Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20151224121621/@comment-1496755-20160329185615

Heh heh, can't you see I'm joking :P

I'm not so sure you're a modern gamer - you don't sit in a corner, waiting for the enemies to come to you. Perhaps you are a hybrid gamer, a true fusion of old- and newschool. Of course, we change and adapt - even I have adapted some modern practices when they are undeniably beneficial.

You've summarized it pretty well. Some of the things you mentioned could be found in earlier games, though they were more exotic than common features. Strife has lots of NPCs and a conversation interface, and what you say could affect the game pretty often. I know one Wolfenstein clone that had non-hostile actors, though some of them were "traitors" and would attack you, though you could not tell which ones, until you talked to them. Half-Life was one of the first games where NPCs were actually critical to completing the game. As for Episodes - they were a consequence of technical limitations, but also a product of the Shareware age. Id Software had done games without episodes before (Spear of Destiny & Doom II), but they were not shareware, they were "commercial" releases. Quake was shareware, so it had to have a distinct Episode 1, which would be available for free. And it was the last - starting with Quake 2, all of their future games were non-episodic. And this pretty much applies to the rest of the gaming industry.

In terms of strategy games, the late 1990's were dominated by StarCraft, of course, though there were some good obscure titles that I've played (e.g. Dark Colony). Your math thing sounds a little like me and chemistry/biology - I'm very good at them, but they just couldn't excite me enough to study medicine, as I planned to do at some point. I share your sentiment about numbers in RPG games - I remember how hard it is to decide which armor to use, the one with +2 strength or the one with +1 dexterity and +5% fire resistance. In the end I usually just picked the one that looks better on my avatar :P

And since you mentioned grinding - Diablo practically invented it, so you could definitely level-up this way in these games.

See - you play PWADs from the time when level making had not even started for real yet. Overall, the best and most legendary PWADs can be found in the "unholy trinity" of 1995, 1996 and 1997. Stuff like the Memento Mori series, Dystopia 3, Requiem, Icarus, Hell Revealed, Eternal Doom and many more... These were the Doom community's glory years, the time when there were entire dedicated teams of international WAD makers, who released big and ambitious projects. The release of Quake put an end to this golden age, though it also did contribute to it, e.g. level designers started to pay more attention to lights and the way they interact with the architecture. I'm sorry to say I missed these glorious times due to the lack of internet in this part of the world, but I did catch up during my high school years (I played the most famous examples of this period) and then some more in college. During the actual 1990's my experience was just like yours - crappy 1994 stuff :P

Same here, Death - I grew up with Corel and my mom used it a lot while making textbooks (I still remember helping her with one pretty big project - "Operative Veterinary Surgery", a textbook that is still in use today). We learned and used photoshop as a part of our JMC education, but I could never get used to it.

I tend to avoid wireless equipment due to my fear of the batteries dying right when I'm busy and in a big hurry. I remember a guy from college who had exactly this problem - he'd be all set to do something important or play some game and his mouse would stop working. And then he would start rummaging through his drawers, looking for fresh batteries.

I see the first video is up - I'll take a look now :)