STRAFE: The Bleeding Edge Game set for '96 Release

[Viscra Maelstrom]

moral of the point being that controversial ads are doing just as well as they did back in the good 'ol days, right?

[MetroidJunkie]

moral of the point being that controversial ads are doing just as well as they did back in the good 'ol days, right?

It doesn't matter how intentionally controversial the marketing is if the game just isn't all that good, case in point Man Hunt 2.

[demo_the_man]

0_0 that's one heavy ad

[YukiHerz]

The pinnacle of edge, and badly done graphics that try to be period accurate and fail hard.

[leileilol]

the problem is the alleged "old school!!!" is too successful as a marketing gimmick for the younger target demographic that didn't live through the evolution of the genre or learned why it has 'evolved' this way, starting off with Serious Sam, Painkiller or even DNF/ROTT'13 as their pinnacle examples of 'oldschool'. Design philosophies of the old are not considered, just exploitative novelty, alienating the veterans. Doom wasn't designed by mashing a bunch of rooms and generic monsters together and they weren't doing it to appease a pixel fetish. They tried to make the best game they could.

Even Toxikk pulled this off with its misleading 'frag like it's 1999' with a very very 2007 game. I don't know what jedi mindtrick they're using to make UT3's existence rewritten, but it seems to be working. It hasn't fooled anyone who did "frag in 1999" though. Oh speaking of derivative logos what's with Toxikk ripping off 3dmark's logo?

[Sgt. Shivers]

I really don't like what they're doing with this. I mean, it's perfectly possible to make an oldschool game and still have it look good, unlike the weird minecrafty vibe this is giving off. Ziggurat already did the "old-school randomised shooter" much better. I doubt this'll be anywhere near as good as something like ROTT 2013 or Ziggurat.

[JimmyJ]

The lack of mod support is pretty disappointing, not very retro-fashioned!

[wildweasel]

The lack of mod support is pretty disappointing, not very retro-fashioned!

Well, keep in mind that they're (apparently?) making it in Unity, which has a strange file packaging system that isn't especially conducive to people modifying the game data.

[MetroidJunkie]

Anyone else find it pretty amusing how they basically took pretty impressive looking concept art and shredded it down just for the sake of making it look retro? As if making it blockier and more pixelated on purpose makes it a better representation of the thrill that 90's shooters had.

[timmyr0x0r]

the problem is the alleged "old school!!!" is too successful as a marketing gimmick for the younger target demographic that didn't live through the evolution of the genre or learned why it has 'evolved' this way, starting off with Serious Sam, Painkiller or even DNF/ROTT'13 as their pinnacle examples of 'oldschool'. Design philosophies of the old are not considered, just exploitative novelty, alienating the veterans. Doom wasn't designed by mashing a bunch of rooms and generic monsters together and they weren't doing it to appease a pixel fetish. They tried to make the best game they could.

Even Toxikk pulled this off with its misleading 'frag like it's 1999' with a very very 2007 game. I don't know what jedi mindtrick they're using to make UT3's existence rewritten, but it seems to be working. It hasn't fooled anyone who did "frag in 1999" though. Oh speaking of derivative logos what's with Toxikk ripping off 3dmark's logo?

Well, most people on Steam's reviews are calling it a UT 3.5, so not all forgot, and it's certainly deserved. All the time I looked at the trailers, I thought, "Epic WILL sue you, and they'll win!". I even spotted that the showcased "vehicle" map is a port from a custom map for UT3, RocketForst (http://www.mapraider.com/maps/unreal-to ... ocketForst)

Back on topic, even if the ad is crap, I don't think it should condemn the game to eternal torture and suffering, it could be fun. And still the blood decals are MUCH BETTER looking than the horribly clashing ones we have in ZDoom.

[mallo]

Anyone else find it pretty amusing how they basically took pretty impressive looking concept art and shredded it down just for the sake of making it look retro? As if making it blockier and more pixelated on purpose makes it a better representation of the thrill that 90's shooters had.

(big gif, click it)

[Blox]

Except not because the end result still looks like Minecraft Syndrome and not actually Trying To Do Your Best Like It's 1996.
I mean fuck, Doom has more detailed textures than that. Because it actually tried to look as good as possible.

[Medicris]

Except not because the end result still looks like Minecraft Syndrome and not actually Trying To Do Your Best Like It's 1996.
I mean fuck, Doom has more detailed textures than that. Because it actually tried to look as good as possible.

Seconding this. Quake 2's more around the level of detail and resolution I'd imagine for something in late 1996. This just comes across as lazy, exploitative of the trend and generally just a cheap trick to try making the sell on something with less effort. Flat colour textures don't look "retro", it looks like first spriting attempts with Microsoft Paint (I remember making shit like that when I was 10).

Sure, a dev might see this and say it's nitpicking, "we're trying to create the game you remember, not what they look to you now" (seen this somewhere on their blog). Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work with the assets. The problem comes from them seemingly not bothering to put any effort into recreating the grit, colour palette or general atmosphere of it like any game developers of the age would've done their best to recreate*: what Blox accurately describes as Minecraft Syndrome along with the brightness ramped right up.

Really not impressed by the influx of games trying to sell themselves with "lol omg retro style!!1" with developers who barely know what a Nintendo is over the past few years. See Starbound.

EDIT: All of that said, the final product could look completely different. Pre-alpha programmer art and whatnot. Let's hope these guys actually finish a game instead of leaving everyone who contributed to them in the dust like so many others.

EDIT AGAIN: From other bits of footage, it seems they upped their texturing game a bit.

**Quake, Quake 2, Half Life, Duke Nukem, even Descent and Descent II did a better job of it and they were limited to a tiny fraction of the polycount and texture resolution of Strafe so far. All it would take is a little texturing over those flat colours.

[demo_the_man]

why does this game exist, we still have doom, and doom 4 is on the way

[MetroidJunkie]

(big gif, click it)

As the others pointed out, even Doom looks much better than this so, if you're trying to tell me I just don't get it, then please enlighten me.


I'd rather have a game based on 90's shooters that plays like a retro shooter rather than one with them going out of their way to make it look crappy so that they can claim that makes it more nostalgic as a cheap gimmick. Besides, almost all of the reason old games look the way they do when it comes to detail is because they knew most computers wouldn't have been able to handle anything beyond that at the time and did the best they could to add as much information as limitations could allow. There's working as best as you can with what you've got and then there's just using the "it's retro!" excuse to not put effort in.