Postby AgedAngel » Fri Oct 07, 2016 12:52 am
Everyone,
Sorry about that last post: it was a little off topic. It's so good to be back in the mines after so long that I sometimes get over-enthusiastic.
More to the point, then: I ran the videos of Overload and watched them very appreciatively. It's fantastic that 6DOF is coming back. I love the feeling of being allowed to roll, pitch, yaw, and tumble in threespace without any hinderance aside from those pesky 'bots...who keep trying to kill me. (What did I ever do to them? Well, OK, I did blow up a few. But they were *shooting* at me!)
But Overload didn't GRAB me the way that even the first, Lego-block-demo of DESCENT did. I thought about it for a while, and I finally came to the conclusion that Overload is just a little *too* pretty. It lacks the grittiness that the world of DESCENT has in abundance, even in its D2X-XL incarnation with the ultra-detailed textures, models, and sounds.
Overload is slick and glossy. The robots gleam and sparkle like cruising chop-and-channel jobs with candy-apple paint jobs, undercarriage lights, and chrome all the way down. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and if Overload were the first introduction I had to a 6DOF shooter, I'd probably pledge to it my allegiance and my firstborn child alike.
But there's just a certain rough panache to D1 and D2 that captured me a long time ago, and I can't give it up, no matter how pretty the graphics are these days. The DESCENT mines and 'bots aren't clean and smooth: they're rough, jagged, and nasty, echoing a brutal world of corporate anything-for-a-buck-including-your-life attitude. The only analogy I can give is how James Cameron, when given the opportunity to spruce up and smooth out ALIENS for its DVD/BluRay release, decided against doing so: he liked the Vietnam-era "aliens by arclight" feel that the graininess of the film stock gave him. And I have to go along with him there, because that feel works well with the film's subject.
No arguments from me about Overload: this is all solely a matter of taste. I'll keep on with D2X-XL until my Thrustmaster rig gives out or my computer melts down, whichever comes first.
Good hunting.
AA
