Hovertank 3D Short Review

                                             Hovertank 3D

                                                  First DOS FPS Made in 1991

History

Hovertank 3D is a Vehicular Combat First Person Shooter developed by id Software and published by Softdisk in 1991. The game was made by a few persons, mainly John Carmack and John Romero.

Story

You are a hovertank driver working for a governmental institute called UFA. Your mission is to rescue all hostages in the designated area before a nuke will be dropped.

Gameplay

You control a hovertank which has a normal attack and a charged attack, which you can take out multiple targets. There are three enemy types in the game: two are monsters, one who floats in the air, dies when touches and damages you, and kills a hostage directly; another monster type which can hurt you multiple times but doesn't kill any hostage, and the enemy hovertank which has a range attack. When you rescue all live hostages, a yellow teleporter will appea and then you must reach it to finnish the mission. After completion, you get a fee depending on how many you saved and how fast you finished. 

There are only 20 Zones in the game, where difficulty progression will rise up. A zone has a glitch in which the teleportal cannot be reached, resulting in cheating to finish.

Soundtrack

Sadly, there is no music in the game, the only sounds which accompany you are when you speed up the tank, shoot a projectile, a monster/hostage dies and several others.

Conclusions and Score

In conclusion, despite the game being very lackluster in many aspects, it is an interesting concept and should remain in the annals of history as the first DOS FPS. Sadly it was forgotten and only a single mod was made for it. I recommend at least trying it out for curiosity. I give it a solid 6/10.

You can watch my playthrough Here:

Quake

                                      Quake 1 (DOS) Review

                             First True 3D FPS Game made by id Software in 1996

History

Without a doubt, this was one of the most influential game of it's time, revolutionizing FPS games in that era of gaming, even being an inspiration for the GoldSource Engine for Half-Life.

Quake is a 3D First Person Shooter developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive on June 22, 1996.

 At first it was supposed to be a Fantasy RPG, but it was scrapped and later turned out to be a Doom style FPS, which of course got a lot of criticism for that. Unfortunately for id, which at the time it was splitting in half, resulting in John Romero leaving after the game was finished. Due to this aspect, the game had to suffer a lot because it was quickly made in the last moment, also the game seeming to be unfinished.

Story

Like John Carmack once said: "Story in a game is like a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.", meaning that story in an action packed FPS is not important so it's not really focussed on it. However, The story is laid out in the manual and ending screen texts after beating an episode and beating the game. You play as an Unnamed Ranger which recieves orders to eliminate enemy hostiles codenamed "Quake" in Operation: Counterstrike. Earth is invaded by Quake and it's your task to stop the invasion before the Hell-Mother Shub-Niggurath clears all life on Earth. 

Gameplay

Same as Doom, Quake is a shooter in which you shoot enemies, collect power-ups, collect keys, find secrets, find the exit, rince and repeat until you beat the episode. HOWEVER, there are slight differences here and there. For example, there are new powerups (Ring of Shadows, Pentagram of Protection, Biosuit, Three Types Of Armor and the beloved Quad Damage which pretty much turns every enemy in mince meat), weapons (Axe, Shotgun, Double Shotgun, Nailgun, Super Nailgun, Grenade Launcher, everyones favorite Rocket Launcher and the OP Thunderbolt) and enemies.

There are four different episodes, each of them containing different set of levels, with a Rune at every final level of the episode. Once you collect all 4 runes, Shub-Niggurath's Lair opens at the episode select room. Beat her and the game is over

Soundtrack

While there are ambient sounds, nothing compares having the Nine Inch Nails music in the levels, which in my experience makes the game even better. There are 10 soundtracks available, two of them being the overall best, the Theme Song and Halls of Souls which play rarely in game.

Conclusions and Score

In conclusion, Quake was a masterpiece and in my opinion is my Top 1 Game of all Time.

But in an objective way, I give it a 8/10 due to having problems and a few glitches. Other than that, a great game.

You can also watch my playthrough on YouTube here: