Strife: Veteran Edition
The Original Strife is back!
Hailed as the original FPS-RPG game that spawned countless imitators, Strife: Veteran Edition is a love letter to the classic from 1996.
New Features Include:
- Support for high resolutions, with proper aspect ratio.
- OpenGL for video backend to provide portability and support for vertical sync.
- Dynamic lighting and bloom
- Widescreen support.
- Ability to freely rebind all keyboard, mouse, and gamepad inputs.
- Steam Achievements
- Steam Trading Cards
Completion of missing and unfinished options in the original game, such as:
- The planned “Capture the Chalice” multi-player mode.
- Marking of current objectives on the auto-map.
- Special HUD for the Torpedo weapon
Immerse yourself in this all-consuming epic quest that for the first time combines riveting role-playing adventure with the spectacular Doom 3D engine! -An evil presence has implanted itself in the fabric of our world. Play the role of spy, assassin, warrior and thief as you are lured into the darkest and most perilous adventure of your life. You´ll have Blackbird on your side – a seductive underground agent that will provide you with clues as you encounter progressively more sinister foes. Be strong, and trust no one.
FULLY INTERACTIVE WORLD
The elaborate virtual environment offers 28 interconnected levels covering over 200 square miles. Explore medieval towns and industrial complexes filled with pitfalls and perils, ending in a final confrontation that will reveal the planet’s darkest secrets.
AN AWESOME ARSENAL
From the silent but lethal crossbow to the breathtaking flame thrower, you’ll toast, mince and vaporize your opponents in your search to control the ultimate weapon of mass destruction- the Sigil.
NAIL-BITING NARRATIVE
In your role as resistance fighter, you’ll conspire with allies to demolish the fanatical ranks of the order from the inside out. Provides an engaging complex storyline and a multitude of dramatic voice-overs.
Steam User 2
Found the CD a long time ago, but never could get it to work on my machine. And that might be all I knew about the game before I got it on Steam. I'm pretty amazed at how advanced it is given its era, with spoken dialog and a kind of decision tree mechanic.
It's also somewhat complex, with several menus of key mappings. Default WASD for movement, but then also R and F to select inventory items and then Q to use them. Heretic's brackets and Enter is easier for me, but I didn't change any mappings.
Didn't explore all the options. I toggled a few, like turning on the crosshair. There was one about playing the game more like the original, which I'll try out next time. Think that option is just about how the game is played. Said something like it also had bugs from the original. Didn't run into any bugs here, except enemies getting caught on the geometry sometimes.
I wouldn't be surprised if that same option also affects how the game looks, but I don't think it does. The game looks great! Really crisp textures and vibrant colors.
Sleek level design too. I could slide through some levels once I got to know them. The game doesn't progress one-way through levels, but instead has an RPG-like ecosystem of zones. You can leave the level you're working on at any time, for example, to make a mad dash to the shops to buy more health/armor/ammo with any gold you may have found or earned. There are detailed maps of individual zones when you hit the Tab key. I didn't see a map of how all the zones fit together, so I had a little trouble going from one to another. (Even if I'd been there before. I get lost easily.) For its time, this might be an open world game; the world map is big, but not too big.
Maps felt a little sparse at times, or too big for how many enemies were in them. That's probably less of an issue at higher difficulties. I went with Veteran, the middle one. Difficulty was about right for me. Easy enough for me to make progress each session. (This playthrough took me about 12 hours, which is what I was expecting.) But also hard enough that I saved pretty conservatively. I may have saved too much actually, because getting the "best ending" achievement depends on a specific decision I made, and that save was overwritten long before I reached the end.
I got about half the achievements just by playing through the game. (Surpised I didn't get the one about stamina/accuracy upgrades, but I think that's because of the same decision. So I definitely want to replay to retry that.)
Unique and fun arcade/comic-book vibe to the game. Catchy music that had the same feel. Likewise with your assistant (Blackbird), a voice in your ear who tells you your tasks, taunts you when you die, and is comic relief the rest of the time. This felt like a Teen rating, but it might be more Mature if I hadn't toggled a few options.
The game's a little bit of a platformer in areas. Not entirely a "shoot anything that moves" FPS; in fact, playing it that way can make the game harder than it needs to be, I found out. Easy to learn, although The Big Decision snuck up on me. A couple other things that I wasn't expecting:
1. Health packs get auto-consumed when you're low but the big field kits do not. Both of these come in handy because
2. The Sigil is a weapon (especially for bosses and crowd control) and its ammo is your health
A story threads the different levels together, but I had a little trouble following it. It involves a virus from a comet and you're a member of the resistance, a group called The Front. I wondered if this game was an influence on several others I've played; it felt especially like a prelude to Heretic II to me.
Fun game, looking forward to playing it again soon!
Steam User 2
Not bad, it's literally like Doom + HeXen.
Doom being the FPS part of the game and HeXen being the inventory items + slight bit of character stats.
It's one of the better retro FPS among many. It's worth checking out.
Even though the game have full of doors and switches to navigate honestly it's one of the easier ones compared to most of the older retro FPS.
Definitely 1000X easier than HeXen....I only used guide like twice or three times a certain area I got stuck.
But most the time with the map I can just navigate quite easily.