Unprofessional Fridays: 03/06/20

"The problem with Business Dave Top 10 is that's just too long."

N O

PLEASE DO NOT CUT BUSINESS DAVE SHORT!!!!

HE'S ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF UNPROFESSIONAL FRIDAYS!!! <333

Wonderful UPF. I haven't actually watched a UPF in quite some time. It just kind of fell off for me. But I'll check in once in a while. Seeing Vinny in the thumbnail sold me on it. I liked Brad's game. And definitely always enjoy TM with Jeff. Amazing lineup.

I had so much fun with Quake Champions. That was a really great game. It didn't keep my attention long though becuase it was a real case of dividing the playerbase between unranked and ranked. Ranked was dead and you couldn't find games, while unranked was so unbalanced. 95% of the time I would destroy everyone (and I'm not even that good at classic Quake) and the other 5% of the time there was someone insane pro-level player on the other team. I wish the game took off because it filled a void for me and rekindled that love for fast-paced FPS.

I always got the impression both games are neck-and-neck like Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat or something. I always preferred UT because a couple reasons: The aesthetics are phenomenal (the way the levels look, the visual variety but above all the soundtrack by the Deus Ex team), the bot support was so much better than Quake 3 (very important if you didn't have cable/DSL in 1999 which most of us didn't), and it had more game modes that really pushed the genre forward. The assault game mode are still extremely fun and unlike other things out there. This is likely why Quake 3 had a team-based expansion (people seemed to not like it; I never played). Then, you have the modding community. For whatever reason Quake 3 didn't have much modding support; while Half-Life was still the main platform for modders, UT had a lot to offer. I spent so much time playing Goldeneye maps against bots with a Counter-Strike rip-off called (I think) Global Ops ... while listening to Linkin Park. Those were the days...

If you are still curious, Giant Bomb has many streams of both. I think they had dedicated streams to both UT and UT 2004.

I will never understand why anybody would say that they liked the campaign of Quake 1. It was a boring, lifeless thing with sterile level designs and an uninspired aesthetic when compared to Doom. Its monsters were bullet sponges with terrible AI that largely had to be downed through monotonous repetition. The sound design was fine, but the soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails felt like it was phoned in; it was basically a bunch of teeth-gratingly annoying ambience with maybe two or three half-decent tracks on the whole disc. Id gave us a compelling boss fight in Episode 1 (i.e., the shareware version of the game), then cheaped out and gave us absolutely no bosses to fight in Episodes 2, 3 or 4. The final boss with Shub-Niggurath obviously doesn't count; she was an immobile blob with no attacks and was impervious to normal damage, who was killed in 1 hit with a telefrag. Even the Icon of Sin in Doom 2 required some skill and timing to defeat; Shub Niggurath just died easily and simply with virtually no effort.

Even the story was lazy; it was completely derivative of Doom. It can be summarized in these three points: 1) Humans make a portal to another dimension. 2) Something goes wrong and monsters come out of the portal. 3) A single lone soldier needs to go into the portal to kill all the monsters. Sure, games like this don't really need deep or compelling stories, but aside from the fact that the monsters were from a Lovecraftian otherworld instead of Hell, they were basically copied and pasted.

I understand that some people enjoyed the multiplayer in Quake, but was it really all that groundbreaking compared to other titles available at the time? It had 8 weapons and 4 ammo types, which was exactly the same as Doom, and it got very repetitive after a while. By comparison, Duke Nukem 3D had 10 weapons, some of which were devious traps like tripwires and pipe bombs, and each with their own unique ammo types. Duke also had a selection of inventory items at his disposal. Duke Nukem 3D also had far more interesting and dynamic level designs. Yes, Quake was one of the first truly 3D first person shooters, and its engine was highly efficient, but is that really enough on its own?

I understand that the engine was groundbreaking and capable of doing great things. It was responsible for mods like Teamfortress, and it was eventually used in great games like Half-Life, but having a great engine alone does not mean that Quake was a great game. It just had a good engine. The single player campaign felt more like a demo for the engine than a fully rounded out game of its own.

I like the old BDTT format!

"I don't feel that infantilizing the virus is appropriate." Brad makes the weirdest comments sometimes.

That exact issue Jeff is talking about with the controller is something I have been experiencing specifically in Apex Legends recently.

I really wish that Jan had Ben as the focus on the stream lol. Jeff's was really stilted and it made it look pretty laggy at times.

Incidentally, Ben's 'I have no guns and I must stream' is a great idea for a stream.

@vinny

According to the lore, Caustic worked at an amusement park when he was very young. It was called Knoxberry Farms.

I miss Murder Island.

A lot has changed since this stream

@virtuale: 5 months ago you had nooo idea. Haha.

The last in-person UPF and literally none of these people are with the site any more. Man.