The BUILD trio, which one do you prefer?

[levelworm]

I have to say that I like all of them. Given the amount of game contents and expansions available, I could probably play them for the rest X years.

Duke Nukem 3D is the first Build game, and it's the first FPS game I played (strictly speaking I played the demo of Rebel Moon Rising before that, for perhaps 15 mins). I still remember the moment that I saw "Entering Hollywood Holocaust" shown on the screen of my father's 486DX PC. Although I have spent a lot more time on other games such as Baldur's Gate and System Shock 2 and I profoundly enjoy them, that particular moment is so unique that the thrill it brought to me occured once in my life, so far.

I didn't play Blood until GoG released the bundle, so that's at least 10 years from its release. Contrary to what some people say, nostalgia is NOT the reason that I prefer classic games like Blood. After all, I didn't get the chance to play the game until at least 2008, and I'm also playing some of the modern FPS games as well, e.g. Call of Duty. I prefer Blood to modern FPS games, as it does have a lot of game design gems. Blood doesn't have up-to-date graphics and audio, and the control is awkward if you don't set up properly. Build engine does not do well about players' looking up/down so that's also a problem. But Blood has superb game design, in some ways far superior than many modern FPS games. Modern FPS games, as well as some other genres, seem to be based on an objective system. The players are busy completing all the designated objectives without being truly immersed in the game. The cover system that you are able to see in some FPS and RPG games are also a game-flow-breaker. I played all the Mass Effect games, but honestly I never got used to the cover system so I rarely used them. I'm not saying that the objective system and cover system are bad designs, but they definitely remind the players from time to time that they are supposed to enjoy the hard work of game designers and abey the rules.

I'd like to discuss a little bit more about the objective system and cover system. It's true that a lot of games need such systems, but they can be treated differently. For example System Shock 2 has a lot of game objectives, but they are subtle, and the map is just for reference. The player is supposed to find clues in the game world, i.e. they are supposed to immerse in the gigantic game world, not the objective system itself. Now I didn't play many 3rd person games, so I can't say much about the cover system.

Shadow Warrior is actually the only game of the trio that I never completed. I bought the game a while ago and am playing it slowly, due to high difficulty and other reasons. IMO Blood and Shadow Warrior are definitely more difficult tham Duke3d, and Shadow Warrior is the most difficult one in the trio. Shadow Warrior introduces some new elements into the build engine, like drivable vehicles, but most new gameplay elements are subtle. For example I pretty enjoy taking hours and hours to find a certain key (not a secret place), and some of the secret places are truly well hidden.

Overall I'd say Duke3d is conceptually simple, while Blood and Shadow Warrior try to add a lot of details and flavors into the games. I definitely enjoy all of them, but I'd like to hear your opinions.

[Lunick]

Legend of the Seven Paladins, Witchaven and Tekwar predate Duke Nukem 3D as the first Build engine games.

I think I would enjoy Blood more if it had a port.

[levelworm]

Originally posted by Lunick:

Legend of the Seven Paladins, Witchaven and Tekwar predate Duke Nukem 3D as the first Build engine games.

I think I would enjoy Blood more if it had a port.

I actually played the demo of Legend of the Seven Paladins, pity that it was never released. I didn't play the other two and am planning to do so.

Not sure if you have ever visited this blog:
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.ca/
This guy decided to play ALL RPG games and has been doing so since 2010. It would be a cool idea to do the same thing for FPS games, and could be easier if limited to well-known FPS games. Witchaven is defenitely well known.

[Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979)]

Originally posted by Lunick:

Legend of the Seven Paladins, Witchaven and Tekwar predate Duke Nukem 3D as the first Build engine games.

I think I would enjoy Blood more if it had a port.

I also wish for a Blood port. Pity Atary won't release the source code, and sends cease and desist letters to those porting it from scratch. (Like Jace Hall's port being shut down)

[🌎Earth]

My friends think I'm crazy for playing these games still, they'll just never understand.

I have the same memory as you, seeing "Entering Hollywood Holocaust" on my older brother's monitor for the first time. My dad didn't exactly like that I played it but he never stopped me, sometimes he'd watch me play for a few minutes and say something like "do you have to play this?". The funny thing is that he grew to like Duke 3D eventually. The N64 port came out and my brothers and I had so much fun in coop, and we would have one of us on the PC sometimes just comparing map differences. The re-recorded Duke voices sounded a bit like my dad, which of course we all found cool and kinda hilarious. ("Ready for action!")

We had the demo of Shadow Warrior and I thought it was awesome, but for some reason we never felt compelled to buy the full game. We learned about Blood quite a while after it's release and bought it and we basically looked at it as the evolution of Duke 3D, because it basically was, totally expanded in every way. I still think Blood has the best weapon set ever, very personal and situational... and pleasureful.

It's a hard pick between Duke and Blood for me, but I like them better than Shadow Warrior for sure. If I woke up and it was unobtainable by all means, I could live with it. Not Duke and Blood.

[levelworm]

Originally posted by Earth:

My friends think I'm crazy for playing these games still, they'll just never understand.

I have the same memory as you, seeing "Entering Hollywood Holocaust" on my older brother's monitor for the first time. My dad didn't exactly like that I played it but he never stopped me, sometimes he'd watch me play for a few minutes and say something like "do you have to play this?". The funny thing is that he grew to like Duke 3D eventually. The N64 port came out and my brothers and I had so much fun in coop, and we would have one of us on the PC sometimes just comparing map differences. The re-recorded Duke voices sounded a bit like my dad, which of course we all found cool and kinda hilarious. ("Ready for action!")

We had the demo of Shadow Warrior and I thought it was awesome, but for some reason we never felt compelled to buy the full game. We learned about Blood quite a while after it's release and bought it and we basically looked at it as the evolution of Duke 3D, because it basically was, totally expanded in every way. I still think Blood has the best weapon set ever, very personal and situational... and pleasureful.

It's a hard pick between Duke and Blood for me, but I like them better than Shadow Warrior for sure. If I woke up and it was unobtainable by all means, I could live with it. Not Duke and Blood.

Indeed, cherish memory...the only differences are 1) I don't have a brother 2) My father did not approve it, so I have to play it alone in deep night when my father is asleep :D Oh my that's 20 years ago already.

Yeah I felt the same about SW actually, that's the reason I bought the game only recently, the game design seems to be a bit...messy, that is, too much expansion, and IMO it's even more difficult than Blood, which in turn is more difficult than Duke3d. But I do enjoy all the build games I played so far.

[gecko_sp]

Duke3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Exhumed... In that order. I don't like Nam or WW2GI.

I think Duke is the best all round and the character, episodes, level design, themes and expansions are all awesome.

Blood has great level design but the 8 key setup, and puzzle parts annoy me, although Cryptic passage bypassed all that. Its an awesome game otherwise.

Shadow Warrior is great too, and they really pushed the build engine to the limit here, but some of the levels are straight up confusing. I also didn’t like how they took the Doom2 route and just made it just basically one long episode. Wanton Destruction is my favourite,

Exhumed is really underrated. It’s an awesome game once you get into it. The Egyptian theme is great too for a change of pace. Its a pretty hard game too, harder than SW IMO.

[Robman]

SW is the most fun, especially online multiplayer. Duke is fine, but why play Duke when you have SW? Blood is too dark and its fake floaty physics are annoying.

[Red Cooter]

At the moment, I prefer SW because I played through Duke3D too many times to count and Blood plays like crap on steam. That being said, I think Duke3D is the best of the three.

What makes Duke3D the best for me is its overall level design. I found the levels in Duke3D to be the most open, which provides more paths of progression and more options for taking down enemies. In SW and Blood, the levels tend to be more linear and cluttered, limiting exploration and the utility of certain weapons, especially explosives.

The build engine is also very blocky, which works well for the largely urban levels in Duke3d. However, SW has a lot more rural levels which look too much alike and just plain ugly with the blocky backgrounds. Blood's levels weren't too visually appealing either, with its bland and unvaried textures.

Although SW and Blood made improvements in gameplay, I just feel like those two games lacked the degree of polish that Duke3D had.

[Cole Wolfsson]

Blood.

[⛧RETRODEATH ⛧]

Blood is easily the best imo, considering the fact you've got an actual windows 98 lying around or a vm software since the steam is just a cheap dosbox port and isn't as playable.
Such a shame. *Sniff*.

On the other hand I'd have to say I like powerslave (aka Exhumed outside of the US) more than anything besides blood. The theme has a certain charm to me I can't really describe.
Duke and SW I love equally.
I even like all of the pre-duke3d build games (i.e. Witchaven, tekwar, ect)
All the games on the engine (besides extreme paintbrawl, that game was a sack of sh1t) were something I grew up with as a young grasshopper.

[Emmanuelexe]

BLOOD, it's not only awesome and complete, alternative fire and stuff like enemies are so cool in this game but it has the deepest atmosphere i have seen in a fps ! (for me).
I like heretic or exhumed but BLOOD has something really deeper and the design are really original, but it depends, i like the evil stuff of BLOOD ^^

Exhumed on pc had really a great level design (huge maps !) but the strafe problem was not fun for a lot of people :s (but now, we can use the strafe patch.....), the atmosphere was still awesome, spiritual in a way maybe, i like this kind :)

[gecko_sp]

Has anyone played redneck rampage? I've never played it, but it's on sale now. I might buy it.

[mkee8638]

Hi I just got shadw warrior and I want to use textures in the editor but they don't show up. Help I would like to use the textures in a editor.

[gecko_sp]

Doom 2 is not a build engine game. Also its probably the worst out of all the dooms. Some of the levels were very amateurish.

[Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979)]

Blood is one of my favourites. I have always been a Horror fan, since I was a tiny grasshopper, back in the mid 80's. I was an 18yo when Blood came out, and understood all the references to the old-school horror films, and loved the tongue-in-cheek humour.

It's a shame that Atari is holding the source code hostage, and placed a Cease and Desist order on Jace Hall's remake plans. All we can get now is a DOSBox version which is plagued with performance issues because........ It's DOSBox! and BloodCM is nowhere near completed (I hope Atari don't Cease and Desist that project)