1998 sure did happen! And there were video games all up in it! So let’s talk about way too many of them!
It’s weird to have watched this series change: what started as a time filler in between “bigger” essays has itself become one of the biggest projects in scope I’ve ever done. And what started as talking about one game each year has slowly become more and more about looking about each year in context and cross-comparing what was going on. I think this is more useful and interesting, but it is also undeniably more resource and time intensive to produce. Hopefully the results continue to bear fruit, though.
Sources:
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-cabal-valve-s-design-process-for-creating-i-half-life-i-
https://valvearchive.com/archive/Other%20Files/Publications/The%20Final%20Hours%20%28Geoff%20Keighley%29/The%20Final%20Hours%20Of%20Half-Life/The%20Final%20Hours%20of%20Half-Life.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/stop-motion/the-shadow-king-selick-lasseter-pixar-222390.html
https://medium.com/counterarts/pixars-first-woman-director-c0fdb600e531
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/pixar-john-lasseter-boys-club
00:00 Half-Life
22:38 Unreal
30:35 SiN
38:16 Thief
41:12 Tribes
45:16 Jurassic Park: Trespasser
53:06 Klingon Honor Guard
57:11 Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
1:00:32 Blood 2: The Chosen
1:04:09 Xtreme Paintbrawl & Nam
1:07:36 Delta Force & Rainbow Six
1:11:34 Outro
source
Holy shit. Welcome back!
I forget how GOAT'd Tribes was
19:55 damn I’ve been on a Valve video kick recently and I keep being reminded out how Valve, the GOAT video game company, has had its golden age and has basically retired. Makes me so sad
YOU CAN PLAY TRIBES ASCEND! its a huge disservice as a games journalist to not learn/mention that. There is a dedicated albeit small community that play many times a week.
Truly appreciate what labors of love these videos are. Grateful for the chance to hear about all these games that have vanished from the conversation
I've never been more pleased to own an original Unreal CD. I remember being blown away by it at the time, and still go back for nostalgia once in a while mainly just to walk around the opening crash area.
It feels so, so barren now, walking around such an empty open space compared to modern games that would no doubt have it littered with collectibles and materials and waypoints and so forth, but all the same, it's an interesting walk back once in a while, maybe very few years.
Unreal also lacks humor, that HL has
I never played any of these games as a 90s console kid, but I just love your analysis and passion. Great series!
Was wondering where you'd been. Little did I know you were working on a badass hour long episode!
Finally someone who doesn't have blurry textures enabled.
Bro did you just say 'cromulent'?
(Amazing video btw).
Trespasser has always fascinated me. The amount of hype and for how long it was built up and it just came out and was instantly forgotten. It tried so much but was so alien to play that it got a drubbing. I reckon you're spot on that someone could do a refined take on its ideas today and make something neat.
I'm looking forward to when you hit 2000 cos I feel you have to talk about Alien Resurrection on PS1.
Now I am listening to KR Rankin on repeat just like I did in my childhood. This is all your fault.
Jokes aside, damn this series continues to be so cool. It's so easy to lose perspective about where all these games came from and how their strengths and weaknesses came to be the way they are…
As someone who bought SiN back in the day, I want to mention the unfinished state the game was released in.
Wikipedia summarizes better than I can: "Some of the more widely reported bugs include a total lack of sound in the game, an end of chapter boss which couldn't move, a level on one path through the game not being finishable and general game crashes. Although these bugs were quickly patched up, the damage of the negative publicity had already been done, especially with the majority of the press reviewing the unpatched version. The patch was exceptionally large; at the time it was normal to expect a game patch file to be up to 5 MB in size, whereas SiN's first patch was over 31 MB. This was at a time when a substantial fraction of internet access was via dial-up, causing Activision to take the unusual step of offering to send CDs containing the patch to any owners of the game who did not have sufficient bandwidth to download it from the Internet. "
That ending… that perfect ending.
Tribesnext is still kicking.
Gonna be honest, I came to this video knowing there were going to be needlessly broad generalizations and opinions passed off as fact, but as someone who hates playing games like Dark Souls, that game isn't unfair, it could be easier for people that want to enjoy it but can't, but it assumes a level of willingness to learn from everyone, and provides coping strategies.
12:59 Half-Life indeed, with all of its glory, popularized this mistaken trend that a game must have a good story, which is incomprehensible to me, and gave birth to extremely boring titles and dumb mechanics such as press F to show respects. If you want good story, go watch a movie or read a book. A game must have good gameplay, end of the story. Or in any case, if it has some sort of argument, this must be easily skippable (see Doom 2016/Eternal). Why players and studios mistake games for interactive stories is beyond me. Games ≠ interactive stories. HL also introduced the equally mistaken idea that actually fun gameplay < realism, which gave rise to boring titles such as Escape From Tarkov.
Only the indie sphere is producing good games now (titles like Hrot and Ultrakill, for instance), because they know these things.
Feels like I've been waiting for the System Shock 2 video for five years now. Cannot wait to see how that game comes across to people who haven't seen it.
Shazbot!
As an addendum to Rainbow Six: The console version (N64 at least) did NOT have the snap-on auto-aim or the slow strafe. I remember playing it to 100% completion and needing to micro-manage the AI planning so they could deal with the enemies my controls were too limited to take care of.
I had this going on the second monitor as I was enjoying the System Shock remake. The ending was a pleasant surprise.
it's easy to talk down now, but when the internet was slow and rare and this was the best around… Well shit, I spent sleepless nights as an 11 year old playing until the sun came up during summer break.
bro what are you talking about. big boobies are awesome.
Really happy you're back! ❤
It's so disappointing to me that there isn't more gaming content like yours on YouTube. I think you talk about games exactly as they should be talked about.
Thanks for these videos! I loved the concept and execution from the start and now seeing a 1h+ Children of Doom video drop feels amazing. I appreciate how you get into each game in a way that makes me excited even for the ones I haven't played (Unreal, Tribes).
Sin was actually the game pitted against Half-Life at the end of 98, but it was rushed on release and required a whopping 500mb patch to get past an early section in the game.
Blood 2 being a buggy mess, Duke Nukem Forever 2001 never coming out and Sin's problems signaled the end of the edgy action character fps for a while. Well, there was still the Postal series, but those games turned into their own weird beast.
A friend of mine at school had Klingon honour guard. Our computer couldn’t run it and I was so jealous. Completely forgot about that until watching this. Going to buy that hot mess and go to town this weekend.
I feel the pain regarding JP:T's procedural animations. Rain World is does beautiful procedural animation, and I'm happy to see the effort made in UE5's IK tech.
Play spark the electric jester 3 its an amazing indie platformer inspired by the sonic adventure games
The protags bumbling delivery during the "Bet you haven't seen anything like this" scene gives me strong if unintentional Venture Bros vibes lol
If you want to see what Tribes was really like search for the Best of the Best videos, theres only a couple but they still give me chills having played with all of them. There is no game like it.
In regards to Blood 2's random damage, wasn't random damage a common thing in early shooters? I'm pretty sure Doom and Doom 2 have it, but I don't know about Duke or BLood.
yore videos are always a treat. one of the best in the biz for my money
Your videos are so good. I always get a portion of goosebumps during your next episode teaser.
Always so glad to see you still posting great videos.
I've been watching you since I started my career in games and its videos like yours that really make me see my passion for games in a different light.
That Jurassic Park Trespasser game needs a remake. It could be amazing today with modern boob physics.
Not that I mind System Shock 2 being the next video, but wasn't there a "No Immersive Sims" rule?
hurf lurf, followed by hurf lurf turf and possibly hurf lurf thirft
Looking forward to hear what you've got to say about SYSTEM SHOCK.
the appraisal of Black Mesa is spot on, but i'd add another thing about it that i really like — it's a self-contained space that feels appropriate to the corridor-shooting material. my pet peeve with half-life 2 is that it wildly expands the scope of the game's world (from offices and labs in a single facility to entire cities, Combine towers, railways, and coastlines) yet doesn't actually let you go beyond what are basically a few extremely linear hallways. it's like the opposite of that Todd Howard "climb that mountain" meme — an entire game of "you see that thing over there? you can't go there or access it".
Be aware that something..unseemly.. is shown at 18:48. Not sure if you can do anything about it but it might affect your monetization so hopefully you can.
Love these looks into gaming's history, especially when over half the runtime discusses game's I've never heard of. We all remember the classics, but the weird, the mediocre, and the idiosyncratic deserve to be remembered as well.
the early ads for it were all about how smart those little eye guys were, it's really strange. almost as bad as the "u r not e (red e)" and romero is going to make you his b
I don't know why, but despite me being subbed I never get a notification when you upload a new video. Maybe the algo isn't a fan
Omg when the Unreal animation came up a wave of nostalgia hit me like a brick. HL, Unreal and UT99 where formative for me. I played them every day to escape from being bullied and got into game dev because of those games. Great essay!
Truly one of the most underappreciated channels on YouTube. This is fantastic stuff, mate
i'm surprised he didn't mention forsaken as a follow up to descent