99 lines
6.3 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
6.3 KiB
Plaintext
s$
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$$ .d""b. .d""b. HOE E'ZINE #1076
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[-- $$""b. $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
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$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ss$$ "Dynamo Warez"
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$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ by Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
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$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ 05/15/00
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[-- $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
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$$ $$ "TssT" "TssT"
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Game warez have really come apart lately; I don't know, maybe it's
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because I'm so much older now, but the games just don't seem very fun
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anymore. For instance, when I was a young warez d00de el1t3 HST c0urier,
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the vast majority of the games that I pirated were FUN; now when I pirate
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the best I can hope for is an FPS that pretends to be something else.
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Half-life or Thief, for example; the reasons these games have been
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considered SO GOOD is not because they're GOOD games, but rather because
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they're FPS games that pretend to be RPGs. In actually they are not good
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games but rather are distinguished by being slightly less mediocre than
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all the games around them. They're still crap.
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When I first got my computer; the first game I played was Hero's
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Quest 1/Quest for Glory 1: So You Want to Be a Hero. I ordered the game
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before I got my computer, and when my 386sx/16 came, Hero's Quest turned
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out to be every single reason I bought a computer. It was FUN and in
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DEPTH and allowed more control than a Genesis or SNES game and there was
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more thought placed in the execution of the design and focus. I was
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literally obsessed with the game and when I beat it, I realized I had
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seen the sequel in radio shack a few months back.
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(Before I had a computer I would go to stores that sold comptuer
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games and just look at the boxes and wonder what it must be like to play
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games that were actually cool. I would read the gaming magazines and be
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shocked by the depth of play versus the console gaming with which I was
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accustomed. It was a brave new world.)
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So I immediately bought part 2, and I played THAT obsessively, and
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when I had beaten it, I spent aeons just finding all the little secrets
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in the games and being deeply amused by it all. I made up imaginative
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secrets for the games that didn't exist. Do you remember that unused
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wood shed at the far end of Speilberg? The one by the bar? The one that
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you *couldn't* get into? I spent at least 2 months trying. I spent weeks
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trying to find a dragon that didn't exist; the manual hinted there might
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be one in the game. There wasn't. I don't consider this time misspent.
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And somehow, I ended up buying Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge!
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And I was addicted to something else; and after I beat *that*, I bought
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the first game and played it obsessively.
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You might perhaps say that these were abnormal behaviors for a 13
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year old, but what else, in all honesty, was there to do? I suppose I
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could have gotten into some inept teenage sex or drug use... Perhaps that
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would have been a better way to spend my time.
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And oh god, there was wing commander, which I couldn't play until
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September of that year, becuase I didn't yet own a hard drive. A game
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that so burned into my psyche I was later to have erotic dreams about the
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hatch doors in the sequel. The doors, which opened by having six or
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seven triangular spikes receeding vertically, you see, became assholes...
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I had dreams about what I felt the various planned Quest for Glory
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sequels were going to be for years. At least until I was well out of
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high school. My dreams were cooler than all the sequels, except 4.
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At some point everything began to change, and I'd say that point
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was when I got Ed Temple to bring me over a copy of the newly released
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Quest for Glory 3. It came on seven 1.44 3 1/2" disks. Each disk had a
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zip.
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I installed it, and sure, it was Quest For Glory, but all the
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goods were different and the parser interface I loved was gone. Instead
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it was replaced by the first of many sierra point-and-click interfaces.
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The interface was based on the idea that there were 4 or so "action"
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icons at the top of your screen: The look icon, the walk icon, the
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take/touch icon, and the talk icon. You also had an inventory icon. I
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think, since the Quest for Glory series had so many special functions,
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there was another icon which brought you to a submenu. On this submenu
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were functions like WALK/RUN/STEALTH/CAST SPELL, each represented by
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their own silly icon.
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The idea behind this new interface is that it would improve
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gameplay by getting rid of the "clunky" parser interface and replacing it
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with a "smooth" mouse driven system. If my description of the interface
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sounds complicated, that's because, in a way it was; It was certianly more
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time consuming to find the right icon on the submenu if you wanted to run
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than it was to type "RUN" on the old parser. The complexity of movement
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was increased by the 5th power. And so by destroying a great game with a
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crappy interface, Sierra created the opposite effect. I don't know anyone
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who likes the games from this period or would consider any one of them
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his or her favorite. It was a dark time.
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And from there it only got worse. The games got stupider and
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stupider and thought there were some brief respites, shelter from the
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storm: QFG4, Out of This World, Gettsburg, Syndicate, Grand Theft Auto,
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etc., for the most part gaming just went down the shit hole. The games
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just stopped being fun.
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And then there came Wolfenstein 3D and the whole world exploded. I
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don't know what I can say about any of it; we're deluged in FPS games that
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all play the same, and when someone makes one that plays ...slightly...
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different, everyone has a digigasm and screams for hallelujah. Did you
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see the press HALF-LIFE got? Did you see how happy your friends were that
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someone had made an "INTELLIGENT" FPS?
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We've become so disabused to the idea of quality gaming that we're
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willing to assume the roles of dogs eating scraps off the floor from
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beneath their master's table.
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Fuck you, John Romero. Fuck you, Carmack; Fuck you Lara Croft.
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Fuck you all. You've killed the only thing I ever really loved.
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[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
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[ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu HOE #1076, BY FPKK! - 5/15/00 ]
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