Even contemporary games can end up with plenty of bugs in their pathfinding so I imagine in the 90s it was much worse. Pathfinding isn't that complicated abstractly, but it still is an easy source of bugs and edge cases. Not an unsolvable one by any stretch but still one that takes time and resources. The issue of "show enemies while exploring" vs not doing it is actually a somewhat significant development headache. The spell graphics may look better than DM's, but they are just screen effects and unlike a DM Fireball a BC Fireball has no physical presence in the dungeon, and does not explode against walls or smash through doors.ĭungeon Master and CSB were the only real time blobbers that had any meaningful interactivity with the environment (some had NPC interaction and economy (wich is important for some), though), and in the end the only novel thing about Black Crypt was that it was Amiga only.īut as I said I did find it quite enjoyable when I replayed it, so my experience with BC was the opposite of my experience with Eye of the Beholder. There's a long way from number 2 to 3, though, and not much difference between 3 and 10.īack in the days, I thought it was rather bland and boring, having just played CSB, but I liked it much more when I replayed it some years ago.Īmiga fanbois were wetting themselves over the superior graphics, especially the spell graphics, but it's all flash and no substance. DeleteĪs a true Dungeon Master fan (and even more Chaos Strikes Back fan) and having played virtually all real time blobbers except the Grimrock games, I rate it as the third best one I've played. So Raven Software's choices for their games' genres are consistent from that point of view.īut I wish that either they had made the combat in those games just as fast and action-heavy as in Doom & Quake, or that they had carried the complexity of RPGs like Dungeon Master (or even Ultima Underworld!) into their later games. You could say that the 3D shooter genre provides an experience that is somewhat similar in parts to that of the Dungeon Master genre ("combat waltz" = "circle strafing"), so maybe there was less need for further Dungeon Master style games from then on. Heretic II, using Quake II's engine, had a third-person camera which didn't fit well for its style of combat. Hexen, using an extended Doom engine, and Hexen II, using Quake's engine, have tedious combat and lots of backtracking to solve puzzles. Heretic, using the Doom engine, has less fun weapons and less dangerous (= more tedious) enemies in my opinion (in large part because none of them fire "hitscan" projectiles, so usually you can easily dodge most of their missiles). Black Crypt seemed to be a bit less atmospheric and had more fiddly inventory management than Dungeon Master (though I only played the beginning of the game). But I thought they always had less fun combat than their id Software equivalents and lacked a little something to be really great games. The Hexen games had different character classes, but they don't have experience points or anything similar.Īll the Raven Software games from the 90's that I played were consistently good games with fine artwork and flawless technology. Raven Software's ShadowCaster ('93), Heretic ('94), Hexen ('95), Hexen II ('97) and Heretic II ('98) were all games that took id Software's engines and turned them into fantasy 3D shooters, some with light roleplaying elements.
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