Bang! The FPS Megathread

[Ikagura]

I live again...

I love this quote so much I think about it each mornings.

He delivered it better than its source material

 

[Lee__Kanker]

It was as great as it was hard!

Yet despite the hit-scanning, dynamite throwing cultists that have a quarter second reaction, I still love it the best of all Build Engine games (next to Powerslave Saturn). I think the difficulty is lesser with Episode 2 thanks to the other enemies that make it so cultists are less common.

iirc it was because the guys making it balanced it around Their skill level; sadly I suck at build engine games so I could only beat it on Pink on the Inside haha

One of the best things about biild engine games are the wacky weapons; I looove the sword in SW and the riot shotgun and especially The Nuke (funny how lo wang has it but not duke nukem). The flare guns are so unique, never seen another gun like it! And the vodoo dolls and the staff, hehe...
More fpses needed double tommy guns btw

 

[Ikagura]

iirc it was because the guys making it balanced it around Their skill level; sadly I suck at build engine games so I could only beat it on Pink on the Inside haha.

Blood requires the players to be careful about their ammo and crouching to avoid the hitscanners.

One of the best things about biild engine games are the wacky weapons; I looove the sword in SW and the riot shotgun and especially The Nuke (funny how lo wang has it but not duke nukem). The flare guns are so unique, never seen another gun like it! And the vodoo dolls and the staff, hehe...
More fpses needed double tommy guns btw

I know that TF2 has a flare gun for the pyro but I agree about the wackiness.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Blood requires the players to be careful about their ammo and crouching to avoid the hitscanners.


I know that TF2 has a flare gun for the pyro but I agree about the wackiness.

Yeah I just tried playing it like SW, I should give it another go!

I like flare gun in games; but the one in blood where it's like a Delayed one hit kill and it's your starting pistol? Never seen that in another game

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Build Engine, my beloved.

God damn do I love me some Build Engine games. Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior are favorites of mine, and Blood might be my favorite (Non-Doom) FPS of all time. Even Powerslave PC is pretty good.

Blood is just so goddamn good. It feels so good to control, and the weapons like the dynamite and sawed-off tickle that monkey part of my brain real good. As Civvie11 said, It's a delicacy of action gaming.

 

[Ikagura]

Yeah I just tried playing it like SW, I should give it another go!

Each time I read "SW" I have to manually translate from Star Wars to Shadow Warrior lol.

If I made a retro FPS I think I'd ban hit scanners altogether and only have fast projectile (which are what bullets are irl anyway).

Hitscans were apparently just more convenient to calculate a bullet impact for the older computer by drawing a line instead of rendering a single particle (or sprite for bigger ones) so it wouldn't get heavier on the RAM when you had many of them.

I like flare gun in games; but the one in blood where it's like a Delayed one hit kill and it's your starting pistol? Never seen that in another game

It's useful against zombies but it being a projectile weapon also makes it harder to hit in corners and against enemies behind grids. It's weird how unconventional the weaponry is so that your main weapon is almost the dynamite (few games have satisfying ones, Zortch's being a close second to me).

Build Engine, my beloved.

God damn do I love me some Build Engine games. Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior are favorites of mine, and Blood might be my favorite (Non-Doom) FPS of all time. Even Powerslave PC is pretty good.

This makes me think that I still have to finish DOS Powerslave someday. I'm using the BuildGDX sourceport to make it more convenient but I wish it got a proper remaster like PowerSlave Exhumed on Steam (and PowerSlave EX).

Blood is just so goddamn good. It feels so good to control, and the weapons like the dynamite and sawed-off tickle that monkey part of my brain real good. As Civvie11 said, It's a delicacy of action gaming.

I kinda like Civvie's reviews (especially Zortch) but I also like when people check more than one content creator for retro FPS just to hear the different opinions about them.

And yes, Blood is a delicacy of its genre, it may have not been Doom, Quake nor Half-Life in term of revolution of the genre but it has mastered the old school type of shooter before the genre finally switched to full polygonal 3D for the enemies and environments.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

This makes me think that I still have to finish DOS Powerslave someday. I'm using the BuildGDX sourceport to make it more convenient but I wish it got a proper remaster like PowerSlave Exhumed on Steam (and PowerSlave EX).

Honestly, missing the DOS version on the rerelease felt like a miss from Nightdive. They're usually pretty comprehensive on rereleases, hell the Rise of the Triad remaster had a fanmade RoTT Doom Wad included.

 

[Ikagura]

Honestly, missing the DOS version on the rerelease felt like a miss from Nightdive. They're usually pretty comprehensive on rereleases.

A while ago I assumed that Powerslave was the console version and Exhumed the PC one until I've learnt that Exhumed was just a name used in Europe because of the Iron Maiden album name since they're in Europe too, yet another Starfox/Starwing/Lylat Wars situation). I thought that this release included both version...

I've also learnt that it was named 1999 AD: Resurrection of the Pharaoh in Japan (they love long video game names).

hell the Rise of the Triad remaster had a fanmade RoTT Doom Wad included.

Wait really? I should try extracting the wad since I have bought it.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Wait really? I should try extracting the wad since I have bought it.

The "return" folder should have the Wad with GZdoom ready to go.

 

[Ikagura]

I wanna try that mod

 

[Burzuru]

sometimes i like to go postal

 

[Ikagura]

I'll be watching this video:

The Rise of BLOOD Source Ports and why it MATTERS?! by MrJohn Reviews

 

[Ikagura]

I've finished the first Episode of Duke Nukem 3D with Voxel Duke via EDuke32 just to give myself an original yet vanilla way to play the game

I really like how interactive things are in the first two levels but I feel that it becomes more like a proper FPS starting by the fourth and fifth level.

I also think that getting captured and losing every weapons and items in the third level kinda feels too soon (compared to Half-Life where it's around the middle point of the game).

Next stop: Lunar Apocalypse.

 

[LeoTCK]

Yea well they changed things around. I wish that the issues with beta versions/beta content was solved and that the whole database of old versions was released (like they did with shadow warrior) but because gearbox has the rights and this and that they didn't allow it.

I mean the level order and stuff changed countless of times in Duke3D we at least have lameduke but its far from the best version of that time. Like in later versions they even added levels that were added to the plutonium pak but changed up/messed up. It would be cool to play the originals. I never liked Plutonium Pak fourth episode btw, too many crude/distasteful jokes compared to original and the gameplay was just all over the place.

I believe you were meant to lose your weapons only way later on or it was once an episode end where you'd get captured. For sure lameduke had the prison elsewhere. But there are so many interesting versions. Like did you know the multiple ammo things that are in DN64 or DNF2001 started in the original? They removed it though and in plutonium pack they brought back the expander but its "shite", it functions like instant hit instead of the projectile it was/used to be. Its really bs. The Nintendo 64 version at least brings that back. Yes I know people say censorship this and that with that version, however in many ways it is truer to the original ideas including stuff like the duke burger. They turned it into really crude stuff in the Plutonium Pak and I didn't like it. Like really Plutonium Pak has moments where Duke says something really out of his character or that dog-meat reveal at the end of the burger place. Why did it become so disgusting out of the sudden? Well the final DNF also has a lot of crude jokes, maybe that happens when broussard isn't kept in check or whatever.

 

[Ikagura]

Next stop: Lunar Apocalypse.

I got so busy with the game I forgot to even tell about how I've ended up finishing the game (both the Episode 3 and Episode 4).

I think some of the levels were neat (like Duke Burger and the Police Station) but those new enemies were kinda tedious sadly.

Duke shines the best with real life looking locations and it's probably the weakest with sci fi and alien areas (Lunar Apocalypse). It's also a real issue when there are too many hitscanners with more HP for its own good (Blood also suffers from that).

I kinda understand why, even if it was a fundamentally less advanced FPS, Doom was more popular between the two yet I also understand why some people preferred the 2.5D sprite based Duke 3D over the full polygonal 3D Quake thanks to the references, the personality of the protagonist and how many things could be interacted with even compared to more modern FPS made later (nowadays you can barely move objects in today's FPS like you could in Goldeneye, Half-Life and its sequel).



Yeah right, thanks Randy.

PS: I've played the game once in the Megaton Edition but the mouse movement really felt off (while I've managed to finish it). EDuke32 is so much better yet I've still bought World Tour...

 

[Ikagura]

I've finished Duke it Out in D.C. and Nuclear Winter.

The first is a neat Episode (I'd almost rate it above Lunar Apocalypse) but the other feels like a cheap reskin with low quality level design sadly (some levels feel like Doom detail wise and the snowmen are like cheap pre rendered models).

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2026

A surprisingly great expansion, I haven't finished it but it's way above Duke it out in DC and Nuclear Winter.

 

[LeoTCK]

MegaTon edition sucks and ruins so many things. Yet World Tour edition is hated simply because of Randy yet if you disable the fancy stuff its way closer to the original look and feel. But that's just me.

Did you try the fifth episode from world tour btw? I only got to the second level, then lost interest for a while. Now I don't have it anymore, the laptop was lost in flood etcetera (and also my whole collection of cds and what not).

What's for sure is that...ugh well you should try duke64 i think or the mod for eduke32. Those are good. There's also the playstation duke mod with its own exclusive expansion (yea...more shit to try, also it was the same developer as cancelled unreal psx which rework is the thing I'm working on or trying to but everything in my life made it drag out to hell, like its finished and at final betatest phase but I had relegated it to a single person who only could finish it now and I can only playtest in places like public library, not fun, its awful, anyway the level designers were different but the main people behind the game were the same). And...yea there's lots of interesting material out there. Remember though the expansions from Megaton, those are actually "unofficial" but commercial ones, as in it wasn't the apogee/3drealms approved continuation, its really more third party loose stuff. Like okay...I never got to finish the Sunstorm ones, I did play through many levels but didn't...

I did finish playing Nuclear Winter. And...okay that's another story. Yes, its a bit done on the cheap but I really liked it myself surprisingly, when I played through it many years ago. Yes its not anywhere near the standard of the original but it was not meant to be. It was done by the team who was most often sponsored by wizardworks. They used to release at first shovelware and compilations. Wizardworks was a subsidiary of gt interactive which many people forget and it was often outlet for "unofficial" or "less authorized" compilation and expansions to come out to be sold or even outright mods that were bought out/turned commercially. Like there was Hzone for Heretic which had new episodes as well and even some replacement enemies and what not in them. Apart from all the official expansions it is the only commercial expansion for Heretic, included in that monstrous compilation/package. But it was done by the same team as Nuclear Winter. They also did Deadly Kiss, a cancelled expansion that has become "vaporware" thanks to Hendricks and his team. I had a big falling out with them because I was part of the team on the restoration but they put the project in a backburner and did nothing with it, they even lost my co-op testing reports and screenshots. I mean it was the simplest of the jobs most of the work has been done by the original team, just some little tiny bits needed fixing and...it was actually mostly complete compared to the stuff I got for Unreal including level infinity's steele dawn...and yea all those guys knew each other like...this team had even a cancelled unreal addon themselves, yes the nuclear winter/deadly kiss team had also made a commercial wizardworks to-be-published addon that was canned and some bits ended up in various projects and tcs and expansions. Even the official expansion Return to Na Pali used their camera system called UDSDemo. Which originally came from the sillysoft or like they renamed themselves later...Creative Carnage...yes that Creative Carnage...the makers of the infamous Extreme Paintbrawl on the Build engine. Now look, the real reason that sucked so bad is it was a gun for hire game by that terrible sports games publisher that made them rush it out. Wizardworks was a little better but they still didn't care as much about quality or consistency, it was the budget release market of gti and it shows. I'm familiar with many of those developers and chatted with them. Now the team and quality varied a little from game to game but its often the same shared people, some of them were shared between those different teams now and then too. Like some of the mappers contributed a level to like every of those expansions, yet the quality differed on how much time they spent on them and how rushed it was. There's just so much to say about these things, like...yea about Deadly Kiss on SW. It leaked in the end, the original version mostly, because they are/were planning for a makeover rather that became vaporware, but like...after the leak. I played part in it but unwittingly because there were team conflicts and there were like two guys involved that ran their own websites unrelated to duke4.net and they had personal grudges and I didn't know. And to me they all behaved awful and I felt used for their little conflict because it was me who got blamed for the leak. Like why do you do this? Prior to the leak I had never even talked to that other guy, corvin. So...it couldn't have been me who gave it to him right? No...they just used me and smeared me. There is an obvious link between that other guy and corvin but you know...and the other guy and me..so yea that's how it happened but I never agreed for it to be given out to corvin as some kind of revenge plot by them, which is what it was, but like the "other guy" was practically part of the restoration team too or almost was. He had access to some of that material already somehow which is how I trusted him and it was him who put me in touch with them in the first place and it all goes bloody full circle. But as usual, there is a lot of greed and power play in here and I just wanted to have none of it. One of the original devs got even disgusted with the team and left the chat seeing they were all egomaniacs. Despite their high status in the Duke and SW community I do not hold hendricks terminx and co in any high regard at all. I won't forgive them how they treated me and it is their direct fault that the leak happened because they treated those other guys including corvin very badly. And kept hosting their site despite splitting away from them, against their consent. So...who is really at fault here? Why do I have to keep clearing my name and bringing this story out? But I will because I was never a traitor. All I cared for was preservation of content and they betrayed it all for greed and politics and that somehow makes them worse for me personally than randy pitchford, who might be more powerful and "greasy" but he also did a lot of good things and sensible decisions. He used a lot of his money to put the former 3drealms people out of debt and all that. People forget that stuff and focus on all the bad things that are said about him.

Also as for original episodes are concerned I did actually enjoy the space levels from episode 2. Not gonna lie. It might have been even better in beta versions or whatever but I still feel like its a solid episode and a change of tone. So I can't agree with you there. Duke doesn't have its basis in real-life locations. Duke started as a 2d game which featured a lot of space/funky stuff too. The space element is as important if not more so to some degrees but the character can exist in any space...he was always meant to be a spoof character anyways so you can throw him into any kind of location and somehow it will work itself out with his lines and everything he does.

 

[Ikagura]

MegaTon edition sucks and ruins so many things. Yet World Tour edition is hated simply because of Randy yet if you disable the fancy stuff its way closer to the original look and feel. But that's just me.

Having to pay a remaster/port again is still bad but that's just me.

I haven't bought Refreshed Supply for Blood simply because I already owned the original DOS version and Fresh Supply.

Also they removed the other extensions in this release so this is already an issue.

Did you try the fifth episode from world tour btw? I only got to the second level, then lost interest for a while. Now I don't have it anymore, the laptop was lost in flood etcetera (and also my whole collection of cds and what not).

Not yet, I'm currently doing Duke Hard and I'll do a pause with Duke after.

Sorry I have a hard time to read the third paragraph. Nuclear Winter while not being too awful is still meh and shouldn't have cost money.

Also as for original episodes are concerned I did actually enjoy the space levels from episode 2. Not gonna lie. It might have been even better in beta versions or whatever but I still feel like its a solid episode and a change of tone. So I can't agree with you there. Duke doesn't have its basis in real-life locations. Duke started as a 2d game which featured a lot of space/funky stuff too. The space element is as important if not more so to some degrees but the character can exist in any space...he was always meant to be a spoof character anyways so you can throw him into any kind of location and somehow it will work itself out with his lines and everything he does.

Nuclear Apocalypse had some nice levels but it felt like Doom without the same level of genius as id did with Doom.

Duke started in space levels in 2D but his 3D transition changed many things and let's be honest: Duke Nukem 1&2 were pretty generic DOS platform shooters like many from Apogee. 3D was the moment the franchise finally got some recognition outside of die hard DOS players and Apogee fans.

If more levels were set on the Moon or having more outdoor sections it could've been phenomenal.

 

[Ikagura]

Not yet, I'm currently doing Duke Hard and I'll do a pause with Duke after.

So basically I've finished Dukehard, it was a very nice mod!

Spoiler: Dukehard ending

If you got other nice mods/community packs to tell me to try I'll do them someday.

 

[LeoTCK]

Having to pay a remaster/port again is still bad but that's just me.

I haven't bought Refreshed Supply for Blood simply because I already owned the original DOS version and Fresh Supply.

Also they removed the other extensions in this release so this is already an issue.


Not yet, I'm currently doing Duke Hard and I'll do a pause with Duke after.

Sorry I have a hard time to read the third paragraph. Nuclear Winter while not being too awful is still meh and shouldn't have cost money.


Nuclear Apocalypse had some nice levels but it felt like Doom without the same level of genius as id did with Doom.

Duke started in space levels in 2D but his 3D transition changed many things and let's be honest: Duke Nukem 1&2 were pretty generic DOS platform shooters like many from Apogee. 3D was the moment the franchise finally got some recognition outside of die hard DOS players and Apogee fans.

If more levels were set on the Moon or having more outdoor sections it could've been phenomenal.

The 'extensions' that were 'removed' were simply never 3drealms' own, as in the original. When the rights shifted to Gearbox, then they just added what was official and not third party.
Megaton was still released under Schreiber iirc while the technical stuff was done by hendricks and co and not very well I must say.
But yes paying again for games you already have is not good unless its a real pittance or with great discount. I am not saying that is good, I'm just saying that technically that version is a little better. Still you can copy the levels into older versions and they will work more or less. Its not like nightdave remasters with new episodes that do not absolutely work with old stuff and I hate that.
In a way it is actually honorable that Tim Sweeney and co stopped caring about Unreal and basically let community share it as freeware. Because he had a point saying those are really old games now. First came the delisting but its not y'know a greed driven business or whatever. So I get where you're coming from.

As for the space levels, they are...well there were actually outside areas that are cut and yes gearbox/randy is holding those beta versions hostage, I would have prefered if it was opened up and fred and him could come to some deal.
Its great that fred and co released some footage at least so we know how it played and other stuff like map screenshots never seen before.
But yea many of the space station levels were originally moon levels and there was more complexity and even destructible environment and what not. The game got its wings clipped but most likely because they had to due to build being continuously updated too.

Nuclear Winter...well originally it didn't cost very much, it was a budget side-release thing. Basically a christmas expansion pack if you will. What can you expect from that? Again...like there's even two doom expansion packs that are not being now recognized not even as "official" or "authorized" mods by bethesda yet they sold commercially. Road to perdition and hells gate or whatever they were called. The first one was actually a discarded third Final Doom pack and the second one is all new. And the second one is a worse one technically, with replacement monsters/sprites that do not match the quality, similar to Nuclear Winter or whatever. But yet those were paid expansion packs. Same with Lost Episodes of Doom, most of those were even avaiable as loose levels but less polished. Then they came with a book as a side expansion as well, before Ultimate Doom.
Nuclear Winter is in that cathegory and so are the Sunstorm packs kind of. They were almost like bootlegs they were not official, the reason they are considered official in any way is because of megaton edition.
They were commercial, yes, but official or any way considered a real duke nukem experience? no
But again it depends on your point of view and whose hands the franchise changed. The same with Unreal and the plethora of cancelled/altered content. There were games that started as mods/expansions for Unreal and still were ultimately cancelled, while others made it through like "Devastation" which was originally UT expansion, then Unreal spinoff game and then...well it can still be considered a prequel game and has nods to the series but was published not by infogrames anymore but a third party publisher.
All this stuff can be a messy business as you can see. I am trying to be historically accurate as much as possible and consider/detail all those viewpoints. Which might not make it easy to read my text, I admit as much.

I have unearthed a lot of lost content over years and very few people can appreciate the content in such way as people like me do. Not all of it is of equal quality and not even in the "AAA" games developement process.
Some of them were incredibly messy and shouldn't have been. With some games its almost a miracle that it ended up being so coherent like it is especially if at some point you restart developement and then its just a string of ideas that somehow end up clicking together and working.

Speaking of Duke3D still, did you hear about umm...what was it called...there was yet a "fourth" wizardworks expansion technically. But it is a more of a loose collection of content even if some of it was exclusive for it, what was it called again? I played through some/lot of that actually. It had a separate launcher. Though there are eduke32 extensions that try to preserve that as well. It was more like master levels kind of thing.

Oh...i'm confusing two things it seems. Duke xTreme, also by sunstorm and then dukezone 2 is the wizardworks thing, with episodes by the nuclear winter team yet again...did you know about those? those are certainly exclusive levels, but were not featured within megaton either..

 

[Ikagura]

The 'extensions' that were 'removed' were simply never 3drealms' own, as in the original. When the rights shifted to Gearbox, then they just added what was official and not third party.
Megaton was still released under Schreiber iirc while the technical stuff was done by hendricks and co and not very well I must say.

Another legal hell, eh?

I hate how they don't have Caribbean which is arguably one of the best Duke experience outside of the main game while Doom still has TNT and Plutonia available in modern releases.

As for the space levels, they are...well there were actually outside areas that are cut and yes gearbox/randy is holding those beta versions hostage, I would have prefered if it was opened up and fred and him could come to some deal.
Its great that fred and co released some footage at least so we know how it played and other stuff like map screenshots never seen before.
But yea many of the space station levels were originally moon levels and there was more complexity and even destructible environment and what not. The game got its wings clipped but most likely because they had to due to build being continuously updated too.

Another good thing sadly locked in their vault next to Duke 4ever 1998 and 2001.

Anyway, I'm starting now with Shadow Warrior (1997) with the VoidSW source port. I used to prefer SW over Duke 3D but maybe my opinion will change (I still think I prefer Blood and Powerslave as my favourite Build Engine FPS)