Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20170225142933/@comment-1915529-20170621195956

Regardless, I’ve put the reminder in my phone. I might suck at timekeeping but I’m not an asshole. Bar an act of God (touchwood), I will be there on the 1st if you’re so kind as to postpone it a week.

I wonder if not liking Doom has helped you get through the 300 levels. So Mars is like a rubbish America with loads of funny Imps/Native Americans. Perhaps that is how all games that put you in an alien world should represent? It works, think about it for Quake, Unreal. It doesn’t work for Heretic because you are the native Indian in that game, defending your sacred land from Christopher D’Sparil.

What would you say Death, is the hardest level in DP/MA to ghost? I think a top contender would be the Bank. During my last play of DP/MA, I completed the Bank in my normal style and then reloaded the level. I then proceeded to ghost the level, doing a bit of role playing (not really trying to complete the level). In my role play I simply stole the documents from the security office and imagined the surprise the next day when the documents were discovered stolen but not a single guard saw anything and no one was found knocked out. I enjoyed it, the suspense and the anquish. I wish Expert difficulty completely removed the use of any weapons. A new difficulty, called Ghost, should have been implemented. But then if what you say about some things being impossible, does that mean that it is literally impossible to complete DP/MA as a ghost?

I don’t mind, afterall when I played Hitman 2 recently, I aimed to get ‘Silent Assassin’ rating on every level but the few later on that I only got ‘Professional’ on didn’t bother me. Perhaps I’ll have to make do in a similar way if I want to ghost Thief.

Kira’s story, along with many others (such as the story of the ISV-Kran) are interesting. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed that aspect of the game. Finding little bits of information that can pieced together is brilliant. But Kira, the crew of the Kran nor the suffering of the Nali’s are related to the main plot of the game which is to escape Na Pali. All the locations that you visit and learn about are merely places you need to get through. You don’t visit the Dark Arena in order to kill the Titan. You visit the Dark Arena because it’s the next location on your journey to escape. You just so happen to fight a Titan whilst you’re there.

I admit that my points made on Unreal can be attributed to a story driven game like Dark Forces. But the main difference I am making is (to compare to my point on the Dark Arena) is that the places you visit in Dark Forces are all major locations. You don’t just visit the Robotics Facility because you need to get to the other side of it. You are there to because you need to destroy it in order to further your mission of brining the Dark Trooper Project to an end. Yes, at the end of the day the Robotics Facility is just about killing enemies and getting from the outside in, just like the Dark Arena is about killing enemies and getting from the outside in. But the way the story is told and driven in these locations (and in the two games as a whole) are completely different.

However, one thing I do think about Dark Forces is the way the story is driven is fantastic. It’s all about investigating and acting on the findings of the investigation. Each location leads you onto the next with reason. You find a weapon in one level, locate the man who designed it who then reveals the location where the weapon was built. Then after all that you discover that the materials used can only come from one place, which just so happens to be the location of an Imperial Mining facility. Destroying that removes 1/3 of the Dark Trooper operation. You then move onto finding the other 2/3 in a similar way, following the trail to the end. Don’t get me wrong of course, Unreal is brilliant but it’s just got a different way to push you from level to level.

But yes you’re right, despite all the story in Dark Forces, every level is just running and shooting and getting to a certain point before returning to the start. No argument there.

Also have either of you two heard of Dusk? It’s a new game coming out this year based on Doom, Heretic, Quake. It looks really cool and is probably as close as we’re going to get to having the Quake 5 that I want. A modern game based on what made those games so good.