Eder's game of the week: id Pack (PC)

Eder

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Edited By Eder

So this week i decided to go PC. I'm not really into PC games that much, I've been playing WoW for a while and decided to take a break and look at some games I might have missed. So when the id pack went half price on January I did what any reasonable person with $35 would do. This pack is loaded with a bunch of games and I played mostly the ones I remember being really fun when I was a kid and I would just play the shareware versions of them. Here goes my quick look at the games I played this week all courtesy of Steam's id pack.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders

This one I played the most becuase I really tried to get to finish it. I kinda did, except it was just the first chapter that I beat. The setting just seems really cool. The game takes place in a demon infested castle and you have to vanquish the monsters that get in your way. It's basicaly a doom clone with staffs and gauntlets instead of shotguns and machineguns. The only problem I seem to have is that sometimes it's really easy to get lost. You go around in a maze, in first person perspective and you gotta find the exit. The map is totaly useless, it's just a bunch of lines that resemble the map. Don't even waste your time with that. Sometimes theres doors that you have to find but are on a wall that has no clear indication that it IS a damn door. I don't want the game to just tell me where to go all the time, but c'mon! How the hell was I suposed to know that wall had a door in the citadel level? Well, the best thing about the game though is the enemies, the weapons and the combat. Just laying waste to a horde of gargoyles and those damn cloaked guys that shoot three purple spheres feels very nice. The crossbow weapon is my favorite is just so effective. One last thing, I wanted Xbox 360 pad support, that would make the game way better. If it would play just like Doom on XBLA I would have kept going. It's not that outdated but still, I'll go back to it some other time.

Commander Keen: Episodes 1-3

Good times. This game I played back in the day every week when we had computer class. First we learned and then we played. I had never gotten past the first episode so now I was all like "I'm back bitch and this time you're mine". The game is a basic platformer much like Super Mario Bros. The story is about this kid that builds a spaceship and gets marooned on mars as the tittle suggests. You go around mars looking for your ship parts and zapping aliens with a gun. Keen is also equiped with a pogo stick that somehow is worshiped by the people of mars. The game is very easy and I have no idea why as a kid I couldn't beat it.

After you get back home in your rebuilt ship, you find out that the Vorticons are right next to earth with a giant ship targeting the mayor cities of the world. Now it's up to keen to go save the earth from exploding. The game is the same thing as the other episode but a little harder. I liked how you can actualy activate any of the death beams targeting a city and actualy make the earth explode! Thats cool! The only downside to that is that the game ends since Keen fails. Like I said it's almost the same game, but the difficulty is turned up a notch. It got me pissed off once in a while but it was just fine.

Now we turn to the black sheep of the games in this trilogy. This game is once again the same game and thats fine because the other two were awesome. BUT once again the difficulty got way outta hand. It's just in the realm of bullshit. After the things that occurred in episode 2, Keen decides to go bust some caps on the brains behind the vorticons: The Great Mind or something I forgot the name really. The Vorticons were actually controled by this kid who is Keen's rival kinda like Dexter and Brain or Ash and Gary. The final boss is kinda cool but MAN it's hard. Shadow of the Colossus eat your heart out. I didn't beat this game without cheats, the last level before the final boss is just crazy. It's a maze that makes to freakin sense. I tryed SO MUCH to beat it until I said screw it. GOD MODE NOW. So the thing to take away from all this is that Commander Keen has a nice story that will make you want to beat it. And the gameplay is really nice, good old 2D sidescrolling action.

Doom 3

Played like 20 minutes of this game. I liked the graphics, good stuff. Just the flash light thing is such a pain. That's about it. Will go back to is someday.

Hexen

5 minutes of playtime. What the hell, I don't know about this one it's like heretic without the good weapons.

Hexen 2

2 minutes if playtime. Quake 3 without the cool weapons.

Wolfenstein 3D

1 hour of playtime. Really good, feels outdated but fun somehow.

Final Thought

There is so much in this pack it's really something that will have me comming back for more. Some of the games I'm not so sure about them, times have changed and some games just don't stand the test of time like others. A controler option would make me play every single one of these games. If you love FPS games you gotta get this pack because it's got the very roots of the games we play today like Halo and Call of Duty. You might not play them all though.

15 years ago