Strife

The Good
Strife is a great tragedy in PC gaming. If only it had not used a somewhat outdated game engine, then I think everyone would have paid attention to its innovation and great design, and I think it would have been a massive success. I think everyone would still be talking about it today, remembering it with the same affection that is held for Half-Life.

Strife was the last game that used the licensed DOOM engine. When it came out, it had Quake to compete against. It couldn't compete.

But it shouldn't have had to. Strife doesn't set out to be a first-person shooter. It's definitely not mindless, and it's definitely not DOOM. It's closer to an RPG than a straight shooter, with a proper storyline (which branches), people to talk to, weaponary and equipment to buy, a well-developed gameworld and varied quests and missions to undertake. On first glance, it make look DOOMlike, but Strife often feels nothing like DOOM.

Here are just some of the great things in Strife:

• Excellent maps that link seamlessly:
  Strife's world, unlike the entirely seperate and unrelated levels of DOOM, Quake, etc., is like one big map. All the locations link together to form a truly related world, and the feeling this gives should not be underestimated - It really adds to the game's sense of realism and immersion. And when I say 'excellent' maps, I really mean 'excellent.' I've played all kinds of 3D first-person games over the years, many with very sophisticated, true 3D worlds and incredibly impressive architecture. I played Strife (DOOM-engined Strife :)) for the first time, a couple of months ago, and was blown away by its level design. This is the DOOM engine pushed to its limits. These are levels designed intricately and beautifully. They really put the lazy level design of some, more recent and much better selling, games to shame.
  Strife has varied locations, too, but they all work together, and feel realistic. More importantly, they're all fun. It generally takes a lot for me to enjoy wandering around in sewers, but I loved Strife's sewers. Some of the best levels are entirely optional, like a weapons storage facility that you can visit if you feel like it, later in the game. This massive level also shows the wonderful pacing of the game: As you have a stolen low-level pass, you can wander around the facility freely, passing guards, defence systems and gun turrets without trouble. But what you really want is held in a secure part of the facility. You just know that the moment you decide to trip the beams, all hell is going to break loose. Then there are the levels that reflect changes, such as the castle, which starts off belonging to the enemy, but after a spectacular siege (in which you work alongside scores of fellow rebel soldiers), the castle is successfully taken. When you go back later, the castle has been converted into an impromptu rebel base and you can wander around, looking at the scorched and smashed walls, craters in the floor and piles of rubble. Rebel soldiers now stand where enemy drones once did. Of course, it's just a different version of the same map, but the effect, and the attention to detail, are both wonderful.
  The main part of the world is the large town that you spend most of the first part of the game in. Needless to say, it's really well done.

• Imaginative enemies to fight:
  Apart from the standard grunts, most of the enemies in Strife are rather imaginative. The best are surely the spider-bots, which crawl along the ceiling and then drop down on you. They honestly scared the hell out of me. Anytime I heard that ominous clacking of metal legs, I backpedalled like mad. I'm sure their A.I. must be quite primitive, but they seemed insidiously evil.
  The flying probe droids are pretty cool, too, as are most of the other assorted droids and creatures. Oh, and the first 'boss' scared me to death, too.

• The graphics:
  Yes, the graphics could take some getting used to, I guess. In fact, I'm a big fan of DOOM, and I still play it to this day, and have no problem with the graphics, but when I loaded up Strife, I thought it looked kind of ugly. This was a temporary thing. The graphics really grew on me, and it wasn't long before I was really appreciating them. Like I said, this is DOOM pushed to its limits, coupled with simply incredible level design. Some of the architecture in this game is honestly brilliant. You'll have to take my word for it. The enemy 'holiday resort' level has to be seen to be believed, as does a later level in some kind of facility, where light and shade have been played around with to great effect.

• To shoot or not to shoot?:
  Like I said, this is not primarily a FPS. It does have a lot of combat in it, but it's tempered by levels where you don't shoot a thing. Or levels where you have the choice - It's up to you whether you want to go in gung-ho, guns blazing, or take a more stealthy approach. There are levels which could explode into massive firefights or which you could creep through without firing a shot. I was often reminded of Thief, particularly at the start of the game. You can perform silent takedowns by using your knife, or poison arrows. There are a lot of levels where you can wander around without arousing suspicion, but the moment you fire a shot, all the alarms go off and all the guards come running. The game's balance is near-perfect - Mixing 'safe' sections with furious gun-fights. Oh, and the combat is incredibly fun, by the way - Just as much fun as DOOM ever was, but with its own style.

• Neat features:
  There are all kinds of neat features and elements to this game. You can break windows and climb through them. You can kill guards silently with your knife or poison arrows. You can earn money and then go to shops and buy armour and weaponary. Your stats increase (not really in a deep enough way to call this an RPG, but still...). You have an inventory. There are comic-book style cutscenes. There are multiple paths through the game, and two different endings. If you wear an environment suit, it protects you against certain robots' flame attacks. If you walk through a toxic environment, it doesn't affect you immediately, and it doesn't end the moment you get out - It's done in a more gradual, realistic way. The plot branches ask you not just to make choices, but to make moral choices.

• Set-pieces (and just generally more cool stuff):
  Fancy storming a castle with an army of rebel soldiers? Fancy rescuing some prisoners? Trying out the training facility? Meeting the Oracle? Slicing someone's ear off to give it to the governor? You should play Strife.
  
  The Bad
  There wasn't much I disliked about Strife. OK, there was one level (in the mines) which I didn't enjoy that much, but that was the only part I found a little tedious.

The unpatched version of the game only gives you one save slot, which is just dumb. However, this can be fixed with the latest patch, so no problems there.

I did have some problems with the sound cutting out, but that was probably just my evil soundcard (now replaced with a different one and due to be smashed with hammers in the near future :)).

I did feel that there were more plot/mission choices to be made near the start of the game. There were many different options for the first couple of missions, but after that, it was fairly linear until the major choice you get about 2/3 of the way through the game.

The Bottom Line
Strife is NOT a DOOM clone, a DOOM wannabe or a DOOM-alike. It may use id's famous game engine, and it does have its fair share of furious combat, but honestly, it's so different from DOOM, that it just doesn't feel anything like it. The bottom line is that this is a big, fun, action-adventure that you should play if you liked Half-Life, or Thief or Deus Ex, and feel you can stomach the old graphic style. Even if you think you couldn't cope with the oldskool graphics, you should give it a try, anyway. I had a blast playing this game and it honestly impressed me. It predated Half-Life, it predated Thief, and it's just a damn shame that more people don't know about it.

The Good
Because it had an actual plot, this was the second FPS (the first being Dark Forces) that I ever had the patience to play from beginning to end. The programmers really did some amazing things with the ol' Doom engine.

For one thing, instead of linear levels the game used a hub system like Hexen where you could go back and forth between several different interconnected areas. Also instead of mission briefings your objectives were relayed to you in-game either by people you talked to or by your everpresent partner "Blackbird" on the radio. This gave the game a smooth transition and seamlessness I hadn't seen since until Half-Life came along.

Also, instead of a dead world populated only by monsters trying to kill you, Strife had various "friendly" areas such as two towns and two rebel bases where you could just wander around and talk to people or buy stuff. Even some of the "action" levels started out friendly and you could even have conversations with the guards (until you started shooting or entered a restricted area, at which point they'd start trying to kill you). Also, there was a great deal of variety to the levels (ranging from occupied town squares to old ruins) instead of the usual endless similar corridors.

When you talked to a major character, you got a close-up screen with comic art and speech. The comic art of the various characters was extremely well drawn, and the speech was pretty good as well. Your partner, Blackbird, also had various funny or oddball things to say over the radio about the various situations you found yourself in.

The action itself was pretty much standard Doom fare, with enemies who weren't too bright but who came at you in ridicuously large numbers. The enemies themselves ranged from the standard gun-toting guards to a variety of cool-looking battle robots. In terms of weaponry there were a few innovations, such as incindery grenades and a flamethrower you could use to sadistically burn your enemies alive, and a crossbow with poison arrows you could use to kill guards without setting off the alarm. There was even an item you could use to teleport friendly rebel soldiers to your location to fight for you (albeit not particularly well).

Also helping to set this game apart were the various set pieces in it. For example, at several points in the game you could sneak past hordes of guards with a fake ID or by pretending to be the janitor. One particularly fun level had you storming an enemy castle, and fighting alongside you was a small army of rebels engaging the enemie's forces in a large scale battle royale which was a real change from the typical one-man-against-the-world FPS scenario. In a similar scenario a single boss-character would show up in the middle of the rebel base and would wind up slaughtering them left and right if you didn't intervene. Finally, towards the ending of the game you were given a choice of two different "paths" which would lead you to two seperate endings. The good ending was your typical save-the-world-get-the-girl scenario, and was pretty tough since you had to go through several extra levels. Despite the grim outcome, I found the bad ending to be most interesting because of the surprise (and boy was it a surprise) identity of the final enemy.

The Bad
Well, the Doom engine was a bit dated at the time (I believe Quake was just coming out) but the programmers made enough tweaks to it (such as jumping/ducking, more "true life" textures, and a hub-based level system) so that it seemed fresh. I also think it didn't have support for mouse aiming, but when I played the game I hadn't heard of mouse aiming anyway so it didn't really make a difference to me.

Though this probably doesn't apply anymore, when I got the game it really cheesed me that it took a whopping 70 megabytes of hard disk space, and you had to install the full game and couldn't play it from the CD. I know that nowadays you could toss 70 megs out the window and never miss it, but back then I only had 30 megs free on my hard disk (which was all I ever needed for any of the other games I owned) and had to do some seriously weird stuff with my HD to get this game to work. But I think it was worth it. The game also didn't allow you to have multiple save slots for a single game, but a small patch (or creative copy/pasting) fixed this oversight.

My only real complaint was that the very last section of the game (the Order Factory) was pretty much just five levels of repetitive shooting and button-hunting, with none of the interactivity, creativity or atmosphere that made the rest of the game so compelling. However things did pick up when you reached the end of the Factory and got to the endgame.

The Bottom Line
After Half-Life's example, most modern first person shooters contain many of the elements which made this game so interesting. However, for it's time Strife was a very different and very enjoyable FPS experience.

The Good
There's a lot of creative juice running through Strife's veins that's for sure. The game sets itself appart from other Doom clones by introducing a lot of rpg touches like npc interaction, sidequests, hub-based levels and character improvement (albeit not with the standard experience points) as well as other gameplay-enhancing gimmicks.

Taking place in a post apocaliptic world, Strife casts you as a roguish character who gets caught in the fight for freedom of a rebel alliance intent on overthrowing your typical oh-so-evil despotic cult. As the story moves along things start to go really trippy, with genetic experiments gone wrong, betrayals, extraterrestrial intervention, and all sort of kooky sci-fi things told mostly via the game itself and on stylish comic-booky cutscenes and fully voice-acted (make that very well voice-acted) conversations. The plot can get a little far-fetched, especially since among it all you remain the typical last hope of humankind, but it's entertaining and remarkably interesting for an fps plot, and besides you have two possible endings to give you an excuse to go at it again.

The game is an fps at it's core, so you have a nice arsenal of things that go boom, and while most of it is standard fare (machine gun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, flame thrower, etc.) there are weapons with different ammo configurations (explosive rounds, incendiary rounds, poison bolts, etc.), as well as a weird "ultimate weapon" from which you collect pieces as you go defeating bosses and which has different and overlapping powers. You'll get to try those weapons on the many, many, many enemies which occupy the collection of maps which composes Strife's world, maps which are very well designed and combine large open areas with winding corridors, and span everything from military outposts to frontier towns and alien spaceships all filled with enemies, items and secret areas and challenges.

The goodies are handled via a nice inventory system which deepens the gameplay options by including the standard collection of bio-suits, medikits and other interesting items like targetting computers (for enhaced accuracy) as well as teleporting beacons for calling some backup.

The rpg angle is small but serviceable, essentially aside from getting bigger guns and inventory space, you can purchase health upgrades as well as accuracy enhancements (tough they don't seem to make a major difference). You also have to supply yourself with ammo and equipment from stores (especially early in the game) and so money becomes another aspect to consider and the game does deliver a much deeper gameplay experience than the usual shooter fps games.

The Bad
There is a lot of "sameness" in this game, and the level design usually has "filler" sequences in it, plus there are some odd elements like the addition of "secret" areas which felt coherent in Doom, but not so here (why the hell after finding a secret cave you come to a giant pedestal with a weapon on top of it in the rebel base????). Similarly, the amount and disposition of the firefights and challenges is a total borefest, there is one very interesting sequence which involves a co-ordinated assault on an enemy base, but that's the only standout sequence on Strife. The savegame system is a piece of crap since it only has one slot (reason number one why I didn't even try to check out the other ending) and the enemy and critter design sucks. Trust me, I know it sounds like bitching when one says things like that, but they are all completely boring stormtropper wanna-bes or Fisher-Price robot-thingies.

Yet all of that is merely bitching when compared to the one big, huge, crippling flaw of this game: The Doom engine.

I know we all like to say how the creative elements are all that matter, and how we would all play anything as long as it has a good story and solid gameplay... but this is the game that proves that technology DOES matter. It may not necessarily be the top element in our priorities, but it DOES matter. Strife is a game done in 1996 with 1992 technology, and the results are just terrible. It's as if a game would come out now using the Quake 1 engine.... And while the gameplay of Strife is something new, it's not THE gameplay experience, in fact, System Shock did the fps/rpg with a plot -thing earlier and used a much more advanced engine than Doom's (not to mention that it was a much better game).... No, I'm sorry, but if I'm going back to the Doom days, I'm gonna do it with Doom, where the violence is plenty, the action is fast and furious and there is no reason for you to turn your brain on. One may think that the technical deficiencies affect Strife only on the graphic front, but the problems seep into the very bones and structure of the game, and they take their toll on the gameplay just as they do the graphics.

Strife just came out to late man... tooo late... And I know what you are thinking: "Stupid Kid, I know your kind! You just want the latest 3D particle effects and thingamagingies and known nuthin' of real gaming!! Go play your Quake 8 and leave real gaming to men"

....well dude, that's exactly what I tought of the kind of people that dissed Strife... until I played it!

The Bottom Line
Real sad man... Strife is not a triple A title, but it sure has a lot of honest creative work poured into it. I feel pity for it, for if it weren't because of it's dated technology, Strife would have been a decent title and an entertaining fps. As it stands it's just too little too late.

Let Strife be a lesson to all you idealistic designers, and know that even if you have a killer game design it's nothing without the technology to at least support it.