyboard, it was really awkward. It’s a game I never finished.; Probably never even got close to finishing. But I was still in awe of the world they built and freedom offered in 1998.
So, the physical release is just... actual garbage? Like sure, someone may proudly display it in their bookshelf or whatever, but then, it eventually becomes trash, and there's no reason to keep any of it because there's no physical copy of the game which can be resold or even borrowed out to friends?
That's not a "physical release", that's a piece of merchandise, as useful as a Funko Pop.
Using FACEit anti cheat and dropping Linux is a bad look. The game also doesn’t have any sound effects except for bullets. The moderation is also very strict, beware.
Also, the teams behind ESO and the mainline titles are not the same. The main team that made Skyrim, Oblivion and the others is focused on Starfield now, and probably for the next three-ish years with the post-release content.
Came here to say this, just because it has voxel style graphics doesn't make it a boomer shooter. I would say it's definitely a regular FPS in the style of Battlefield or modern CoD vs a boomer shooter like Wolfenstein or modern examples like Warhammer 40k: Boltgun or Ultrakill.
I agree, it is a very fun game and captures the classic chaotiveness that I got from playing Battlefield 2 back in the day.
I mean its just a shooter that follows in the footsteps of wolfenstein/doom with very maze like designs with a reliance of colored key(cards), secrets in walls, where you are typically holding your whole arsenal at once. I wouldn't really call BF1942 a boomer shooter or any of the older BF games part of the genre, which is mostly mirroring.
I think System Shock belongs here too. It was an immersive sim in 1994, was one of the first games to make use of audio logs, and had 3D models and environments before Quake. It initially released on floppys without voice acting so it didn’t sell too well, and it wasn’t until later that it started getting more widely appreciated as the groundbreaking title it is. Another thing is that the controls and graphics can make it a bit of a pain to play today - this was before WASD and mouselook were standardized.
FACEIT is yet another completely useless, doesn’t-actually-work, trust-the-client anti-cheating tool. Basically, it makes it so that cheaters (and the game publisher) can claim cheating isn’t happening because, “there’s an anti-cheat tool” but in reality it doesn’t stop actual cheaters.
The entire purpose of anti-cheat tools appears to be to stop casual Linux gamers from being able to play the game. Microsoft has a big part in it as well because the very same intentional vulnerabilities in Windows that hackers use to install undetectable rootkits are what get used by anti-cheat software.
If Microsoft wanted they could close those vulnerabilities by making all privilege levels above administrator (of which Windows has two which is insane) inaccessible to anyone but Microsoft. Instead they just collect money from 3rd party vendors to sign their driver encryption keys, inherently trusting those vendors not to make software with vulnerabilities. It’s a recipe for insecurity and Microsoft likes it that way. It acts as a form of vendor lock-in.
Anti-cheat tools pretty much all work with the same basic assumption: Trust the client. What’s the first rule of network programming?Never trust the client!
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