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Quake First Person Shooters (Games)

Returning to Castle Wolfenstein 167

Posted by Hemos from the back-into-the-thick-of-it dept.
Robert writes: "Voodoo Extreme has posted an interview with id Software regarding its upcoming next-generation engined sequel -- Return to Castle Wolfenstein. " Mmm ... this may be the first person that gets me back into it. Sounds gorgeous.
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Returning to Castle Wolfenstein More

Returning to Castle Wolfenstein

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  • Re:swastika (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, it's not an issue in the US. We believe in freedom of speech and realize banning something as silly as a symbol won't stop the hatred. It only tends to drive the hate deep underground where it can boil and grow until a spark ignites it into a full blown war. France bans it because they were owned and are ashamed of the fact they laid down like a $2 hooker for Hitler and Germany bans it because they're ashamed that they fucked Europe like a teenager on his first trip to the bordello.

  • Re:You bet.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >Cyborg Nazi-SS-Demons in the shots...man, thats creepy, is this how you are seeing us germans?? I hope not...

    There are two smartass responses I made up to this. I can't decide which one to post, so here's both:

    #1 - Of course we don't view you that way! We're an enlightened people, and we realize that there are as many Nazis in Germany nowadays than there are here. We just view you as Cyborg-Demons.


    #2 - Unfortunately it is true, we do view you this way. But it is not our fault! We only see Germans in the media, and not how they are in real life. We must remedy this situation immediately!

    We must show America that real Germans are regular people too. To do this, we must show them pictures of real-life Germans. But not just anyone will do, for to counteract the vile images shown in games, we must spread images that are just the opposite.

    So gather all the pictures of German people you can, but make sure they are only the most beautiful examples you can find. Better to limit the search to those of the fairer sex who are still in the prime of life. Also, they should wear no clothing, as the human body is a beautiful thing.

    So, my friend, send me all the pictures you can find of naked German women, aged 18 to 25 and I will... um... distribute them to all of America! Thus ending this horrible plague of misinformation.

  • Straighten it out. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First, Return to Castle Wolfenstein isnt being done by id, It's being Done by Gray Matter Studios, second, It's using a modified Quake3 Engine. id's next generation engine is still in development, and it will be used for Doom 3.

  • Re:Green Blood. was: Re:swastika (Score:4)

    by drsoran ( 979 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @04:06AM (#125854)
    The Nazis in the German version will be replaced by big purple dinosaurs that sing children's songs and fluffy pink bunnies with menacing looking buck teeth. The guns will be replaced with bubble blowers and the sound effects will all be replaced with sounds of children giggling. The environment will be changed to be bright pastel colors and the mission will be to blow bubbles at as many pink bunnies and purple dinosaurs as you can before they grab you up and hug you to the point that all the joyous love bursts your heart. It's so cute. Castle Fluffenstein.
  • Very immediately! Check out the download times:
    File Size: 1357K bytes.

    Average Download Times
    (Your download time may vary)

    14.4K Modem - 13 min., 14 sec.
    [snip]
    T1 - 0 min., 0 sec.

    Instant file transfer!


    --
  • Maybe this time they won't have you kill off Hitler in only the 3rd of 6 misssions.

    From memory, I thought there originally only were three missions. I thought 4, 5 and 6 were added later as a bonus pack. It was a long time ago now, and I could be mistaken, but I'm reasonably sure that's how it was.

  • know that germany will ban the game on the first day it hits stores

    Actually, Germany would probably have banned the game anyway. From speaking to friends who develop games, they typically have to make modifications for the German market such as using green blood, rather than the traditional human red variety. Apparently, realistic violence isn't allowed in German games. However, they release the "full gore" versions anyway, and usually have up to a couple of weeks of boxes on sale in stores before it's banned, and they have to replace it with the tamed down version. They do this, because there's a certain status to owning the full gore version, and it helps drive initial sales (which apparently are sufficient to justify the cost of the recall when it does get banned).

  • Of course I remember.. however, Return to Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II also had the guards at the desks with the alarms. "Halt! Haus pass!"

    Man, I loved those games.
    --

  • The last time I played a version of Castle Wolfenstein was the terribly bad sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I still have it on 5.25" for the Apple//. When I think of CW, I don't think of some sweet 3D shoot-em-up - I think of a subpar game that had 19 or 20 controls (qwe/asd/zxc to aim, and similar combinations on the right side of the keyboard to move) and horribly digitized sound effects and godawful graphics. Yeah, I did see CW nearly a decade ago for the PC and it was deemed best as 'kinda cool', but it just seems as if they're beating a dead horse on ever-continuing sequels.
  • The law only prohibits "public exhibition" of such symbols, so it is surely illegal to wear a SS uniform in the street, but on a video game it's not clear.

    Some games (Mircroprose's European Air War, for example) have had on problems displaying historically accurate markings on WWII German aircraft, swastika included. But unlike RTCW, they can argue they are historically accurate.
  • France bans it because they are ashamed of the fact they laid down like a $2 hooker for Hitler Please stop repeating that lie again and again. That does not make it true. 90,000 French soldiers were killed between may 10th and june 25th 1940. That's about the same rate as the worst WWI slaughters. Or, about 1/4 total US losses for the whole war, Pacific included, in 6 weeks time.
  • I still prefers Sci-fi stories, becuase of the
    strange and weird scenarios you can have.

    OverLord
  • Now this is strange. I liked Q2 but *hated* Q1 and Q3. I guess I liked the more techno feel of Q2 than the Gothic mood that 1 and 3 seem to have.

  • Re:"id's upcoming FPS"? (Score:3)

    by msouth ( 10321 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:16AM (#125864) Homepage Journal
    What the HELL kind of first post is this?? NO misspelling of "first", NO reference to sex, and, worst of all YOU APPEAR TO HAVE ACTUALLY READ THE FRIGGIN ARTICLE!!!

    You clearly HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE DOING!


    --
  • heh. I remember. But..

    I doubt they can recreate the best parts -- like hand copying cheat codes with friends over lunch, or the friend who got ahold of a level editor and a good map of our school, and changed the guns to shoot pencils and the various gaurds to resemble 'favorite' teachers and admin...

    the big nasty guy was our principal.

    yeah...you can never go home.


    rark!
  • stay a while! stay forever!!!! ahahahahahahaha

    hummer
  • What about all that legal stuff that France was having Yahoo deal with, where they couldn't advertise Nazi collectors' items? I could see the possibility of it having to be adjusted there. The game's not out yet, don't be so quick to flame.

  • My experience of the original CW and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein was on the Atari 800 - I don't think I ever played the Apple version - but it was a *great* game with much more depth than Wolfenstein 3D.

    Don't get me wrong, the graphics and controls were clunky, the speech was barely recognizable, but it still had loads more strategy than Wolf 3D. The emphasis in the original Wolfenstein was on stealth -- in order to avoid detection you could sneak up on guards, stab them silently, steal their uniforms, and hide the bodies. If another guard saw you, he'd raise the alarm and chances were you were soon toast.

    Wolf3D was a fun game, and very visually spectacular for the time, but I even playing it for the first time, it seemed shallow and repetetive compared to the tense cat & mouse play of the original game.

  • Also in the game are these other highly creative enemies: knights, dogs, zombie dogs, zombie x-creatures, zombie knights (with red arm band), and the truly innovative SS Officer Who Turns Into A Zombie Before Your Very Eyes.

    Don't forget the red raccoon zombie dogs, the teleporting SS officer, the teleporting SS officer with missles, and the truly innovative teleporting SS officer that fires missles in eight directions at once!

    All this from iD, the "we spent five minutes making up this cheezy sci-fi plot so that parent groups and the media won't crucify us for making another realistically violent game" people.

  • It must be "old game day" at Slashdot.

    New Wolfenstein eh? I hope it has a link to babelfish for the german translations.
  • This reminds me of something I just read on The Onion recently. There is a What Do You Think [theonion.com] poll about the WWII memorial. The answers are all funny, but I laughed out loud at the response of the 2nd guy on the left.

  • On the subject of creativity (Score:4)

    by rossarian ( 31967 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:50AM (#125872)
    ..we are able to add some incredibly creative enemies like the zombies, zombie knights, and x-creatures

    Also in the game are these other highly creative enemies: knights, dogs, zombie dogs, zombie x-creatures, zombie knights (with red arm band), and the truly innovative SS Officer Who Turns Into A Zombie Before Your Very Eyes.
  • Anyone remember the original? Intruder Alert! Get That Humanoid!

    dave "feeling old"
  • Of course I remember.. however, Return to Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II also had the guards at the desks with the alarms. "Halt! Haus pass!"

    You're referring to Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.

    It was a great game, though.
  • Half-Life is built on a heavily modified Quake I engine, not Quake 2. Most of the Q2 engine's advances over the Q1 engine have been added to the Half-Life engine by hacks and tricks.

    While it's pretty neat to see just how far Valve has managed to push a five-year-old engine, it's time they stopped resting on their laurels and put together something new, as opposed to merely milking the cash cow (Blue Shift, anyone?)

    Since Wolf3D was almost the first shooter I played, and the first one that really grabbed me, I'm looking forward to the new game. I do hope, though, that the level designers take a cue from the likes of Half-Life and Deus Ex and make the gameplay a little more diverse and complex. Not to be badmouthing, but the gameplay in most FPS moves like it's on rails.
  • Morally speaking, killing Nazi's is easier to justify than killing Japanese soldiers or Isreali stormtroopers.

    You were doing great until that part. Morally speaking, if you make the determination to kill a person or group of people based on their beliefs (or race, national origin, etc), then you have done no better than the Nazis themselves. I know it's hard to swallow, but that's what morals are all about: doing what's right, and not just what's easy.
  • >Obviously Mr. Red-White-and-Blue hasn't been
    >paying attention to the motherland. The
    >Confederate Flag is being banned all over the
    >southern states.

    Nothing of the kind is happening in the south.

    What is happening is anti-racism and equal rights groups are BOYCOTTING (or threatening to do so) the tourism industries of those more primitave states whose GOVERNMENTS endorse the confederacy.

    In some cases, said governments have bowed to economic pressure (or the threat therof) and removed the PUBLIC endorsement from the confederate flag.

    But NOWHERE is there a law stopping any given bigoted, hatemongering redneck from displaying the confederate flag, or the swasika, or whatever, on his own, PRIVATE property.

    The equivelent would be if the city of, say, Bonn, were to adopt the swastika as it's city seal and display it above public buildings. Then, after a public outcry, and watching the tourist dollars dry up, realise that GOVERNMENT endorsement of racial hatred is a BAD idea, and remove the swastika from PUBLIC buildings, but still allow individual bigots identify themselves as such.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Shouldnt that name be changed to NVidia Extreme or GeForce Extreme or something of the sort???
  • No, they were the first to hear the announcement. PC people still get it first since they have been a devout following of nVidia much longer then Mac and their ATI co-branding. And it's not even available yet for Mac silly.
  • HUPAPA! [chain gun rattles....]

    (and what about all those secret doors... running down walls hitting the space bar :)
  • And don't forget the Lots'o Identical Twin Brothers Who Also Dress The Same [voodooextreme.com] German soldiers.
    --

  • Engine. (Score:4)

    by Gummbah ( 72706 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:30AM (#125882)
    Actually, they use the Q3A engine with the terrain enhancements. Not the "next-generation engine", which is for the new DOOM.

    ad

  • What I remember about the game from the 80's was the hacked version that circulated called "Castle Smurfenstein"...instead of Nazis, Smurfs roamed the castle and you shot your way through them. Now THAT's a game I'd love to have updated.

    Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com

  • The original Wolfenstien on the Apple ][ was so sweet. I think for me it was the first PC game that had actual speach sounds in it. The first games that I ever played on the Apple ][ was "Dragons Eye" and the "Olympics". Wolfenstien was ten times as cool as those games. Only "Wizardry" was cooler.
  • ...dont you relise that he is saying that the French people though very hard against hitler... have YOU ever tried to get a hooker to lay down for $2... very, very difficult.
  • its not economics... or it may be economics, but it seems to me that it is very hard to be creative these days. Its not that easy to write a devent plot, for a game, or a movie. And just think, they spend over 100 mill on movies these days, and still cant come up with a good story, how the hell are games people going to do it on their small budgets.

    Halflife was quite good, because it seemed to involve you in the game play, much more that a cutscene might.

  • ...whether you are there or not (Score:4)

    by mgblst ( 80109 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @05:44AM (#125887) Homepage
    Enemies will patrol, or work, or talk to each other whether you are there or not, and often without you triggering their action.

    ... if the talk and no-one is around to here them, then do they make a sound?
  • Not to insult or anything, but if you really want a good single-player FPS, you owe it to yourself to try out Thief, Thief 2, System Shock 2, or Deus Ex. It sounds like some of the interactive stuff that has been in those games for years is starting to make it into the eye-candy laden Q3-derived stuff.

    Honestly, after playing Half-Life, I thought I had tried the greatest single-player game ever. Then I tried some of these others I just mentioned, and I no longer consider games like Elite Force or Blue Shift as anything more than the game equivalent of a comic book. And I'm not talking graphic novel, either. Compared to those, these other games are head and shoulders above them. Gameplay isn't dead, it's just been hiding inside Warren Spector's head, from what I can tell.

  • Oh yeah--I forgot to mention, but this interview is with Kevin Cloud, who is from id. But that still doesn't make it id's game!

    ~=Keelor

  • "id's upcoming FPS"? (Score:5)

    by Keelor ( 95571 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:06AM (#125890)
    According to the interview, and just about every other bit I've read about this game, this is primarily Gray Matter's game (formerly known as Xatrix), with some development input from id. Let's not forget the little guy!

    ~Keelor

  • i agree. but some people wont understand that i wont start hunting nazis in the real world only because i like to kill them in 3d.

    That is not the reason for the ban at all. The reason for the ban is to suppress people's ability to express and share Nazi propaganda, symbols, songs etc. Stamp on their heads long enough, and people will want to do it anyways.

    - Steeltoe
  • This is hillarious. You could include a (TM) :-)

    - Steeltoe
  • I'm not familiar with the Mac, but on PC we use(d) software timer interrupts or DMA (preferrably) to be able to play samples and do other things "at the same time". You could use software timer interrupts to playback on the PC-speaker too (but that truly sounded horrible and with varying quality depending on the speaker). To do it in the main game loop would never suffice quality-wise, not in a tight loop either (as the game would halt while sound being played). I guess nowadays you could even use threads, but DMA is the best alternative since it's hardware controlled and frees the CPU (but not the bus).

    Thank god Microsoft released Direct Sound. No more varying quality of code from different game-producers from the DOS-era. Microsoft is not all evil through the bone.

    - Steeltoe

  • It wont know all the historical background that well, and if it sees then these banners in real life, it wont just think them bad, but be strongly reminded in the game. In that way their resistance to Nazi Propaganda may grow somewhat less.

    Exactly. And for the very same reason, the popular game Doom made a generation of kids want to be ugly, flesh-ripping zombies. That's why we have such a problem with them these days.

    See, most people don't realize that kids actually want to identify with the people who are getting the living shit blown out of them throughout the entire game, like the imps and so on in Doom or the Nazis in Wolfenstein.

  • Wasn't the whole point to Wolfenstein to run around and kill a bunch of Nazis? We need the swastikas to know who to kill...

    jred
    www.cautioninc.com [cautioninc.com]

  • I like this line (Score:3)

    by Big Toe ( 112240 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:30AM (#125896) Journal
    "However, through the genetic mutation, experiments, occult overtones and raising of the dead, we are able to add some incredibly creative enemies like the zombies..." I wonder how long into the "creative process" it took Gray Matter to jump to the incredibly creative enemy of a zombie. I can see it now; Dude1 - "Okay boys, we can make human enemies and undead enemies. Lets be creative in our selection." Dude2 - "Well why don't we put zombies!" Dude1 - "My god, you should get promoted for your ingenius efforts!" Blah
  • Wasn't there like 2 million guys killed in the Somme offensive, WW1? Make 90000 sound pretty small...

    --

    "I'm surfin the dead zone
  • Oh yeah, Beach Head II! Loved that game. My favourite bit was during the prison break phase, if you shot the escapee he would say "hey, don't shoot *me*!" That and the GIs landing on the beach who would shout "Medic!" when they were shot ...

    And yeah, it was "Impossible Mission" ... never did finish that game. That fact doesn't quite seem so important now as it once was :)
    --

  • Maybe this time they won't have you kill off Hitler in only the 3rd of 6 misssions.

    And hopefully they'll keep all the german sound bites for when the guards die, etc. "Schutzstaffel!" Bang! "Mein Leiben!"
    That was my sole reason for owning a Soundblaster.

    One more thing I notice right away from the screenshots is that they've gone and made the world all dark and depressing like Doom and Quake was. Wolf3D was kinda cool in that all the rooms were brightly lit, of course that was cause there was only one brightness level throughout the game...

  • When I git my first PC Wolf3D & Dune 2 were the games that i couldn't stop playing. I just bought The new Dune game and it's a little slow on my system, with The new Wolfenstein & TF2 & Duke ukem Forever coming next year I think I'm gonna be needing to get one of those new 1.4Ghz Athlon's a a GF3. Mike
  • Of course it's NOT Black and White, it's Wolfenstein another completely different game. Duh

  • The only "decent" card I have seen in standard high end mac's is the Rage 128, which IMHO blows. I have never dug around inside a mac, but hopefully you could throw a G3 in there. They have APG slots right?

  • In the UK, Sky digital has two channels devoted more or less to games, Game Network (223) and dot-tv (567). There have been numerous shorts showing RtCW. Must say it looks fun - I like the guys who pick up the grenade you threw and throw it back.


  • To repeat what another poster stated (and has mistakenly been moderated down), redskin is a racial epithet.

    You don't see the LA wetbacks or the Tremont tar babies. How about the California cooters or the Hackensack Hoes for the WNBA?

    Or are those names ok for you?

  • exactly.

  • German here too, and actually i liked the first part. I also love Indiana Jones wich is about the same Nazi Hunting stuff like Wolfenstein, so wheres the problem? But anyway, one thing making me wonder were the Cyborg Nazi-SS-Demons in the shots...man, thats creepy, is this how you are seeing us germans?? I hope not... Greets from sunny Munich, Lispy

  • Um...how about teaching a little history? (Score:5)

    by clary ( 141424 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @06:28AM (#125907)
    It isnt as easy as you say. Imagine a kid playing that game. It wont know all the historical background that well, and if it sees then these banners in real life, it wont just think them bad, but be strongly reminded in the game. In that way their resistance to Nazi Propaganda may grow somewhat less.
    My kids will know the basic historical background of WWII by the time they are playing FPS games. How pathetic is it that someone can grow up and not know at least the general outlines of one of the most important periods in the last century?!

    My kids have grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles who can talk to them first-hand about WWII. I make sure they get a chance to spend time with those relatives. I also talk to my kids about things like this when they come up. And they do come up often enough to provide ample opportunity for education.

    Come on folks. Teach your kids about the world, so that they can handle its challenges and face its dangers. Don't just try to shield them from the icky parts...that is a losing battle.

  • Well you know with this new AI, the guards have a resting state where they'll 'smoke and check maps'. Still that doesn't mean the poor guys get bathroom breaks. After all, they're nazis.

  • Re:Killing Nazis (Score:3)

    by Prof_Dagoski ( 142697 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @09:46AM (#125909) Homepage

    Well, I seem to remember a couple of FPSes that got some bad press for just the reason you mentioned. I haven't any of these, but I saw some stories here and there. The first was Kingpin--I think--where you run around in the inner city blowing away drug dealers who, according to the short piece I read, were invariably black. Then there's another game called Nam. You're running around killing black pajamaed VCs. I mainly heard this game sucked. And, Red Neck Rampage pretty much turned the entire rural South of the US into a caricature. I'm not concerned with Castle Wolfenstein because the target is the uniform rather than a caricature. Even so this is something to look out for. And, hey, if you're offended, don't buy it, talk to your friends and community about it too. Freedom of Speech works both ways.

  • Please, my dear clueless friend, SHUT UP. This game is completely legal in France.

    And, once again, once America frees itself of its absurd anti-nudity laws, maybe it will be able to teach lessons.

  • I used to play this on a friend's Atari 400 (later he upgraded to an 800) in my pre-teen years, and was delighted and fascinated by it. He swore the game spoke German, but it sounded like white noise to me. ("SSCHHZZZSCCH" - "Hear that? They said 'Achtung!'")

    Back then you could get somewhere in the game if you cunningly concealed your identity by stealing an SS uniform, but ever since Doom you have to blast your way through a wall of gore.

    Don't get me wrong, I love the mad violence of Quake and the Quake-alikes as multi-player games, but Wolf 3D II sounds like a cheap rip-off of a somewhat less cheap rip-off. Unless there's some more compelling reason to play against bots other than they're wearing swasticas, and on better hardware than I've got you could see the sun gleaming off their belt-buckles, I'll give it a miss.

  • The original Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I spent many hours playing these games. Although I liked the pace of Castle Wolfenstein better, I liked having the knife in Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. It really added variability to the difficulty of the game. I prided myself of being able to silently assassinate all of the guards in the bunker with my knife. No bullets!

    It also reminds me of the first time that a computer game creeped me out. In the final room where Hitler is marching back and forth in front of his officers, when everyone yelled 'Heil!' for the first time I nearly jumped out of my skin. Amazingly enough, this was done with the crappy Apple ][ speaker.

    I could never get in to the whole 3D FPS thing.

  • Macs were the first computers to have the GeForce 3!


    Refrag
  • All I remember is running out of ammo and searching every chest to find some, only to find "Sauerkraut" or "Bratwurst".

    --
  • Last month's PC-Zone magazine in the UK had a good article about the supposed link between Video games and violence. Its conclusion was that violent events like Columbine are far more down to American culture than any game. The best way they illustrated this was by comparing the US to Japan, where video games are incredibly popular, yet violent crime is very low. Neil
  • > I guess they'd be in jail for life.

    On the plus side, they'd have had practice breaking out of said jail.
  • I remember a smurf patch for Doom. All the explosive barrels were replaced by smurfs with TNT around them. When you approached one, they started to shake and tremble, and when you shot them, they exploded in a great blue splash. I nearly died laughing first time I saw it...
  • Yeah, and they're probably all running around in warehouses full of crates. Or secret laboritories with rivers of lava running under metal bridges. Wait, this is a "realistic" shooter: must be acid instead of lava.
  • The guy uses the word "incredibly" four or five times in this short interview, to describe just about every aspect of the game. I think the game will be credibly realistic, but I doubt it's nearly as much of a quantum leap as this guy says it's going to be...I doubt any of us will really be incredulous.
  • This lunchtime I went into a model shop in Leeds city centre.

    They'd recently had a delivery of kits of the more obscure German WWII aircraft. These kits were produced in Germany by Huma.

    The paintings on the box had the swastika replaced by a group of four squares, the sort of image you'd get if you added extra bars to a swastika.

    This logo looks remarkably like the Windows logo to me. Even more offensive.

  • Way back (well, ~97 or so) when they first started, they pretty much just covered Voodoo/3dfx stuff. Sort of how Stomped used to just cover Quake, IIRC. And they expanded to other things, but I guess decided not to change the name since everyone already knew it as that. Someday, no one may get the Voodoo reference.
  • Ban (or throw in jail), the people. A symbol has no inherent power, except what you give it. And not give a mini-history lesson, or start another war, but maybe if your country honored its treaties and went after Germany after the Polish invasion of '39 - when Germany had almost no troops in the West - rather than wait to get overrun, you wouldn't have to worry about banning some vectors (which used to have a positive connotation). The largest army in Europe up until to their surrender was France's. As for the fellow who mentioned the US's anti-nudity laws, well, don't think a lot of us don't agree with you.
  • System Shock 2 is probably the scariest game I've played. Those screaming monkeys freaked me out to no end. And the gameplay was great. I like it better than Half-Life, though I love Half-Life too. It was a shame that it got buried amidst a slew of other FPS games.

  • Green Blood. was: Re:swastika (Score:3)

    by Rothron the Wise ( 171030 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:55AM (#125924)
    Apparently, realistic violence isn't allowed in German games.

    Violence in games and movies are allowed, but it's illegal to advertise for them, and they have to be sold in specific adult-only stores (usually the same stores where you find hard core pornography). This will of course cripple sales beyond the point of a german port, so as a result, most violent films released in Germany are heavily cut, and most games have green blood or none at all.

    Swastikas, and other nazi symbolism are of course strictly forbidden, but I've read somewhere that Gray Matter will be making a Swastika-free version for the german market.

    That would take all the fun away from killing nazis if you ask me...


    A penny for your thoughts.
  • Godwin's Law. (http://www.catwho.net/godwin.html)

    This topic is finished.
  • Good post!

    Also, if any of you guys are interested in an _old_ war-movie pertaining to this, check out "The Young Lions". It asserts that neither side had a monopoly on good (or evil) intentions during the war ...pretty unusual for Hollywood IMHO.
  • Actually there are no big purple dinosaurs in the German version.

    Just posters of John Trovalta smilling and holding a scientology book called dinetics. Also it is rumnoured there are posters of Hubble the founder of scientology in the last levels. Oh you have to beat Hubble in the end to win the game instead of hitler. Its still the same game expect that it takes place in a hollywood mansion instead of german castle. Germans ban everything hatefull expect scientologists.

  • I was just thinking about this. I just deleted thief 1 off my system. The first level was great but the second was insanely hard and I have no idea what I am exactly suppose to do. I did pick the hard level so maybe the could of thrown me off. I have no idea who this begger is and where the stupid arm is. Anyway I am really waiting for doom3. IT looks like its going to rock! However I am older now and want a better gae then just fraging deamons and eyeing the graphics. Anyway games take away productivity and I am quite poor right now in my life and plan to use my computer to jumpstart my once promising IT career. Perhaps in a few years I may give it a try after I use my comptuer to like learn things and beniefit myself. Oh, one more thing. How do you beat the second level of thief 1 with the hard difficulty level selected. :-) I might as well ask. Anyway I hope doom3 is loaded with atmoshpere as doom1 and thief are.
  • You could use the same argument against a kid watching Indiana Jones. Actually, I watched it when I was young and I think I knew enough to understand that Nazis were bad, and I did play Wolf3d when I was young too.
  • The only other games in that era I remember with speech were "Impossible Mission" (or was it "Mission Impossible" and Beach Head II for the C64.

  • Will they be supporting a Linux version? The article didnt mention specific platforms. Here's hoping!

    I'm rather hoping for a Mac port, myself. I suppose the nice thing is that if they make it for OS X, then the people buying it would have to have a reasonably high end machine already -- would cut down on some of the "oh, I thought my video card was better than this" returns to Best Buy.

    --saint
    ----

  • Killing Nazis (Score:5)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @04:47AM (#125948)
    While I don't think the point of killing Nazis in the game is Nazi-glorifying, I have lately begun to wonder whether or not the game is in bad taste and whether they point to some hypocritical double standards.

    Yes, I know, "it's just a game", but I can't think of another game anywhere where you run around and kill an identifiable group of people, no matter how evil they are deemed to be. Can you imagine a game where you're a US GI trying to escape from a Japanese POW camp with Rising Suns everywhere, killing caricatures of (probably bespectacled) Japanese soldiers and invading Japanese labs where experiments are being conducted on Filipinos and Chinese and American servicemen ? What about if a game were released where you are a Palestinian in an Israeli prison and you walk through Star-of-David-festooned hallways trying to kill Israeli stormtroopers while trying to halt their nuclear weapons research program ? How well accepted would those games be ? What kind of uproar would we expect then ?

  • They could perhaps take the same approach the developers of Giants did. When shipped, blood was green and breasts were covered. Remove/rename/edit a file, and the red blood returns and the breasts are uncovered. This little feature wasn't documented, but made it into PC Gamer's review of the game, and most likely showed up on many a gaming site.
  • I'll grant you that Final Fantasy has not been over hyped. I'm fairly satisfied with the amount of preview that I've seen. My skepticism stems from the fact that I am very excited about seeing it, which makes me nervous that its going to be a let down.
  • Wait for the reviews before you get all hot and bothered. I can't count the number of times I've been all excited about something and found out later that it was complete and total rubbish. Pearl Harbor is a notable example. Or to be all excited about something and then find out that its really bug ridden and mediocre ( Black and White - if you played it for more than 10 hours ). The only thing I can think of that has come close to living up to expectations is Tribes 2, despite the bugs.

    Before you let the screenshot mania kick in, just take a deep breath, and go play some tribes, or counter strike. When the game comes out, we'll see how it is.

    BTW, I hope that the upcoming Final Fantasy movie proves me wrong about pre hype.

    Captain_Frisk

  • Interesting cameo (Score:3)

    by imipak ( 254310 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @05:18AM (#125962) Journal
    ...by British ex-Prime Minister John Major [voodooextreme.com] as what appears to be some sort of mad scientist :)

    Judeging from the screenshots, this is the game that's finally force me to upgrade my P2-233 to something with a bit more poke.
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • It's not about the engine, it's about the gameplay experience. Having the latest and greatest 3D effects and the prettiest pictures don't mean jack if the gameplay sucks. This is where I'm hoping RTCW excels, and if the graphics look really good then that's just a bonus.

    Most people don't play games just to look at the pictures.

    Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups. [thedaythatcounts.org]

  • Re:Oh No! not a re-run of that Nazi-glorifying gam (Score:3)

    by ocbwilg ( 259828 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @06:07AM (#125965)
    As if Columbine has not taught us a single thing, here come ID with another Nazi-glorifying festival of blood, guts and gore.

    Yeah, I remember Columbine! I can't wait for this game to come out so that I can be persuaded to don a trenchcoat and shoot all of my high school classmates!!! This will be so awesome!!!

    Oh wait...I'm 28 years old and not in high school. Damn. Now what? Hold on...the 10-year class reunion is coming up! Kick ass!

    (And yes, this was supposed to be sarcastic. I'm not a violent person at all.)

    Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups. [thedaythatcounts.org]

  • Re:Looks awesome (Score:4)

    by ocbwilg ( 259828 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @05:36AM (#125966)
    Yeah. When the hell are the full immersion games showing up? We've been promised for years. I want the gogles and the surround video effect! I'm sick of staring at a monitor, I want to lay back in a lazy boy, slap on the goggles, and have some (clean, non x-rated) fun.

    Non-xrated fun? You must be either gay or a woman! (Just kidding...don't kill me.)

    Seriously though, there is more to a game than just how pretty it looks. There are some games that are very highly immersive without having to use Else 3D glasses or multi-million dollar VR technology. "Half-life" was fair at it when it came to immersiveness. But the all-out champion in the category was "Thief: The Dark Project." I don't think that there has been a game since (with the exception of Thief 2)that has come close to creating such an intense sense of environment (especially when played with EAX audio). It was unbelievable. Granted, the graphics weren't all that hot, but the gameplay + the immersiveness of the game was enough to get me hooked.

    The comments about using stealth and the various "states" of the guards awareness are very much like the way that Thief worked. I'm hoping that RTCW will be a nice Half-life/Thief hybrid. Looks like fun. That, and the pictures are pretty.

    Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups. [thedaythatcounts.org]

  • Oh no!!! Flashbacks...Easter egg? (Score:3)

    by somethingwicked ( 260651 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:28AM (#125969)
    But will I still get electrocuted when I walk into walls and sound like I just won a free game on a pinball machine???

    Do the SS still yell "Rach-Rach" when they see me?

    When I am out of ammo, can I still trap a standard guard in a corner by walking up to him, hold him hostage, steal his ammo, load my gun in front of him with it and shoot him?

    Do I get to have someone else aim and shoot while I move?

    GOD, I hope SOMEONE remembers the 80s version of this game, or this is going to to look REAL stupid!! *grin*

    All that said, I wasted SO much time playing that original version.

    What woulde really cool is to put that version as some kinda easter egg in the new version

  • I remember these situations as being particularly immersive:

    1. Thief (and Thief II), played on hardest mode such that you couldn't kill anyone. (BTW, you're a thief, there's no reason you should be able to kill a guard in a swordfight. Thank goodness one game FINALLY got the thief character correct, at least on hardest mode.)

    2. Duke Nukem, running through the mountains with the eerie alien siren/engines wailing (don't know which.) That went on for hours and really got you feeling despaired.

  • Yet another example of recycling. I did a double-take when I first saw this, because there was a company called Grey Matter in my old home town that did games design back in the early nineties. They did sports games for Sega, but they went bust a few years ago. For a second there I thought they'd been resurected, but no such luck.

    "What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
  • Here's the goofiest example I've come across, somebody wants to ban Minesweeper from all versions of Windows because it offends land mine victims. WTF? The object of the game is to mark mines and not get blown up. It's not like the game shows people's body parts flying off in all directions if you lose.

    Some people have far too much time on their hands.

    "What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"


  • yes that is true, but the case is still different here. normally games like doom with explicit violence dont get banned on the first day because the government doesn't ban the game themselves. they don't do anything against this until someone comes to them and says: there's so much violence in this game, it'll have a bad influence on kids yada yada. so they'll play the game and decide about its potential danger then. this usually takes a few weeks. but even then the game doesn't get banned because of the violence (it's put on the index as they call it), you can still sell it to adults (people >18) but you cant advertise it etc.

    but with the swastika it's a different thing. it's actually illegal to display the swastiak in public so they wont wait until some concerned mum or dad will come to them, they will ban it right away themselves. and ban means it won't be allowed to sell it AT ALL. i think it's even illegal to own it.

  • swastika (Score:3)

    by thopo ( 315128 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:33AM (#125981)

    hmm they will have some problems because of the swastika they use everywhere [voodooextreme.com] in the game. i know that germany will ban the game on the first day it hits stores (or it probably wont even hit stores).
    but what about other countries? is that an issue in the US?
    guess i'll just have to import the game from the UK or the US.
  • > But the all-out champion in the category was
    > "Thief: The Dark Project." I don't think that
    > there has been a game since (with the exception
    > of Thief 2)that has come close to creating such
    > an intense sense of environment (especially when
    > played with EAX audio).

    I agree with that. It was probably the first game, that really treated sound as essential part of the overall game-play, as opposed to a mere background filler. Incidentally, it came with my Soundblaster Live Platinum...a good choice for a bundle. Of course, the fact that Looking Glass folded after creating such an awesome game was shocking, to say the least. Eidos performed some CPR and is now selling the games (Thief III is in the works).
    Unfortunately though, it's not available for Linux (yet). If you're interested, I strongly suggest calling their support number specifically requesting a port to Linux. As an alternative, vote for it on the Tuxgames.com petition site.

  • Re:Looks awesome (Score:4)

    by NeoTomba ( 462540 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:27AM (#126009) Homepage
    "But technology wise they don't mention anything that Half Life doesn't already do."

    Maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but the engine for this game will do a LOT that Half-Life doesn't already do. Half-Life was made using the Quake 2 engine. Since then, iD created the Quake 3 engine which added (most noticably for most gamers) pretty graphic effects like curved surfaces. Now I don't know much at all about this generation of engine (I imagine it must be, what, the 6th generation for iD, starting at Wolf3d and counting up with each game except for Doom 2?) but from looking at those screen shots, the visuals are light years beyond what Half-Life could do.

    Now maybe, as far as an interactive environment goes, this offers very little. But isn't half of creating any realistic envoronment whether or not it LOOKS like a realistic environment?

    This certainly looks more realistic than a lot of games I've seen.

    -NeoTomba

  • Trouble in High School (Score:5)

    by Rayonic ( 462789 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2001 @03:59AM (#126012) Homepage Journal
    Heh, this reminds me of when a bunch of kids in my high school got in trouble for installing a few copies of the Wolf 3D on a couple of the computers.

    Did they get in trouble for installing games on school computers? No. They get in trouble because it was violent? No. They got in trouble because the game "displayed Nazi symbols." i.e. Sometimes there would be a swastika on the wall, etc..

    I tried explaining it to the vice principal of the time, "Uh... in the game you're an American soldier and you have to kill the Nazis. I even think your guy is Jewish." But he would have none of that. There were Nazi symbols on those computer screens, and darnit, somebody was in big trouble. I don't remember what happened to the kids, though. I suppose nowadays they'd get expelled because the game involved shooting. Add Nazi propaganda, and I guess they'd be in jail for life.

  • Maybe this time they won't have you kill off Hitler in only the 3rd of 6 misssions. And hopefully they'll keep all the german sound bites for when the guards die, etc. "Schutzstaffel!" Bang! "Mein Leiben!" That was my sole reason for owning a Soundblaster. One more thing I notice right away from the screenshots is that they've gone and made the world all dark and depressing like Doom and Quake was. Wolf3D was kinda cool in that all the rooms were brightly lit, of course that was cause there was only one brightness level throughout the game...
  • Maybe this time they'll put in some of the old game functionality, such as bribing guards, keeping your passes in order, etc. I think I'm getting TMJ from all these shoot-em-ups. Aus pass! There is!

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