Re: The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered is now available

On Sat, 26 Apr 2025 09:22:41 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 26 Apr 2025 01:48:58 -0000 (UTC), ant@zimage.comANT (Ant)
wrote:
>

Oh yeah, I forgot about that Terminator game. I played its demo.

>
Bethesda made several Terminator games. I have three of them.

Bethesda owned the Terminator license on PC and made many games using
it. I'm pretty sure I owned and played all of their games. This
included:

    * "The Terminator", a 3D action/adventure retelling the
      story of the first game and using a very early version
      of the engine and concepts that would later be used in
      the Elder Scrolls games. Long before such ideas became
      common, it had a huge open world, allowed you to go into
      and out of buildings, drive cars, stealth, and buy items.
      It was quite clunky but actually somewhat fun.

    * "Terminator 2029", a tile-based 'dungeon-crawler'
      (albeit with actionified combat in the near-future,
      where you --clad in powered armor-- fight against Skynet
      and its horde of evil robots. Quite fun, if somewhat
      marred by the infinitely respawning enemies. An expansion
      -pack called "Operation Scour" (requiring the base game)
      added more levels, and a CD-ROM version added full-speech
      to the mission briefings; very exciting stuff in 1992! ;-)

    * "Terminator Rampage", a first-person shooter with techn
      somewhat in-between that of "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom".
      It had nice visuals (for the time) but it had /abysmal/
      level design and clunky controls that made it an
      absolutely tedious chore to play. It was actually a
      sequel to "Terminator 2029".

    * "Terminator: Future Shock", another FPS except this one
      used a fully-3D engine, with 3D models for the levels and
      monsters. It helped introduce many to mouse-look. A lot of
      fun, despite some tedious level design and blocky visuals.
      A sequel to "Rampage"

    * "Terminator: Skynet", a stand-alone expansion (and sequel)
      to "Future Shock". It used an upgraded version of the
      previous game's engine, allowing SVGA resolutions. If you
      owned the previous game, you could play it with the new
      engine too. Pretty good, although its pacing and
      atmosphere weren't quite as good.


Honestly, with the exception of "Rampage", all of these were quite
good, although the fact that none of these games are less than 30
years old does make it hard to recommend them; some games are
timeless, but these games aren't. You can /feel/ their age when
playing them. They were none of them /GREAT/ games but for their time
they were a lot of fun. I personally enjoy the original "The
Terminator" for its implementation of an early Bethesda-open-world
game, and "Future Shock" as an prototype (pre-Half-Life) cinematic
FPS.