Strife

The Good
Strife was the first game in memory to effectively combine the first person shooter and role-playing genres. It also included elements that were portentous of the "sneak" genre, as made popular by games like Thief and Metal Gear Solid. What set Strife apart from other games of the time, including the more technically-sophisticated Quake, was that it wasn't all about brazen blasting. There are of course times where the necessary course of action is to kill everything in your path, but there are other times where that mentality spells your imminent demise.

The weapon selection is quirky and unique. We're not talking pistols and shotguns anymore -- we've got unique energy weapons, a poisonous crossbow (which will prove to be your best friend in the first half of the game), and arson grenades.

Subtler elements include NPC interaction, in which you must choose your words wisely, multiple story paths, a helpful companion (albeit via walkie-talkie), the ability and necessity to be stealthy, a reasonably deep plot, and an open-level structure that would later appear in similar form in Half-Life.

The Bad
Strife was developed by small-potatoes studio Velocity, and as such wasn't afforded the budget it deserved. They licensed the archaic Doom engine in the Quake-era, which meant that the graphics even for the time didn't cut it. Even Doom and subsequent spin-offs Heretic and Hexen utilized the engine more stylistically than Strife -- the textures are overly-bright and amateurish, and the level design is at times very blocky. All the NPCs mostly look exactly the same, save color variation. The consequences of even the smallest slip-ups can sometimes have unfairly harsh consequences (the troops swarm in if you accidentally trip an alarm)

The Bottom Line
The primitive graphics are easy to overcome when you consider the sheer fun and depth of the gameplay. This is a precursor to what would become staple to the genre (story, character interaction, objective-based gameplay, stealth, etc.), but Strife did it first, and it did it right. If you can get your hands on a copy of this and a decent source-port, you'll find hours of classic entertainment. A truly underrated classic that never got the spotlight it deserved.

The Good
This game has a fantastic storyline. Robots, automatic rifles and mutated religious fanatics packed into the medieval times in one. But of course that would be a bit far fetched now wouldn't it? Well before you start the game a narrative depicted in pictures explains how all this became. In short, comet strikes earth, comet releases plague, some survivors mutated into beings known as "The Order" who worship something known as "The Sigil" and those who did not believe in this new religion where brutally beaten, tortured and then "Converted". That's when the rebels and angry peasants come in.....

A special mention also goes to the games graphics, some might see the textures as very blocky and muddy but this is the "Doom" engine pushed to limit. Surprisingly it does a good job of creating an atmosphere, whether it be the grey's and brown's of a medieval town or the dark and light green's of an "Order" temple. The comic-book like art of an important character face as you talk to them is a nice touch and immerses you into this strange world even more.

The levels themselves are great to. They are designed well and look like you would imagine a alien spaceship and underground sewers . My particular favorite is the mission in when "The Front" a resistance group lead by Macil storm "The Order" castle and an large skirmish breaks out between the rebels against robots and cyborgs. The levels are separated using a HUB system meaning instead of linear levels, you can go back and forth from one level to the other which adds to the feeling that this is a real world.

The gameplay is great also and this is what makes Strife a different game from the rest of the doom clones. Instead of shooting everything that moves you have to sometimes actually talk them (amazing I know) to extract information about people, places and objects. Also this is the first game I can remember playing were you have allied soldiers fighting along side you. There is also an RPG element to the game were you have items med packs etc.. to use at anytime. Further more there is also a stat system which determines accuracy and health but apart health the stat system doesn't really affect the game.

Finally the music, even though it's MIDI it can still set the atmosphere for most levels from a rebel underground base to a creepy network of catacombs.

The Bad
There is not much I didn't like about the game apart from maybe one or two levels which are boring endless mazes where you have to solve a puzzle to get out of like "The Sewers" yawn

The A.I is well, laughable but because of the games sometimes restrictive controls, this gives the A.I an advantage because you can't mouse look in the game, also when I played "Doom" non stop when it was first released, I never ever perfected the art of strafing and the same goes for here, even though you can strafe, I find it terribly difficult to turn left,right and strafe at the same time (this is personally speaking of course.)

The save file system is an extremely bad idea as well. I must of had start the game again at least three times because I took at wrong turn got surrounded and had no chance of escaping. This problem can be fixed with a patch though.

The Bottom Line
This game is a CLASSIC. It was one of the first games to combine 1st person shooter and RPG elements into one gaming experience. Think of it as Half-Life's older brother.

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.