Red Faction
Red Faction 1 (RF1) is a great game, but I’m posting a negative review because the port of the game that Steam sells barely works as it is.
I bet RF1 would run well on Windows 98, ME, or XP, but no one should be using a 32-bit version of Windows anymore, and that has been the case since Windows 7 came out in 2009. You can pretty much take my review of Max Payne and pretend I am talking about RF1, because with RF1, we have another example of Steam being lazy and selling a port that, for the vast majority of users, doesn’t work as it is.
– Real player with 21.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Shooter Games.
ULTOR CORPORATION NEEDS YOU!
Big scary hydraulic door with a ‘press to open’ button on the wall next to it giving you the willies? Not to worry! The giant overpowered rocket launcher provided in the open confines of most mining stations can safely dismantle the nearest wall and create a you-sized hole to climb through! Just ignore all the potentially flammable gas from the mines by the way. There are only a few thousand people down there – we don’t care about them, and neither should you.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
Chaser
A really old first-person shooter with futuristic background, heavily based on the movie “Total Recall”. Somehow, up to the moment, Chaser is the best game its creators, Cauldron, made for all those years.
If you haven’t played it before, when it was all fresh and comparable to the actual FPS on the market (2003, before such hits as Far Cry, HL2, and FEAR) - well, the game isn’t aged well. If you’re not down with old-school gaming mechanics, you’ll most likely shouldn’t try to play Chaser now. The game has many obvious and troublesome downsides, it is a real pain in the back for any casual nowadays gamer.
– Real player with 79.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Shooter Games.
“Basically Nintendo 64 & Total Recall”
Chaser is a FPS and the very first game ever built on the Cloak NT 3D engine. Developed by Cauldron http://www.cauldron.sk/ a Slovakian gaming company more notorious for their Cabela franchise. Chaser was released in 2003 which is kind of strange since N64 was released back in 1996 and this game felt somewhat more as a continuation from that cream of the crop.
The game depicts the near future when man has inhabited Mars. In 2036 a coalition of 36 BIG corporations establish the MARSCORP with the goal of terraforming the planet. However, in 2042 the UN makes Samuel Longwood the director of this organisation who then begins to separate Mars into becoming more an independent government with himself becoming its dictator. Eventually a rebel movement headed by Graham Castor is formed whose sole goal is to liberate Mars from this oppressive government. Their continuous rebel strike movement has been long standing and elusive from Longwood’s control and the UNIA Special Forces.
– Real player with 52.0 hrs in game
Doom 3: BFG Edition
Since Doom 3: BFG Edition is in fact a collection of games, it makes sense to evaluate the games individually.
Two old-school DOS Doom games - The Ultimate Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth - have been ported to run natively within Windows. These games are absolute classics, but unfortunately, the copies included in this package have two major problems: frame rate and censorship.
When launched directly through Doom 3: BFG Edition, Doom 1 and 2 have their frame rates capped. This means that these very old games can only have animation as smooth as is possible when they are played in DOS - an archaic operating system that, even for its time, had trouble managing and accessing memory that was physically available to the computer.
– Real player with 71.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Shooter Games.
Doom 3 is an odd game since despite having a greater focus on horror, it’s still an action game at the end of the day. There’s more story compared to the original games, however it is nothing too special and it can be very predictable at times. Since Doom 3 is still an action game, your weapons are pretty strong and you can carry a ton of ammo with you. I am aware the BFG Edition added more but considering the lockers give you a ton of ammo anyways in the original Doom 3, I am confused as to why they even added more ammo to begin with. Doom 3 still has good atmosphere and a great interpretation of Hell that I think even Doom 2016 and Eternal do not capture. It really shows how terrifying Hell is for your normal person, or in this game’s case, a marine who is usually indifferent to a lot of things.
– Real player with 65.7 hrs in game
Martian Law
If you like classic 80’s style arcade games, you’ll love Martian Law. It’s recommended to use a controller and I found out why. I first thought a 3 button Sega Genesis mini classic USB controller would work but it doesn’t have the dual sticks needed. I used an Xbox One controller and it works perfectly with Martian Law.
Like classic arcades, this game can get quite tough, but that’s the point. When the power ups come, it can really help out when the screen is falling all around. I love the weapon upgrades, this can help rack up the score quickly. I’m a very old school gamer and I like that I can switch between windowed and full screen within the game menu, I hate having to fiddle with a keyboard trying to figure that stuff out, simple is better!
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
it’s a cute game, but the controls kind of suck, and the graphics can be a bit eye-straining and the music is loud, kind of annoying, and gets repetitive fast. the gameplay itself is incredibly lackluster, with there only being a few powerups, and the way the game works encouraging sitting in a corner and doing nothing, the bombs can hit through the middle platform so trying to maneuver around is a chore, so i found myself sitting at the screen’s edge, letting the bombs fall. the saving grace is when you get the powerups as you no longer have to be so inert, you can shoot horizontally but there’s no real point in doing that cause by the time it is useful the bombs are already at the ground, though diagonal can help make it so you have to move even less. the game discourages movement, which from the get go makes it bad. not to mention the only reason to even move in the first place is to avoid megaton bombs or go and deal with the laser bots. that’s it, the corner of the screens provide protection from everything else and time will get you way more score than action. i dont think this was the dev’s intention but the game make it such.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
DOOM 3
Phil loves DOOM 3, and the vanilla game is far superior to the BFG edition.
– Real player with 41.3 hrs in game
Has no gurls.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Pinball FX2 VR
Thanks for such an awesome game! It works fine on GTX Titan cards, smooth motion. The playfield is a lot easier to see and understand now, love how amazingly colorful it is with the OLED display, similar to the fun of playing on the PS Vita. Learning how to setup the HTV Vive headset took some time. I needed to update the firmware over USB on the LightBoxes to get them to shutdown when Steam VR exits, as well as install the bluetooth driver and update them over bluetooth too. Also, I needed to update to the latest nVidia drivers to get the HTC Vive to run in Direct Mode, before doing that it seemed like it was not working properly at all, just displaying a copy of the desktop, unusable as far as I could see. Anyways, once Direct Mode drivers were installed and working, everything was fine. Far exceeded any expectations I had for this system. Pinball FX2 VR is a must-buy, it’s amazing how many tables are working already. The HTC Vive controller support still needs a little work, as it seems that there’s no way to accurately control the plunger e.g. as needed for the skillshots to get the Wisdom upgrade in Biolab, so for now I’ve still been using the wired XBOX ONE controller. It’d be great to be able to fully use the HTC Vive controllers, though, as they’re two separate controllers, one for each hand. I was having the occasional 3-second black screen when using a 15ft DisplayPort cable, but after switching to a 15ft HDMI Monster cable, all is working fine, so I can have the PC 15 ft away from the HTC link box, keeping the main area nice and quiet for gaming. There’s also a headphone port at the back of the headset, and in-ear headphones are provided that are very convenient and sound fine. Having some easy way to control the volume in-game could be helpful, at the moment adjusting the volume is kinda awkward. My system is usually setup for nVidia Surround, so if I click on the overlapping squares menu button on the HTC controller to use the Steam virtual interface and view the PC desktop that way from within the headset, all of the icons are very tiny indeed, barely usable. Still, minor inconvenience. Love the sunrise, the way the sunbeams come in and light up the game room is very well done. The latest nVidia 378.92 driver still seems kinda buggy, because if I click to enable stereoscopic 3D (for playing ordinary Pinball FX2 in 3D Vision, which is awesome too), the entire system works fine only until the next reboot, at which point nothing works until I reinstall the nVidia driver again. Scary! The best driver for 3D VISION on GTX Titan seems to be the old 327.23 and I’d been using it up until March 2017 completely successfully. Sadly, it doesn’t have “Direct Mode” support, hence the need to update to the newer 378.92 driver. Well, perhaps nVidia will fix the driver some day, it’s very puzzling why rebooting doesn’t get the system back to a clean state if I enable stereoscopic 3D, and the 378.92 driver needs to be reinstalled. Overall, it’s amazing fun to play this, and to see the beautiful Zen tables really coming to life. Your work on this is really appreciated! Oh, by the way, the menus for the game are too “HUGE” when running the game in 3D Vision Surround on three monitors, it’d be great if you could render the menus in 1920x1080 rather than in 6000x1080.
– Real player with 51.4 hrs in game
You can’t change the view so I guess they want it to feel like you’re playing a real (and most amazing) pinball machine.
I use an Xbox controller. I sit down get comfortable. Hold my HMD exactly arms length above my head, reaching for the ceiling. Press X on the controller to reset the view.
Put the HMD back on and it’s like you’re inside of the pinball machine. (or using view 5 or 6) And you’re looking UP for the mostpart with less strain on your neck. And I can get highscores for LONG periods of time. NOT STANDING and feeling like crap. Take my advice or suffice.
– Real player with 25.6 hrs in game