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Screenshot thread

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
Aye. It really isn't suited to Painkiller's gameplay, and it doesn't work at all well with Painkiller's movement/jumping physics.

I really forgot just how annoying it was to get through.

C'mon, you didn't like the jumping sections with the death falls and floaty controls?

I replayed Painkiller recently (and managed to play for the first time the expansion, Battle out of Hell), and I'm still amazed how the games slowly devolves: levels become less and less playable, boss fights become more boring and spammy, setpieces start to rule the level design instead of interesting set-ups..... every level of Painkiller gets worse and worse, ending up with a final level and a boss that's a travesty.

Battle ouf of Hell felt outright amateurish. Like, newbie Doom modder level. Some enemy designs were good, but level design was outright atrocious (Leningrad, Lab) enemy design was graphically inventive but the mechanics poorly thought (Leningrad again, great demon soldiers but copy pasted tank models and gosh why everyone has hitscan weapons. Or the nurses with bouncing breasts, scary stuff mostly for how bad the models where for something that I presume was intended to be "darkly sexy"). Or the first level, with the HP sponge children. Or the retarded new weapons, pretty much useless copies of the baseline weapons done just because.

Compared to Battle out of Hell, the Monastery is a work of art, with tons of secrets and even some clever battles. But gosh, never saw a game getting so bad so.... gradually as Painkiller. I can only wonder what the fan-made expansions are made of.
 

tormund

Arcane
Joined
Aug 15, 2015
Messages
2,282
Location
Penetrating the underrail
^Same thing is visible in Shadow Warrior reboot which is, surprise surprise, made by former Painkiller devs. It goes beyond them just running out of ideas, it feels like they get sick of their own game before they are done with it and drop any pretenses of creating fun levels or encounters (later part of Shadow Warrior reboot had some sort of base, lab with area with poisoned gas that looked samey, had bunch of HP bloated enemies and just keeps going, and going and going...).

BTW have you played Painkiller Overdose? That one was even further decline than Battle out of Hell. Interestingly, it had a level based around Japan (every level had p much completely different theme) that I was reminded of when I first played SW reboot. It was even filled with bunch of explosive crap that was way bigger hazard to player than to enemies (which would become a trademark of FWH games) . AFAIK it started as a fan made campaign and wasnt developed by people Can Fly, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of its devs later joined FWH...
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
Battle ouf of Hell felt outright amateurish. Like, newbie Doom modder level. Some enemy designs were good, but level design was outright atrocious (Leningrad, Lab) enemy design was graphically inventive but the mechanics poorly thought (Leningrad again, great demon soldiers but copy pasted tank models and gosh why everyone has hitscan weapons. Or the nurses with bouncing breasts, scary stuff mostly for how bad the models where for something that I presume was intended to be "darkly sexy"). Or the first level, with the HP sponge children. Or the retarded new weapons, pretty much useless copies of the baseline weapons done just because.

Compared to Battle out of Hell, the Monastery is a work of art, with tons of secrets and even some clever battles. But gosh, never saw a game getting so bad so.... gradually as Painkiller. I can only wonder what the fan-made expansions are made of.

To be fair Battle Out of Hell used levels that were cut from the original for whatever reason. I suspect People Can Fly simply reused what they had lying around and didn't finish in time or simply didn't deem good enough to be in the original game. Vanilla and Battle Out of Hell are still absolute masterpieces compared to what followed, though. Overdose and Redemption were indeed originally mods before DreamCatcher saw they could make some money there. I don't think a single developer they got to work on expansions after the first ever came back for round two.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
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A horse of course

Guest
Duke Nukem mods part trois

TamDuke

An impressive feat of level design cobbled together by a drunk, suicidal ice mongol, TamDuke is a cautionary tale of science being so busy asking "could I", that it forgot the most important question: "Should I?"

Comprising a handful of maps - based on what I assume pass for locations of note in the loose confederation of dirty hamlets that comprise the Finnish nation - TamDuke features some of the most detailed environmental design I've seen so far, certainly at least on par with the vanilla game. Unfortunately, the mod grows increasingly self-indulgent with each new level - maps growing in size and puzzles becoming more convoluted by the minute. Expect lots of obscure air vents, grates hidden behind posters, hidden switches, and in the worst case, a hidden walkway that's only visible when teetering right on the edge of a broken window. I had to refer to a developer-made youtube walkthrough several times. I think it appropriate that the penultimate map, climaxing in a massive battle with at least a hundred enemies plus every single vanilla boss from the original game, constantly glitches out in the final sequence, throwing over an hour's work out the window. Strangely, the very last map is rather more subdued, taking place in some sort of underground arcade.

I think the mod's biggest failing is the painful over-reliance on scripted enemy spawns. By the second map, you're already tired of the same trick of teleporting aliens behind you when you enter a room or pick up a key, and it only gets worse from there. My "favourite" was spawning 20 pig cops behind you in a narrow corridor. That said, if you could handle the pixel-hunting and puzzles of American Assault, you won't have too much to complain about here.

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Alien Invasion TC

Another vanilla-esque map pack that makes extensive use of custom art (particularly from other games), Alien Invasion is a three-episode (plus four secret levels) tribute to famous action, sci-fi and horror movies, with a little flavour from other sources. This results in a great variety of different themes and settings that, combined with the typical vanilla map length, makes this perhaps the best-paced conversion I've played so far. Expect to visit everywhere from space stations, moving trains and Nazi submarine bases to Cydonian pyramids and haunted hospitals. After dealing with so many nightmarish puzzle-driven mods, it was refreshing to find that over the course of 20-30 levels, the longest I got lost was for about 10m in one of the John Carpenter maps. Obviously, if you're a fan of such levels, you might be let down here, but I'd still give it a spin.

If I had to complain about anything, I would fault the mod for never really ramping up the challenge at any point. Though I enjoyed the fairly leisurely pace for the most part, you rarely get the sense of a crescendo in the action. There was also an annoying Nuclear Warhead puzzle where you had to solve an 8/10-button puzzle in 10-15 seconds, which I eventually noclip-ed through. The lack of new enemies, even some palette swaps or custom NPCs for the radically different maps was also a downer. Just giving the pigcops space suits or bloody overalls or something depending on the map. Then again I have no idea how much trouble it is to rip, recolour and re-insert Build sprites, so whatever.

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Critical Mass

A very short, 2-3 map mod which makes extensive use of custom art, weapons and enemies, and maintains an excellent pace of near-constant action right up to the final boss. Most changes involve swapping out weapons in favour of iconic guns from other games, so the Shrinker is now a BFG, the rocket launcher a railgun, the microwave gun powerful akimbo pistols and so forth. These changes extend to the enemies - Floaters shoot railgun charges, elite alien assault grunts fire mortar shells and so on. The whole experience is about 45m-1hr, shooting your way up a highrise (including the destructible lobby from The Matrix) and into a Nuclear facility, holding off robots, Pigcop tanks and vanilla bosses before battling a teleporting mini-Emperor who fires BFG and mortar shells with alarming speed and accuracy.

I can't really fault this one for anything beyond the length and lack of imagination in weapon choice, so unless you demand a bit of puzzling or switch-hunting in your maps, give it a whirl.

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Haunted Nukem

Another horror-themed mod that takes a lot of weapons and art assets from Blood, but tries to set its own tone rather than going the tribute route. Interestingly, many of the reskinned enemies can now be mutilated by gunfire, with heads and arms being blown off by most weapons. I'm not sure whether there's a locational damage system - the amount of shots each enemy took seemed to vary by quite a bit - but it's a cool little addition that helps increase the sense of reactivity and weapon feedback, something I've felt the vanilla game now lacks slightly compared to Brutal Doom.

The almost omnipresent darkness and hidden enemies means you can expect to edge your way through the five maps relatively slowly, but it's not a noticably difficult mod otherwise. Will probably take the average player an hour or two to finish, though it does seem to be semi-compatible with the original Episodes (I believe there are more extensive Blood TCs if you want that, though). Also, it would've been nice to have new or properly reskinned bosses and more custom weapons, but for the length you can't really complain. I also had to disable Polymer's dynamic lighting for the boss fight, but those sorts of performance issues aren't unusual with Polymer.

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A horse of course

Guest
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A horse of course

Guest
If anyone was interested in my Messiah screens, there's also an interesting analysis series by TalonBrave (Eradicator dev, thanks to Grim Monk for the link)

 

A horse of course

Guest
Kang Knuck'em mods part vier

God of War

Yet another cherry vanilla mod, with gameplay and content virtually identical to the original game, GoW follows Duke as he hunts down a new Queen alien that is spawning superpowered red-tinged grunt troopers. Environments range from cities, to a desert valley, space, an alien mothership, and an overrun EDF base on Mars. I don't recall any difficult puzzles and general level design and map detail is adequate, if unremarkable. I did like the addition of the firethrower as a replacement for the absolutely worthless freezethrower from the vanilla game. Worth a couple of hours, but there are plenty of mods that excel in all the same areas.

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Duke, It's Zero Hour

The Duke Nukem wiki states that this mod was originally intended as a licenced retail mod for DN3D, but was instead released for free due to reasons unknown. After playing it, I can suggest a few pretty good reasons. If you want proof that pure, unadulterated evil exists in this world, know that someone wanted to actually charge money for this shit. A Total Conversion in the true sense of the word, virtually all the weapons and enemies from the vanilla game have been replaced with new content. There are some passable if unimaginative new foes like the heavily-armed Cyberdisc-esque tanks or the rocket-launching terminators, but the bulk of the new enemies are just plain fucking annoying to fight. The first and most common opposition you'll encounter are irritating fighter drones that zip around in every possible direction and are a bitch to actually hit, and some idiotic raptor/alien creatures that leap about like squigs and take far more shotgun blasts than is reasonable within the bounds of human patience. Random explosions abound in every map, including some that spew mini-explosions in weird directions, killing the player from half-way across a hanger. Level design is typical keycard-and-switch hunting and I can't say anything particularly negative about it, though I found the general art style and environments to be off-putting, like they were from some bad 50s sci-fi book cover. Though not particularly long, I can't recommend this mod to anyone. Were it a full commercial title, it would've been bargain-bin trash even in the 90s.

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Dawn of the Pork

Not really a mod so much as a large user map with custom content, DOTP has Duke liberate a town of PigCop refugees from an alien virus that turned much of the population into zombies. The reason I picked this map was because it uses a few enemies ripped from Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown (PSX port) and I was interested in seeing them in action. The map itself makes skillful use of light and shadow to keep things moody as you shoot through the town, sewers, local businesses and courthouse, but obviously don't expect much actual tension or horror. A nice diversion, but the zombie Pigcops seem to use default PigCop AI and look stupid when they go prone, whilst underwater suicide drones are literally suicide drones...underwater, so they're basically just a reskin.

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Grins of Divinity

Another major Total Conversion that replaces most of DN3D's original content, GoV appears to be a passion project of the lead developer, with a cheesy backstory I never read and an ebook I similarly ignored. Originally intended as three or four full Episodes, only one seems to be completed. There are a number of jury-rigged mechanics added by this mod, such as being able to pick up and stack barrels, and apparently some sort of NPC interaction which I didn't see in action, but nothing that really adds to or improves the base game.

Initially I was quite impressed by the environments and wandering NPCs in the first level (made me think of TekWar, actually), but the new enemies seem rather stupid, the default grunts apparently intended to look like impish humans or a parody of hair metal fans. There isn't actually much time to wander around because the first level has a 4 minute countdown timer for some reason. Level 2 is a large dam which I got stuck in and had to noclip through due to the odd lack of any walkthroughs or LPs for this mod - the Duke4.net modder who compiled and fixed up the addon pack simply states "I have not played this addon since level design seemed too confusing. Use at your own risk!". The remaining six or seven levels wouldn't be out of place in a typical action movie - an island prison, an airport (with a MIDI Blade Runner remix), a passenger plane, The White House (or rather, the level begins in front of The White House...then makes you turn around and mess around in the city instead) and Area 51, which ends rather abruptly and lacks a proper ending confrontation of any sort.

Weapons seem oddly balanced - the pistol is pretty effective against most foes and has plenty of ammo available, whereas the chaingun takes something like half your reserves to kill a single enemy and doesn't even partially stunlock anything. The other weapons - an M16, rocket launcher and shotgun - behave as you'd expect.

All in all, nothing noteworthy about the mod aside from my irritation at getting stuck in a couple of places. Not as bad as DIZH, but still shovelware material.

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