Extra Punctuation: Golden Era of PC Gaming

[Breywood]

I've done a little bit of poking around with exploits. Like watching "invalid Paul" kill all the way to the exit of the 'Ton. Or getting a zyme vial at the statue when Gunther and Anna are camped out [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ih150NBolE&list=PL89A9A5E37702E4F9&index=4] at the subway station getting ready to take you to the Secret MJ 12 Lab. Fun times.

 

[ScrubberDucky]

I have never, ever wanted to hear anything said by Yahtzee out loud more than that last sentence. Not since I lost my Zero Punctuation virginity has he had me rolling on the floor, spasmodically twitching from lack of oxygen due to laughter. Well done.

 

[satsugaikaze]

I would pay money to see an official rendered video of Adam Jensen flipping the hell out on with the vending machines.

With Elias Toufexis actually doing that "WHO'S THIRSTY". That would be 9001x more glorious.

 

[Theysaid]

I really like this article because I usually try to do these types of things in game. You know, the kind of stuff that screws up the gameplay enough that you might have to reload because you can't progress further (but you're laughing your butt off) -- but it doesn't screw things up enough that the game crashes.

One of the simple things I always liked to do in Deus Ex was to throw stuff up in the air that would land on top of people's heads. If you hit them in the face or body it was ok... you got a canned response to those. But if you hit them on top of the head with anything, they would attack you. Instead of "not in the face!" it was "not on the top of the head!"

I know I spent hours in Deus Ex trying to do what I shouldn't do instead of trying to progress in the game. Eventually I'd move on with the game, but that's what made it so great... I turned the game into a small sandbox for a while, and when I was done I dusted myself off, reloaded the saved game, and continued with the story.

 

[weirdee]

Speaking of unintentionally breaking things....

We had another mention in The Escapist and the site has gone over quota. We should be back up in about 6 days, unless I forget to bring the site back up, of course.

In the meantime, please use the coralcache mirror: Coral Cache

J. P. Morris, 07/09/2011

email address

 

[Razorback0z]

Im totally with you because Deus Ex is not even the best example of created worlds with fuzzy edges and even fuzzier rules. I could write a book about Ultima Online year one and the crazy, funny and sometimes tragic things we saw go on in that universe before the fun police got involved.

Who can forget perhaps the most famous example of all for your point when a player managed to murder or (PK) Lord British during a speech in early Beta. Well UO just got crazier after that and as a career housebreaker in year one it was a source of endless enjoyment finding new ways to break the game and empty folks houses at the same time.

Stacking crates and marking runes on the crates, then opening a gate to the next level up and eventualy stepping through the roof of a house. Getting killed and standing inside the house and having a buddy cast Rez, which in the early days had a radius effect thus rezzing you inside the house. Or waiting for a passing healer to do it for you.

Training a pet mongbat to fly through windows and retrieve peoples stuff... camping doors for key holders, placing trapped chests... the list just goes on and on.

These days, your lucky if you can get any surprises from a game.

 

[Undeadpool]

Have you gone MAD??

YES! Because of these stupid invisible-wall games!

It SO absolutely DID exist! How about in Doom where you couldn't climb up any step higher than your shin? How about Medal of Honor where they'd randomly explode you for wandering off the path? Invisible walls were practically invented in the Golden Age, the problem with nostalgia is that we tend to forget the bad and only remember the good. A perfect example of this would be the people who complained Fallout 3 was too glitchy compared to its predecessors. And those examples are just off the top of my head.

I never played Medal of Honor, but the Doom example is not true. In Doom you always know if you will be able to walk to or through a place from the look of things. Very unlike "The Witcher", the worst offender on my list, where the game constantly forces you to walk detours because you're not allowed to jump of a tiny ledge or pier. Or the newer Call of Duty games, where you can jump over some things, but not others of equal or lower height.

It probably did exist in some games, but I can't think of any. And newer games are doing a better job at pissing me off about this.

Fair enough, I'm just a bit perturbed that people are more and more calling upon this "golden age" of gaming that, quite frankly, never existed. I've gone back to a lot of those older games, including the original Deus Ex, and they're filled to the brim with problems that people have either overlooked or forgotten across the years.
My best example of this is Fallout 3. When it was first announced and first released, there was a subset of people who went CRAZAY over every little flaw, claiming that Fallouts 1 & 2 were vastly superior. This was only a trifling matter until they started pointing out glitches. I wonder how many of these people had played Fallout 1 or 2 recently, because those games are two of the glitchiest I've EVER encountered.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

Yes, game devs should realize that the more freedom a player has in his actions the better the game can be. The games that restrict you the most are the most boring ones. That's the reason I never really cared for the "Assassin's Creed" series, after a while it felt like being on auto-pilot.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Yahtzee speaks the truth.

Being a jerk in a video game isn't about reading the "jerk" script and choosing to suck out ADAM from a child's brain. It's about drawing your pistol right after being ripped off by a merchant who only gave you 40 caps for your 200 cap item and shooting him right in the face, then seeing how long you could survive running around the town breaking into people's homes just to see what was in there before reloading the game and finding a different merchant to sell to.

It's living out those little, spiteful fantasies in our heads that we always dream up whenever we walk out of a situation feeling slighted. Conversations that embarass you and make you want to piss all over his Thanksgiving turkey, or seduce his girlfriend and send him the pictures of the act under a box of "cream-filled" cookies.

It's the id. Monsters from the id.

And the id hates scripts.

 

[DioWallachia]

Tyrian
The Vinyl Goddess from Mars
Operation Carnage
Dynamite Headdy
Alien Soldier
Thunder Force IV
Vectorman 1 and 2
Arcus Odyssey
Gunstar Heroes
Doom
Heretic 1 and 2
Hexen 1 and 2
Raptor: Call of Shadows
Duke Nukem
Shadow Warrior
Blood
Populous 3 The Beginning
Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 (i liked DK1 more because of its fast pacing and atmospheric soundtrack but loses point for the Direct Drawn problem that doesnt let you have more stuff on the map than it should)
Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver
MDK 1 and 2
Heroes 3 of Might And Magic
Sacrifice
Messiah
Requiem The Avenging Angel
Legacy Of Kain: Blood Omen (by Silicon Knights, yes, there was a time when they did good games)
Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
Legacy of Kain: Defiance

all of them made in and before 2003, where the golden age ended (as far i can remember). But i still have the free games to download games like:
IJI
Cave Story
Minecraft
Soldat
Hero Core
The Binding of Isaac (not free but from Steam and deserves a good recommendation)

I cant die happily that at least no more good games will be made after me

 

[Kvaedi]

I must be a complete jerk then. Every time I play halflife 2, during the bit after you put the suit on I end up stacking boxes together, stealing microscopes and throwing them in NPC's faces, and just generally trying to make an ass out of myself and get in places I shouldn't while causing as much chaos as possible. It wasn't until you mentioned it, but that really is something I loved about older games: I could act like a raving lunatic and watch just imagine the NPC's try their hardest to ignore my insanity.

 

[Chewster]

One of the funniest moments I've ever experienced in gaming happened randomly when playing the original Deus Ex. I had just gotten finished whooping Walton Simons, and he had fallen over, screaming but otherwise dead. As soon as he hit the ground, one of those big, dangerous lizard hybrid-things came over, and began to chomp on his body until it did that awkward explode-into-tiny-giblets routine.

I was speechless and was never able to recreate that again. I wished I'd recorded it.

 

[icydeadpeople]

"Who's thirsty!" is pretty funny but I think you could do one better:

Have Adam use his bust through the wall aug and say "OOOHHH YEEAAAH!"

 

[Antari]

This pretty much explains why I read your articles and watch your videos. You get it. Have you investigated cloning?