strife is so ahead of its time, its not even funny
i first heard of this game from ross's game dungeon close to a decade ago, and i've been meaning to play it ever since. sometimes i would pick it up, play for half an hour, forget i even started it, lose time in some other game, then a year or 2 later come back and do the same thing, rinse repeat like 3-4 times, always interested, but never committed. until now, that is, as i'm going through my backlog in release order.
and for some reason, once i started playing this time, i was entranced by this game from the start and couldnt put it down.
see now, this is no simple 90s fps on the doom engine, this game decides to take doom and turn it into a story-based role-playing game. prior to this game, almost every first person shooter was pretty much "go through the maze killing every monster you see and humping the wall, find 3 keycards, get to the elevator", and theres nothing wrong with that, duke3d and blood are some of my favorite games of all time, but the genre needed something added to it, lest it stagnate. so now, you go from that, to this game that has a story, it has cutscenes with cool comic type art, you can talk to characters and they're voice acted with passion, you can take on quests and even side quests, there's a primitive wanted system, currency, shops, items that arent just guns or health, a massive map that doesn't just feel like levels but rather a world, hell you can even go back to other areas at almost any time,, you can level up your aiming and health, there are multiple endings, you have a woman talking in your head, you can even fight alongside and summon soldiers, this game is such an advancement from doom, it's insane.
but i am overhyping the rpg elements to this game, it's rather light on them actually. this is no daggerfall. you don't create a character, or fit him with gear (armor works like it does in doom, so i won't count that). there are so few side quests in the game, and they don't even amount to much, its usually just "get this chalice, ok go here for your reward.", leveling up isn't based on experience, but rather a reward for beating a mission, and only affects aiming and health (maybe also punch strength? i noticed i could gib basic enemies almost instantly later in the game). point is, the rpg elements are minimal. if you want a more proper rpg fps hybrid, well there's system shock. i guess ultima underworld and elder scrolls arena as well if you remove the shooter part. but all those games are rather... clunky.
this game, is not an fps-rpg hybrid. at most, it's an fps with rpg inspiration
however, what we really have here is a co-creator of the immersive sim genre, a major leap from system shock or ultima, where menus and general clunkiness could take you out of the experience, strife just controls like doom, but where doom had a level-based structure and didn't have (almost) any story, strife keeps you going through its world organically as the story drives you. half-life and system shock may be lorded as the granddaddies of imsims, but i'd say strife is the biggest, most important leap for the genre, and i can't recommend it to old school fps fans enough
fight, for the front and freedom and move out
i first heard of this game from ross's game dungeon close to a decade ago, and i've been meaning to play it ever since. sometimes i would pick it up, play for half an hour, forget i even started it, lose time in some other game, then a year or 2 later come back and do the same thing, rinse repeat like 3-4 times, always interested, but never committed. until now, that is, as i'm going through my backlog in release order.
and for some reason, once i started playing this time, i was entranced by this game from the start and couldnt put it down.
see now, this is no simple 90s fps on the doom engine, this game decides to take doom and turn it into a story-based role-playing game. prior to this game, almost every first person shooter was pretty much "go through the maze killing every monster you see and humping the wall, find 3 keycards, get to the elevator", and theres nothing wrong with that, duke3d and blood are some of my favorite games of all time, but the genre needed something added to it, lest it stagnate. so now, you go from that, to this game that has a story, it has cutscenes with cool comic type art, you can talk to characters and they're voice acted with passion, you can take on quests and even side quests, there's a primitive wanted system, currency, shops, items that arent just guns or health, a massive map that doesn't just feel like levels but rather a world, hell you can even go back to other areas at almost any time,, you can level up your aiming and health, there are multiple endings, you have a woman talking in your head, you can even fight alongside and summon soldiers, this game is such an advancement from doom, it's insane.
but i am overhyping the rpg elements to this game, it's rather light on them actually. this is no daggerfall. you don't create a character, or fit him with gear (armor works like it does in doom, so i won't count that). there are so few side quests in the game, and they don't even amount to much, its usually just "get this chalice, ok go here for your reward.", leveling up isn't based on experience, but rather a reward for beating a mission, and only affects aiming and health (maybe also punch strength? i noticed i could gib basic enemies almost instantly later in the game). point is, the rpg elements are minimal. if you want a more proper rpg fps hybrid, well there's system shock. i guess ultima underworld and elder scrolls arena as well if you remove the shooter part. but all those games are rather... clunky.
this game, is not an fps-rpg hybrid. at most, it's an fps with rpg inspiration
however, what we really have here is a co-creator of the immersive sim genre, a major leap from system shock or ultima, where menus and general clunkiness could take you out of the experience, strife just controls like doom, but where doom had a level-based structure and didn't have (almost) any story, strife keeps you going through its world organically as the story drives you. half-life and system shock may be lorded as the granddaddies of imsims, but i'd say strife is the biggest, most important leap for the genre, and i can't recommend it to old school fps fans enough
fight, for the front and freedom and move out