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Renesis

Sun Jun 13 2010, 11:31PM

Registered Member #2028 Joined: Mon Mar 16 2009, 08:13PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 319

I have just finished playing a forgotten pearl in computergaming history. The reason why i wish to mention it here is because it has such a capturing storyline, written by author Warren Ellis. Clearly inspired by the book Engines of creation and the grey goo-schenario, it takes part in a not so distant future where nanorobotics fulfill mankinds every need, and concepts such as money, war and nations are abolished. This utopia, "whose grasp exceeds the moon and stands on the verge of greatness", is now threatened by a cabal formed by the greedy and corrupted leaders of the old world. They intend to scare this new worlds population by manufacturing an artificial alien threat, and then regain control of the world by offering themselves to protect the world from this false invasion.

Without warning many large cities around the world are attacked by long range missiles, and the Ministry of Intelligence determines the missiles launch site to be located on a newly formed chicane of islands in the pacific. A team of highly trained soldiers are sendt into the chicane to investigate, but all contact with the team is lost.

After the war of 2012, named "the last war on earth", all weapons were dissasembled and recycled. All exept for two mighty warships of the Antaeus-class, so called "Adaptive cruisers." These two vessels were sunk in the ocean in case the world would ever need them again. Central, the government of the new world, desperately decides to reactivate the Antaeus-program. Only one of the two ships respond to the reactivation signal, the Antaeus prototype 00. You are assigned to be the captain of this vessel. Onboard are a series of "Soulcatcher chips", memory chips that contain the minds of dead soldiers, and they become your crew. The ship gains its might from a large onboard "creation engine", a machine containing utold trillions of nanorobots called assemblers. This machine can construct any tank, plane or gun required, atom by atom, within seconds.

You are sendt into the chicane to find the missing team, but your task quickly becomes far bigger, and far more important than anyone could ever dream of.

The game is called Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, and was developed and published by Rage games in 2001. If you like strategy/first person tank games, you should check it out. It has no multiplayer or skirmish mode, sadly, but in return it has a long and satisfying campaign. I played it on Vista, and it worked well without any obvious bugs.

And of course, if you too have played a less known video game you wish to share, this is the tread to do it in.

Marko

Tue Jun 15 2010, 07:41PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Renesis wrote ...

And of course, if you too have played a less known video game you wish to share, this is the tread to do it in.

Hi,

Would Planescape Torment count as one?

Cheers,

Marko

Hon1nbo

Sun Feb 06 2011, 12:45AM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

Reviving this Thread NAO!

I recently started to get back into games now that my PC is back up to spec (just finished a custom build recently) and I have rekindled by love of the Half Life series and of Portal

Besides the demotivating line "The Cake is a lie" The following are priceless.

Aperture Science,
We do what we must
because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying 'till you run out of Cake!

Muttyfutty!

Sun Feb 06 2011, 12:59AM

Registered Member #2915 Joined: Fri Jun 11 2010, 10:41AM
Location: Malaysia!
Posts: 101

...Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we're out of beta we're releasing on time... :)
Defiantly one of my favorite games.

GluD

Sun Feb 06 2011, 01:16AM

Registered Member #1221 Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196

I really enjoyed the old Commander Keen games, I even think I got one of them at my parents house still, on a floppy disc of course

I dont remeber which episodes I had, though I'm fairly sure Aliens Ate My Babysitter! was one of them.

And to the poor souls who has not a clue about whom the commander is, the link is here:

Zum Beispiel

Sun Feb 06 2011, 01:23AM

Registered Member #514 Joined: Sun Feb 11 2007, 12:27AM
Location: Somewhere in Pirkanmaa, Finland
Posts: 295

Since someone else already did the threadmining for me, might as well:

Minebombers.

Probably won't ring any bells to anyone, but just leaving it out there. That game rocked my socks off in 1996 and still does this day. MBII has been in development since god knows when and I can only hope that some day it will be released.

Inducktion

Sun Feb 06 2011, 03:11AM

Registered Member #3637 Joined: Fri Jan 21 2011, 11:07PM
Location: Buffalo, NY
Posts: 1068

Ohhh....What was the game called, it was about Aliens underwater...Like deep something, it had like 6 CD's, it was a massive game... Deadly tidE!
Deadly Tide. That was the game. It was great shooter game.

Renesis

Sun Feb 06 2011, 06:32PM

Registered Member #2028 Joined: Mon Mar 16 2009, 08:13PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 319

GluD wrote ...

I really enjoyed the old Commander Keen games, I even think I got one of them at my parents house still, on a floppy disc of course

I dont remeber which episodes I had, though I'm fairly sure Aliens Ate My Babysitter! was one of them.

And to the poor souls who has not a clue about whom the commander is, the link is here:

I remember him, i used to play those games all the time.

Hon1nbo

Mon Feb 07 2011, 08:29AM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

Zum Beispiel wrote ...

Since someone else already did the threadmining for me, might as well:

Minebombers.

Probably won't ring any bells to anyone, but just leaving it out there. That game rocked my socks off in 1996 and still does this day. MBII has been in development since god knows when and I can only hope that some day it will be released.

I feel your pain, I have been waiting for over a decade for Duke Nukem: Forever to be released, but I got to see some stuff for it at a development office so I am still crossing my fingers after years!

Chris Russell

Tue Feb 08 2011, 09:50AM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

DaJJHman wrote ...

Reviving this Thread NAO!

I recently started to get back into games now that my PC is back up to spec (just finished a custom build recently) and I have rekindled by love of the Half Life series and of Portal

Besides the demotivating line "The Cake is a lie" The following are priceless.

Aperture Science,
We do what we must
because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying 'till you run out of Cake!

Relevant:

As for a game I find inspiring, I know I've mentioned this before, but... Fallout 3.

For those who haven't played, the basic premise is this: In the Fallout universe, the future came pretty much as popular imagination predicted in the 1950s. Nuclear power became accepted and put into widespread use. Even cars came to be powered by small nuclear reactors. Society and technology either looks like it was straight out of the 1950s, or a 1950s sci-fi movie: think "danger Will Robinson" robots, and flashy ray guns. As a result, the transistor wasn't invented until the 2070s.

Like in 1950s America, Communism was seen as an ever-present threat, leading to a great arms race between the United States and China. Eventually, as fossil fuels and other resources began to run out, resource wars broke out, culminating with a Chinese invasion of Alaska, the United States annexing Canada, and at long last, a full nuclear war between China and the United States in 2077. The nuclear war lasted only a few hours, and destroyed utterly everything in the United States. Instead of a nuclear winter, much of the United States ended up stuck in a permanent, scorching, radioactive summer.

Prior to the start of the war, many middle-class Americans purchased spots in enormous underground shelters called vaults. When the bombs fell, many took shelter in the vaults. Some sheltered their inhabitants as expected, only for the occupants to find a nightmarish wasteland above in 20 years time. Other vaults, unfortunately, were rigged to serve as complex social or psychological experiments. For example, one vault began to release hallucinogens into the air supply a few weeks after being sealed, to see what would happen. Another was designed with a faulty door, to test the effects of long-term radiation exposure on a population. Yet another was intentionally overcrowded. A few, like Vault 101, were designed to remain closed forever, to test the effects of long-term inhabitation of the vaults. Fallout 3 begins in Vault 101, one of the Washington DC metro area vaults, 200 years after the start of the Great War.

It ends up being, IMHO, a very well-done cross between an RPG and a first-person shooter. The best part of the game is that there is an enormous world that you are pretty much free to explore at your leisure. The main quest can generally wait as long as you like, while you either explore the wasteland, or tackle on of the huge number of available side quests. You're also free to be good, evil, or somewhere in between; the game really tries to restrict your actions as little as possible.

There is also a huge semi-archaeological aspect to the game. In the course of exploring the game world, you discover what life was like for people at the time of the great war, and in the days, months, and years following. There are many tales of survival, death, new life, and tragic loss scattered across the wasteland, just waiting to be reassembled.

My favorite moments from the game:

* Picking up a haunting morse code beacon whilst wandering the wasteland, tracking it to its source, and finding the remains of a family that died not long after the Great War. Huddled in an underground service tunnel, waiting for help that would come 200 years too late.

* Being randomly attacked by an enormous monster in the wasteland, frantically emptying magazine after magazine of ammunition right into its face, praying that it will die before my ammo and health runs out.

* Finding the rather amusing remains of a daredevil who didn't survive his last stunt.

* Gunning my way through the Museum of Technology, trying to find a piece of the first lunar lander.

* Blowing away raiders while Ella Fitzgerald croons away on the radio.

* Looking out on the vastness of the wasteland at dusk from the top of the Washington Monument.

* Accidentally launching a leftover ICBM.

* Fighting my way through a bunch of power-armored goons with the assistance of Liberty Prime, a 40 foot tall robot that throws nukes like a quarterback, shoots lasers from his eyes, and booms anti-communist propaganda at his enemies. It's even more awesome than it sounds.

I'd say that only Half Life 2 comes close to my level of enjoyment for Fallout 3. I have a lot of observations about Fallout: New Vegas as well, but I feel like I haven't really played the game enough to give it a thorough and fair appraisal (not nearly enough time these days to do so, sadly).

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