Sombrero wrote on 2023-05-05, 07:40:

Didn't the game have a score/rank screen after every level, I figured the secondary objectives probably only affect that. Some secondary objectives might reward you with a vehicle drop or something I guess, but I don't remember that happening.

Yeah, completing secondary objectives sometimes provided additional equipment drops, and I did like that. But discovering and finishing the secret tertiary ones just got me some pep talk from HQ. I guess they might affect the post-mission score card, but I never really cared about that to be honest.

There was some secondary escort mission/missions in one level, the kind that has the people you are supposed to escort run straight into enemies and die immediately. I sure didn't load the game to try again 😆

Ah yes, the dreaded escort missions. Pretty sure those are universally hated across all genres and platforms. 😁 I don't think I've encountered the one in Renegade yet, but I'm probably less than half way through the campaign.

It is really funny tha they added Escport missions in Renegade because it is so fitting to the C&C lore. I hated the escort missions for Doctor Mobius in the original C&C though. But it is somehow nice that they added different type of missions into Renegade. I am not going to like them when I play them that's quite sure but it is still nice in a weird way.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-05-05, 07:40:

There was some secondary escort mission/missions in one level, the kind that has the people you are supposed to escort run straight into enemies and die immediately. I sure didn't load the game to try again 😆

so many games .... 😀

i never much like squad based games for this reason, as the game becomes bout keeping them from jumping onto the nearest bomb or tackling machine gun with their faces

often its difficult enough to get them to follow you

i'm sure they are better now though, i'm talking about games from 20+ years back

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-05, 08:12:

Yeah, completing secondary objectives sometimes provided additional equipment drops, and I did like that. But discovering and finishing the secret tertiary ones just got me some pep talk from HQ. I guess they might affect the post-mission score card, but I never really cared about that to be honest.

Ah yes, the dreaded escort missions. Pretty sure those are universally hated across all genres and platforms. 😁 I don't think I've encountered the one in Renegade yet, but I'm probably less than half way through the campaign.

Oh right, I forgot there were also hidden objectives and they and the secondary objectives somehow melted together in my mind. Yeah the whole score screen is silly, I guess they added it just because the RTS games also had it. I'm sure some people have replayed the missions to get a better score, but I sure as hell didn't 🤣

I could be misremembering things, and probably am, but IIRC the escort mission I'm thinking was a secondary objective that only popped up if you happened to stumble close to it. Not only was it that kind of an escort mission it also happened to bug out for me, I got a single survivor to where they wanted to go and then nothing happened. Guy just stood there and the mission didn't get completed. So if you find it and happen to get them all killed I wouldn't get bothered about it if I were you.

gerry wrote on 2023-05-05, 09:24:

i'm sure they are better now though, i'm talking about games from 20+ years back

I wouldn't trust an escort mission even if it came from the distant future 🤣

I think a game with a not-annoying escort mission has not been invented yet. They are always annoying even today.

predator_085 wrote on 2023-05-05, 11:46:

I think a game with a not-annoying escort mission has not been invented yet. They are always annoying even today.

Their Finest Hour doesn't have explicitly escort missions, but if you play as the Luftwaffe, you'd need to escort your bombers anyway, to ensure success in destroying ground targets like enemy hangars, radar stations, and factories. You can fly a fighter escorting AI-controlled bomber(s), or you can fly a bomber while being escorted by AI-controlled fighter(s). I generally choose the former since I suck at bombing (except dive bombing, but dive bombers don't carry many bombs anyway). I can say that escorting your bombers is not overly difficult. In fact, I always find it much more difficult in doing the bombing myself instead of escorting friendly bombers.

Their Finest Hour.

In any case, Their Finest Hour is a wonderful mix of (lite) flight sim and strategy, where you choose your own target (if you play the German side) and mix your own aircraft to destroy the said target. So technically, you can send all-bombers (and fly in one of them) without escort whatsoever, but it is usually a recipe for disaster. Well unless you're using Messerschmitt Bf 110, which is quite capable to defend itself, but it doesn't carry many bombs anyway.

The same goes with Their Finest Hour's sequel, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, if you play as USAAF. While it has no explicitly escort mission, you do have to escort your bombers to ensure a successful mission.

Gunship 2000 doesn't allow you to choose your own mission objectives --they are provided for you by the random mission generator. But you can also choose to be the escort (usually AH-64 Apache or AH-1 SuperCobra) or the escorted (usually UH-60 Black Hawk). You can also try to perform the mission without escort, like flying an all-Black Hawks section, without AH-64 support whatsoever, to pick a downed pilot, but it is not advisable.

Wing Commander 1 and 2 also have escort missions, but it is not unfairly difficult.

LHX Attack Chopper has a mission where you, flying an Apache, should escort two Black Hawks. The mission is quite difficult, but to be fair, every mission in that damn game is difficult. The escort mission, while difficult, is no more difficult than other missions.

Microprose's Knights of the Sky often assigns you to escort an artillery spotter aircraft, but then again, the mission is not notably difficult compared to a typical mission, particularly since enemy aircraft are always more interested in attacking you instead!

I remember Chuck Yeager's Air Combat also has an escort mission. IIRC it was a Korea mission, where you, flying a P-51, should escort a Cessna. But it is not overly difficult compared to other missions.

Privater 2: The Darkening often has you escorting cargo ship, both as part of the plot, or part of you doing interplanetary trading, and in both cases, the escort missions are not particularly difficult either, especially if you already knew the trick. That is, wait until the escorted ship starts its jump before you jump yourself. Also, if you escort a Monolith, it's more often the cargo ship saves your ass instead of the other way around.

Just like loot boxes, DRM, microtransactions, and console-style save points, it seems unfairly difficult escort mission is a modern game phenomenon. Perhaps it's a way for game publishers to wave their middle finger to the consumers, I don't know. But there are reason why I generally stick to old games.

I've mostly been playing console RPGs in the living room lately (completed Lennus [SFC] and Shining and the Darkness [MD]; currently working on Dragon Quest III [FC]), so I haven't been posting here much. However, I started playing another PC game today, so I thought I'd post:

Geneforge 2
I completed the first game last year (having never really played it before), and absolutely loved it; probably a top 10 if not top 5 game for me. So, it made sense to give the sequel a try. So far, it's just as good if not better than the first. It's basically the same game; choose a class (basically, a fighter, thief, or summoner), explore a nonlinear world, choose factions, and solve quests based on your class/skills. The "hook" of the whole series is about creating/modifying life through "magic" so it would be weird imo not to choose the summoner class, so that's what I did.

This game is a bit friendlier compared with the first. It starts out with an actual tutorial, though it is 100% gameplay with just some helpful text screens popping up now and then. It starts you out as some lackey following around your senior, which is honestly kind of lame, but within 30 mins or so you are pretty much on your own. I preferred the setup of the first game, where you were (for story purposes) an experienced guy/gal shipwrecked on a hostile island.

Otherwise, it plays exactly like the first game. The first few areas are very linear, but I reached the point where the game opens up just now, so I'm looking forward to putting some more time into this!

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-05-05, 13:30:

Just like loot boxes, DRM, microtransactions, and console-style save points, it seems unfairly difficult escort mission is a modern game phenomenon. Perhaps it's a way for game publishers to wave their middle finger to the consumers, I don't know. But there are reason why I generally stick to old games.

I always appreciate your in-depth posts, and this was a great one!

I think escort missions get a bad rap nowadays (that is, the last 30 years or so), because they aren't really designed properly. Back then, in flight sims (or even arcade shooters like Wing Commander) it was just something you expected, or maybe something to add mission variety. I certainly didn't feel they were unfair back then.
I think that developers took escort missions from flight sims and basically without thinking stuck them in FPS or third-person action shooters, where now you have to worry about walls and elevation, and so it completely breaks down.

Yes I also have to thank you for your very long post @Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman. It also good to know that Escort Missions are always that annoying.

I just made experience with bad designed missions. The Natalaya Escort missions in Golden Eye 64 were horrible for example. They even nailed the bad design in the 2010 remake of Goldeneye. The escort missions in some 90s flying games like Rogue Squadron and G-Police were also quite bad.

Concerning G-Police I am not sure if that mission was just bad in the Playstation 1 Version ( the draw distance was horrible in that game which made it hard to reach the object you had to protect in time) or if was better in the Pc Version. I am just specutaling because I have never played the PC Version.

newtmonkey wrote on 2023-05-05, 15:23:

I've mostly been playing console RPGs in the living room lately (completed Lennus [SFC] and Shining and the Darkness [MD]; currently working on Dragon Quest III [FC]), so I haven't been posting here much.

This might be PC centric forum, but I've never thought this topic or Vogons in general to be PC only. I'm going to let everyone know just how much I love Resident Evil when I get drawn back in to PlayStation which happens every few years.

Continuing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The Taris part, as in the part the game starts with and is hands down the most boring part of the game took nearly 10 hours to finish, oof! No wonder I remembered it being something you just had to get over with as quickly as possible.

As I only just got over the worst part of the game I'll reserve my overall opinion of the game for later, but I already can see what it's going to be; an ok game that is still fun to play but one that has lost some of the shine it once had. There are definitely improvements over Neverwinter Nights especially with writing and characters, but the same childish naivety that plagues NWN still lingers with SWKotOR. Thankfully not quite as badly though. Also skills are just as useless as they are in NWN, with the exception of persuade and maybe treat injury.

It's for sure one of those games that I used to really like but haven't aged as gracefully as some others, but I'm still having a good time playing it.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-05-06, 08:41:

Also skills are just as useless as they are in NWN, with the exception of persuade and maybe treat injury.

Repair and Computer Use can be interesting if you pick up the droid companions, especially for restoring a certain HK unit later on. But yeah, during normal gameplay, I never felt like I needed to use them. The Jedi powers are where this game really shines. If you're playing a Light Side user, be sure to max out Destroy Droid or however that power is called. You encounter quite a few nasty droid enemies and other mechanical contraptions later on. That power makes them much easier to handle.

BTW, I remember liking the first KOTOR more than the second one. It had better pacing and more polished levels. The sequel felt unfinished at times, and had a somewhat troubled development history, or so I heard.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-06, 09:15:

Repair and Computer Use can be interesting if you pick up the droid companions, especially for restoring a certain HK unit later on. But yeah, during normal gameplay, I never felt like I needed to use them. The Jedi powers are where this game really shines. If you're playing a Light Side user, be sure to max out Destroy Droid or however that power is called. You encounter quite a few nasty droid enemies and other mechanical contraptions later on. That power makes them much easier to handle.

Repair is useful for improving HK, at least for a dark side character since HK is all about shooting meatbags, but then you'd have to pump intelligence just for that or go for a class that gets the skill points for it but isn't as good at melee as soldier/guardian. And considering the game is 99% combat and I happen to like my lightsabers. I'll keep Destroy Droid in mind. I'm doing the stop at level 5 and wait till you get to choose a jedi class trick so I should have the force powers to spare.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-06, 09:15:

BTW, I remember liking the first KOTOR more than the second one. It had better pacing and more polished levels. The sequel felt unfinished at times, and had a somewhat troubled development history, or so I heard.

Same here. Obsidian had laughably short time to develop it, something in the lines of 6-9 months and it shows in many ways. The writing and story is way better than in the first game though, but that also suffers from short development. I mean Darth Nihilus, a really awesome sith lord that gets painted as an absolute monster who consumed the population of an entire planet and is more like a black hole than a man got like two scenes in the game and is then beaten easily somewhere around half way through the game. Kinda applies to everything in the game, great premise, bad to avarage implementation.

I'm not at all a fan of Star Wars, but KotOR 2 showed you could do really interesting things with the setting, things that would turn me into a fan in light speed. If I could choose a game that would get remade with all the resources it would need KotOR 2 would be pretty high on my list.

newtmonkey wrote on 2023-05-05, 16:34:

I always appreciate your in-depth posts, and this was a great one! […]
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-05-05, 13:30:

Just like loot boxes, DRM, microtransactions, and console-style save points, it seems unfairly difficult escort mission is a modern game phenomenon. Perhaps it's a way for game publishers to wave their middle finger to the consumers, I don't know. But there are reason why I generally stick to old games.

I always appreciate your in-depth posts, and this was a great one!

I think escort missions get a bad rap nowadays (that is, the last 30 years or so), because they aren't really designed properly. Back then, in flight sims (or even arcade shooters like Wing Commander) it was just something you expected, or maybe something to add mission variety. I certainly didn't feel they were unfair back then.
I think that developers took escort missions from flight sims and basically without thinking stuck them in FPS or third-person action shooters, where now you have to worry about walls and elevation, and so it completely breaks down.

predator_085 wrote on 2023-05-05, 16:55:

Yes I also have to thank you for your very long post @Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman. It also good to know that Escort Missions are always that annoying.

I just made experience with bad designed missions. The Natalaya Escort missions in Golden Eye 64 were horrible for example. They even nailed the bad design in the 2010 remake of Goldeneye. The escort missions in some 90s flying games like Rogue Squadron and G-Police were also quite bad.

Concerning G-Police I am not sure if that mission was just bad in the Playstation 1 Version ( the draw distance was horrible in that game which made it hard to reach the object you had to protect in time) or if was better in the Pc Version. I am just specutaling because I have never played the PC Version.

Thanks, both of you. 😀

I just like to talk about certain topics; things like retro computer games, stereo system, superhero comics, and science fiction. Before I have my own business, I had a co-worker named James who is also obsessed with computer games (although he prefers RTS, while I'm always a flight simmmer) and gaming hardware. During those days, we could spend hours talking about games and gaming hardware. Coincidentally, we're both introverts and we both hate small talks, yet we could waste an entire lunch time talking about Emperor: Battle for Dune. What do you call it? Asperger?

In any case, the first time I read about frustrating escort was in a review about Daikatana, although technically it's not escort mission. Still, in the game, you need to keep your computer-controlled sidekick alive to finish certain levels, and it's very difficult due to the sidekick's stupidity and suicidal tendency. I just didn't except such thing would later become a new standard for escort mission. 😵

In any case, I never understand the ho-hum reviews about this following game. Yes, it is not as realistic as, say, MicroProse's Grand Prix. And yes, victories are rather easy. But it is lots of fun, and my daughter also loves it.

Selecting the driver.

Selecting the track.

The race start.

A sharp turn.

Closing in.

Competing for the finish line --with a shark!

Victory!

Finished C&C Renegade. As expected, the infamous escort missions sucked. Basically, whenever there was an NPC (or more) that you had to babysit, it made things significantly harder. Didn't help that the last couple of missions had literal swarms of enemies pitted against you, along with those pesky ceiling turrets which can shred you in mere seconds and are very difficult to spot from a distance. And all of that while escorting either Dr. Mobius or his daughter, who love rushing into the line of fire.

Also, enemies sometimes had insanely good aim, even if they were far off in the distance. To deal with that, I mostly resorted to using the laser weapons which seemed to stun opponents for a moment, thereby preventing them from firing back. This kinda left me in a bad spot during the end boss fight against the cyborg chick, since I was pretty much out of ammo for lasers. I did still have a few shots of the portable Ion Cannon, and fortunately, that worked well on her. The last level also had infinitely respawning enemies during certain sections, or at least it seemed that way to me. And that final sequence with protecting Mobius' daughter on those elevators was absolutely terrible.

All in all, I think this game is pretty mediocre. The few good points that it has are offset by some truly awful design choices that the developers made, especially during the final levels. Definitively not one of my favorites among the C&C games.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-06, 21:09:

All in all, I think this game is pretty mediocre. The few good points that it has are offset by some truly awful design choices that the developers made, especially during the final levels. Definitively not one of my favorites among the C&C games.

Exactly how I see it too.

And yeah, there's a reason why I raged about the ending here. Worst kind of BS I've probably ever seen. I had actually kinda forgotten escorting Mobius' daughter at the end, it's just a red mist to me.

2hrs in on Xbox 360. Never played this game before, only SR The Third and SR4. I heard the PC port is a mess, also that this is the best in the series. Well, the Xbox version also loves dropping the frame rate. Otherwise so far it looks like a discount GTA San Andres.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-05-07, 04:44:

Exactly how I see it too.

And yeah, there's a reason why I raged about the ending here. Worst kind of BS I've probably ever seen. I had actually kinda forgotten escorting Mobius' daughter at the end, it's just a red mist to me.

Heh, I almost rage quit during that catacomb-like section right before the end fight, where those cyborg/mutant creatures kept spawning out of thin air in seemingly infinite numbers. I expended most of my ammo there and was woefully underpowered for the end boss fight, but somehow made it through out of sheer spite.

That final level was terrible in so many ways. And I agree, it's probably among the worst designed areas in any FPS game that I ever played.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-06, 21:09:

Finished C&C Renegade. As expected, the infamous escort missions sucked. Basically, whenever there was an NPC (or more) that you had to babysit, it made things significantly harder. Didn't help that the last couple of missions had literal swarms of enemies pitted against you, along with those pesky ceiling turrets which can shred you in mere seconds and are very difficult to spot from a distance. And all of that while escorting either Dr. Mobius or his daughter, who love rushing into the line of fire.

Also, enemies sometimes had insanely good aim, even if they were far off in the distance. To deal with that, I mostly resorted to using the laser weapons which seemed to stun opponents for a moment, thereby preventing them from firing back. This kinda left me in a bad spot during the end boss fight against the cyborg chick, since I was pretty much out of ammo for lasers. I did still have a few shots of the portable Ion Cannon, and fortunately, that worked well on her. The last level also had infinitely respawning enemies during certain sections, or at least it seemed that way to me. And that final sequence with protecting Mobius' daughter on those elevators was absolutely terrible.

All in all, I think this game is pretty mediocre. The few good points that it has are offset by some truly awful design choices that the developers made, especially during the final levels. Definitively not one of my favorites among the C&C games.

i'm kinda glad i never did finish it now 😀

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-05-07, 05:38:

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/9480/logo.png […]
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2hrs in on Xbox 360. Never played this game before, only SR The Third and SR4. I heard the PC port is a mess, also that this is the best in the series. Well, the Xbox version also loves dropping the frame rate. Otherwise so far it looks like a discount GTA San Andres.

maybe that explains my experience on a PC with SR2

i found it 'jumpy' in controls/gameplay and couldn't get into it at all

i've played 'the third' too and while that was better in gameplay terms i think this style of open world is just not my style, preferring the worlds and gameplay of gta

Thanks for your review of C&C Renegade @Joseph Joestar. I am not surprised by your impressions. As far as I can remember the game had not the best reputation back then and it was not nearly as good as it could have been.