Hacker News Reader

Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking that too. It's bought up a lot if you watch retro gaming videos that talk about this era. Doom was an incredibly fast game. It's pretty technically amazing to think about how the game was constructed to run so smoothly on a 386.

The game can still be jump-scary after all these years with the way the levels and sound effects are designed.

View on HN

Same here. I definitely missed zooming across maps like CS' surf, Q3's defrag or Tribe's skiing. Is there any good fast paced modern game with good movements? And is there any with a decent single player experience?

Titanfall 2 has one of the best single-player campaign in recent shooters. You are highly mobile and it's possible (and expected) to parkour your way across multiplayer maps.

Warframe is different, it's focused on PvE (although there's a PvP mode if that's your thing). The premise is simple, you are a space ninja with supernatural abilities and you kill hundreds on enemies on each mission. The game is complex and you'll need to read the community wiki to understand some things, but the experience can be very rewarding.

I did enjoy Titanfall 2's single player campaign. The cinematics were quite amazing, almost as good as the cinematic feel of Mass Effect 3.

The trouble with it was that it was waaay too short. There are only 9 single player levels. I realize the game is geared towards multiplayer, but I honestly couldn't even get into multiplayer. Everyone was so good it made multiplayer insanely difficult. You pretty much have to be able to beat the game on hard to even begin in the multiplayer space, or grind a shit ton to get powerups.

On the flipside, I really appreciate a short but sweet single player campaign. Titanfall 2 had some truly awesome levels (time travel!) and ended when it had said what it wanted to say. I really dislike games that feel drawn out like too little butter on too much toast (some JRPGs come to mind..).

Skill movement is integral to high-level Soldier or Demoman play in Team Fortress 2, a game which is for most effective purposes a Quake (1) mod: bunny-hopping is defanged but explosive-jumping is as important as ever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-N2iWbhsY . The game also used to have a significant competitive jumping community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAEOiIF8Piw

Not exactly what you're asking for, but the Brutal Doom mod makes Doom even faster and more difficult. Due to the speed and accuracy of mouse input, it's still quite winnable and very fun.

I will also randomly recommend Overload, Descent successor in everything but name. Movement isn't super fast but you sometimes need to waste the robots very quickly to avoid getting overwhelmed, or decide on a tactical retreat in a split second.

I personally like more Complex Doom. Modernizes weapons mechanics and adds random monsters variations.

Natural Selection 2. https://unknownworlds.com/ns2/

The Marine team plays much like a slow modern shooter, but the aliens move very fast, and each type of alien has a different movement mechanic for building and maintaining speed.

https://youtu.be/SbmH7mThwCU

I've basically stuck to certain Q3/idtech3 games for that reason, they have pretty low player counts these days but the combination of skill involved in moving in these games combined with strategy is something i've not found in any modern games yet... I think most people would be too put off by them "not looking good enough" though.

I play urbanTerror (for the jumping element) and OA for similar reasons but mainly in railjump mode which can get crazy fast. Both of these make the original Q3 look slow!

Rail wars?

Wasn't familiar with it but had a look at some videos, it's similar in that it's also basically Q3A even some of the same maps and that it's rail, but the dynamic changes so much when you can rail-jump and rail-push (your team-mates), it's difficult to effectively describe and I can't find videos, maybe it's worth recording some time.

Afair it was possible to rail jump in rail warz. But maybe I’m confusing it with other mods. It was long ago.

But the grapple hook travel was dope and super speedy.

Edit: not possible to rail jump. But the laser grapple is the killer feature.

I always played the capture the flag version. The speed and precision of it was what really got me into it.

Anarki in quake champions can move pretty fast. No single player though.

> Tribe's skiing. Is there any good fast paced modern game with good movements?

Well there's a modern tribes (ascend?) which is that same concept. Idk if you call it "good" movements, that's a personal thing, some people never get the hang of it.

Not single player though.

Oh man surfing on cs or cs:s.. those were some of the most fun moments I had in gaming. Also got about 2.5k hours surfing across those games :p

I do prefer faster paced games. Instagib jk2 especially though that might be the nostalgia taking.

Have you tried Warframe? Tribes was a direct inspiration I think?

Quake Champions - free to play on steam.

Quake Live also has very nice race mode, clone of defrag, and of course, defrag servers are still alive and have players on them!

Doom didn't run all that smoothly on a 386. A 486 was the 'recommended' system on the box.

>The game can still be jump-scary

Isnt it amazing how some of these old games with relatively small budgets, teams, and difficult dev tools still seemed to capture great design characteristics, artwork and creativity?

The Game Engine Black Book by Fabien Sanglard[1] is a wonderful book that talks about some of the engineering challenges and tricks employed by id software to get Wolfenstein 3D working.

[1]: http://fabiensanglard.net/Game_Engine_Black_Book_Release/ind...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com