STRAFE is The "1996 Style" Hyper-Violent FPS We Deserve

[Steven Bogos]

STRAFE is The "1996 Style" Hyper-Violent FPS We Deserve

STRAFE is the game your 13-year-old 1996 self would have loved to play.

"STRAFE is the fastest, bloodiest, deadliest, most adjective-abusing, action-packed first-person shooter of 1996!" boasts developer Pixel Titan in the game's Kickstarter pitch [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strafegame/strafe]. This statement alone should already convince most to throw their money at their computer screens, but if you need some more, check out the deliciously retro VHS-style trailer to the right, and then tell me you don't want to play this game.

Pixel Titans, the geniuses behind this project, are asking for an oddly specific $185,096 to fund the game, of which $67,928 had been raised at time of writing. While the game obviously draws heavily from the likes of Quake and Unreal in terms of gameplay and graphics, it will have a few modern doodads to liven it up.

Levels will be procedurally generated, and infinite, and death is permanent. Furthermore, the blood splattered walls and giblets of your fallen enemies will remain indefinitely, meaning you can use the trail of blood and gore to mark your way through the level.

One thing that STRAFE is not, however, is an arena shooter. Pixel Titans have made it clear that it's not stepping on Quake Live's toes, and is instead bringing us a fully single-player experience.

[gallery=3767]

Each of the game's three weapons includes a secondary firing method and is affected by two types of powerups you can collect. Common power-ups affect your weapon attributes such as magazine size, damage, reload time and firing speed, while rare power-ups alter your secondary fire, like turning your machine gun into a mine launcher to set traps or splitting your shotgun flak at mid-range.

If you think this is a game that should be made (and you should), then you can throw money at it on its Kickstarter page [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strafegame/strafe], where $15 is the minimum required pledge to get a copy of the game.

You can also check out its awesome GeoCities inspired website [http://www.strafe1996.com/].

Source: Kickstarter [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strafegame/strafe]

Permalink

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I see this an awful lot and I don't know why I am posting on this thread of all of them buuut...

I think everyone is confused about why FPS games from back then were so good. It wasn't just because they were fast, had gore, lots of weapons, etc. That helped but the main thing was amazing level design. Everyone always suggests to me when I say how much I wish I could see another Doom 2, or Heretic, Hexen. They say, go play Painkiller, or this, or that. I do, and they are all boring level design where you walk into arenas and blast enemies. Yawn, yawn.

I get they are saying this isn't an arena shooter but procedurally generated levels won't come anywhere near as good as a solid sprawling well crafted design.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

The reason it's such a specific amount is that they must've paid $36,096 to make that bloody commercial. Probably. Seriously, that 'ad' was fucking creepy. Seriously considering getting it. Will have to see what the Australian audience will be like though, fast paced action at 250-300 ping WILL melt my face.

 

[Comic Sans]

I'm not gonna back the game as it doesn't sound like my cup of tea (and I'm poor cause bills), but that video was absolutely amazing.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Maybe I just wasn't playing the right games at the time, but every time I hear about this fabled, glorious, gore-filled 90s FPS of yesteryear...I just shrug and wonder what the hell you guys are talking about! What, Turok?! Duke Nukem 3d/64?! Body Harvest? Hexen?! Perfect Dark? Quake? Unreal? Alien Breed? GOLDENEYE?! DOOM?!?

WHAT?!?!

What classic childhood games were you guys playing that today's Gears of War, Lollipop Chainsaw and Gods of Wars leave you, metaphorically speaking, blue-balled for blood?!

From what I remember, there were a lot of square shaped, poorly animated, barely passable in a pre-school class, blood splatters from those games. I vaguely remember Turok allowed you to keep lobbing grenades at dead bodies, which would then scream and ragdoll as if just killed...but I haven't been harboring a raging stiffy for 20+ years since then. I just kinda smile and go 'That was fun. Moving on.'

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Wow, that ad was f'd up. It kinda remind me of the paranoid fear the mid 90s parents and media had of Doom and its successors. I was 8 in '96 so I had to make do with Chex Quest until I could buy Doom myself.

The procedurally generated levels idea is a bummer, though. I'd rather have a few well designed maps and a good mod community. Wolfenstein, Doom, and Marathon had the great level outline, big open areas not linear corridors of today's shooters. If STRAFE's intended level design is generating open levels, like ES2: Daggerfall, I guess it is at least better than linear runs. I just hope the dev team puts in mod support or mixes in some good human created levels.

 

[FogHornG36]

The NWO flag with hall and nash on the wall gave me a nostalgia boner

 

[Kahani]

If I want a fast-paced, old-school FPS with relatively poor graphics, why would I play this over something like Serious Sam, which is available on GoG and Steam for significantly less than this game? Or if you're looking for something with similar gameplay but looking more up to date, Serious Sam 3 and Wolfenstein: The New Order have already given us that, with the latter practically drowning in award nominations and "best game" lists. There's plenty of boasting here about how fast and bloody it is, but there's nothing unique about being a shooter with elements taken from older games. What does this one do that plenty of other games haven't already done? The only thing it does that none of the well-known shooters have done is procedural generation. And the reason I use the term "well-known" there is because a bunch of shooters have done it, they just all sucked because they replaced good level design with the same parts randomly mashed together over and over again.

Each of the game's three weapons

The game does not have three weapons. You choose one of three as your starting weapon, but there are lots more you can find while playing. Although they don't specify how many, and also don't seem to mention if you can actually carry more than one at a time.

 

[josemlopes]

Wolfenstein: The New Order have already given us that, with the latter practically drowning in award nominations and "best game" lists.

Its sad that only Classic Arcade Room gave it GOTY, in here it wasnt even up for nomination while others like Watch Dogs were.

 

[Kathinka]

I see this an awful lot and I don't know why I am posting on this thread of all of them buuut...

I think everyone is confused about why FPS games from back then were so good. It wasn't just because they were fast, had gore, lots of weapons, etc. That helped but the main thing was amazing level design. Everyone always suggests to me when I say how much I wish I could see another Doom 2, or Heretic, Hexen. They say, go play Painkiller, or this, or that. I do, and they are all boring level design where you walk into arenas and blast enemies. Yawn, yawn.

I get they are saying this isn't an arena shooter but procedurally generated levels won't come anywhere near as good as a solid sprawling well crafted design.

This.

The reason why shooters were good was (among others) because they were set in well designed maps that rewarded experimentation, exploration and resource management. Nowadays console controllers have made that almost impossible and have made shooters very two dimensional with pipe levels (not saying consoles are the devil or something. but they have undeniably changed how shooters are made, and I think it's for the worse). The modern-military-shooter-craze hasn't helped innovation and variety one bit either.

 

[josemlopes]

Nowadays console controllers have made that almost impossible and have made shooters very two dimensional with pipe levels (not saying consoles are the devil or something. but they have undeniably changed how shooters are made, and I think it's for the worse). The modern-military-shooter-craze hasn't helped innovation and variety one bit either.

Dude, really? You know that the games that popularized that were also available for PC, right? And even then games like Timesplitters (a game that was made just for consoles and works around the limitations of a controller) are basicly the proof of the opposite.

Also, you can play Doom, Serious Sam and Duke Nukem 3D perfectly fine on a console so it really has nothing to do with consoles or controllers but the actual shooter audience that exists both in PC's and consoles where a big chunk of it showed a lot of interest in linear pipe level design making it a popular choice for developers.

 

[Sosa Star]

I thought we'd grown out of the whole "ultra violence is the coolest thing!" Using it as a marketing point makes whatever is in the offering feel juvenile to me.

Pass

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I love that ad. But I don't care about the game enough to throw money at the devs. I wish them luck and if they reach their goal I might get it when it's released. But I'm waiting for Toxikk to step out of Early Access and into the light.

 

[Kathinka]

Nowadays console controllers have made that almost impossible and have made shooters very two dimensional with pipe levels (not saying consoles are the devil or something. but they have undeniably changed how shooters are made, and I think it's for the worse). The modern-military-shooter-craze hasn't helped innovation and variety one bit either.

Dude, really? You know that the games that popularized that were also available for PC, right? And even then games like Timesplitters (a game that was made just for consoles and works around the limitations of a controller) are basicly the proof of the opposite.

Also, you can play Doom, Serious Sam and Duke Nukem 3D perfectly fine on a console so it really has nothing to do with consoles or controllers but the actual shooter audience that exists both in PC's and consoles where a big chunk of it showed a lot of interest in linear pipe level design making it a popular choice for developers.

Eh, I'd argue that it was simplified to be usable with the lowest common denominator, namely controller input. That's not just movement, but overall complexity and game design as well. (Look at System Shock 2 for example). Sure, the concept proved popular and the games were available on PC as well, that's not what I'm contesting. Just that it has wiped out the complex-level type of games like Thief or Deus Ex or System Shock that were popular on PC too. There's things you just can't do with a controller. If you want to go back even further to quake days, watch this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU#t=126] from 2 min 6 sec on and try telling me gameplay like this would be possible with a controller.

 

[deleted+75193]

DELETED

 

[Smooth Operator]

That ad was certainly the most metal thing I seen in recent history, but I'm not paying money upfront for a new 20 year old game.

I doubt I'll even try to play it from what I've seen.

 

[Vigormortis]

Let's see now...

* 'Retro graphics' which are nothing more than shitty modern graphics that attempt to feign an 'old school' look by coping the Minecraft big-pixel, blocky look? Check.

* A promise of 'classic, old-school gameplay' that isn't delivered, save for the shallowest of mimicry? Check.

* An ad campaign relying on stroking players nostalgia boners? Check.[footnote]Though, it was at least mildly entertaining, even if it was trying too hard.[/footnote]

* Odd and seemingly eccentric funding goal on Kickstarter? Check.

* A team of designers claiming they're 'bringing back the classics', but seem to have no real grasp of what made those classic games great? Check.

* Using the 'everything's procedural!' tagline as if it's representative of good design? Check.

Yep. Nuts to that. I grew up on those "old school shooters", and this isn't doing anything for me. At all. Nothing about it seems like the team behind it has any real appreciation for what made the classics from back then so.....classic.

Still, best of luck to 'em. I'm glad someone's still attempting to bring back the fast-paced twitch shooters of yesteryear.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I actually found that ad surprisingly hilarious in a goofy and self-aware type of way. But as for the game, it does nothing for me really.

To quote an already over quoted figure on these forums, "...in today's enlightened, joyous, post-Michael Atkinson days, a violent game trying to sell itself with gore comes across as hopelessly quaint, even a little bit backward."

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Eh, I'd argue that it was simplified to be usable with the lowest common denominator, namely controller input. That's not just movement, but overall complexity and game design as well. (Look at System Shock 2 for example). Sure, the concept proved popular and the games were available on PC as well, that's not what I'm contesting. Just that it has wiped out the complex-level type of games like Thief or Deus Ex or System Shock that were popular on PC too.

There's no reason why consoles should be limited in their level designs, outside of the processing power to render them. Most of these complex-level type games aren't even present on PC to any significant extent anymore, I don't think this has much to do with simplifying it down for the lowest common denominator.

There's things you just can't do with a controller. If you want to go back even further to quake days, watch this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU#t=126] from 2 min 6 sec on and try telling me gameplay like this would be possible with a controller.

Now this is just disingenuous at best. Sure, it would be difficult to do this with a controller, but it would be difficult to do with a keyboard and mouse as well. If you truly think the footage of an insane speed run is representative of the average gamer's experience with Quake, then you are either fooling yourself or lying out of your arse.

Someone completed Dark Souls using a Guitar Hero controller, but that doesn't mean that it's anything more than one freakishly dedicated gamer.

 

[Madame_Lawliet]

I want this.
I want this bad.
I haven't actually, physically, backed a kickstarter since the one for Little Witch Academia 2 (although I did come close to backing the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared campaign), but I might just go for this one, it's been too damned long since we got a real first person shooter (Wolfenstein:TNO was a step in the right direction but it just didn't do it for me) and I just don't have enough faith in Doom 2016 to get too excited for it.
Whether or not I end up backing it though, I will definitely be watching this one.