Best Environments

[Fallen Man]

What are the best environments in gaming?

The Forgotten Realms is awesome. It started out as a D&D PnP, but then emerged into the gaming world through stuff like "Eye of the Beholder" and "Pool of Radiance". Great settings are in this place: Waterdeep, Myth Drannor, the Abyss, Candlekeep...All kinds of great stuff. Adventures are made, as well as heroes. I love this world. It's even a book world, having great authors (R. A. Salvatore, Ed Greenwood, Claton Emery, Mel Odom) and terrible ones (Phillip Athans http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smilies/cwm23.gif , Troy Denning).

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"And the brave hero stood before the oncoming maelstrom of evil, his blinding sword in hand, ready to slay darkness once and for all."

[Doom_Dude]

Cool topic. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/cool.gif

Loved Myth Drannor when I went through it in one of the early AD&D Forgotten Realms games on the Commodore64 back when....

I've read a lot of the Forgotten Realms books. Especially like R.A. Salvatore.

Kudos Well in Pool of Radiance. Something about the place was cool even if it was an olde C64 game that I barly remember. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

Shadar Logoth in the Wheel of Time. Very atmospheric place and very creepy. Reeks of mystery and shadows and decay. I always like ruins for some reason and Shadar Logoth is one of the best.

The Ways in the Wheel of Time. Nothing beats it for atmosphere methinks. The place makes me want to stay and look around in the offchance of finding some cool secret but you just can't. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

Moogaly Swamps in Fakk2. Can be creepy and pretty cool looking. Lots of towering trees and vines and weird swamp critters and plants that grab you if your not carefull.

The Planet Stroggos in Quake II. Loved the architecture of the big buildings and the sounds and whole design / look of it all. One of my favorite tech locations.

Blackmarsh of HeXen II fame looks damned cool with it's courtyards, towers and castle walls of dark gray and black stone. Always loved castles and gothic style architecture......

Dros Delnoch (not sure of spelling) in the David Gemmell novel Legend. It's not in any game but should be. Its this huge assed castle set in a mountain pass. In the novel this one guy who's supposed to be retired from battle and such rallies the forces of Dros Delnoch against a horde of nomadic types who are bent on conquest. The castle must hold em back sort of dealie. Excellent novel and very cool setting which is very memorable to be though I've not read it in a long time.. Read it. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/wink.gif

MARS is wicked! I love the whole setting of anything on Mars and is part of the reason I want to play DooM III. I remember playing Battlezone and cruising across red sand and blasted plains and weaving around big boulders in various vehicles. Got lost once and called in a scout to come pick me up. That game was too cool. Mars is also part of the reason why I liked Red Faction.

DS9 would make an excellent setting for a Star Trek game methinks. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/biggrin.gif

The Bonehoard is this huge crypt-like level in Thief. It's crawling with zombies and there seems to be many different ways to go in this place. I only passed through this level once but it left an impression. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smile.gif

Black Mesa seemed to go on forever. I loved the whole atmosphere and look of the concrete and steel construction. The labs looked cool and the underground railway system is one of my favorite game locations. It was cool to travel around on the train, stop off and kill some grunts / aliens at diff places and going up those roatating lifts on the train was kick ass cool. You don't see that everyday. lol



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Vilecore@The Megawad (http://megawad.newdoom.com)
http://megawad.newdoom.com/sig/vilesig1.GIF
The NewdooM Community Project (http://megawad.newdoom.com/ndcp)

[Fallen Man]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, serif">quote:</font><hr width="100%" size="1" noshade><font face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, serif" size="2">Shadar Logoth, The Ways, Stroggos, The Bonehoard, Black Mesa</font><hr width="100%" size="1" noshade></BLOCKQUOTE>

All these environments are excellent.

Shadar Logoth: The Mashadar tendrils were freaky with those whispers, their minions, and that weird huge exhaling sound.

The Ways: Yeah, you tried to look for secrets...but the secrets found you.

Stroggos: I played the demo of Quake II. This planet was neat. Very sci-fi. Have you noticed that none of the Quake games have anything to do with each other, except for the name?

The Bonehoard: This is the scariest environment in Thief. I remember when I tried to get one of those 'mystic' hearts...did the weird door puzzle, and zombies seemed to pour out of the walls...quite memorable, that level was.

Black Mesa: Realistic and cool. Industrial construction rocks.

Another environment: Constantine's Mansion in Thief. It had really cool construction. I remember a part where there were three corridors to go down, so you go down one, and the corridor gets smaller and smaller...that was cool. Not to mention the part when you hear stifled laughter from Viktoria. Great environment, it was.

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"And the brave hero stood before the oncoming maelstrom of evil, his blinding sword in hand, ready to slay darkness once and for all."

[mr_insanity]

Medeva and orenia from Summoner. The world had such a deep history and the people's religion was just as developed. towns and villages were huge and amazingly detailed, and very unique in design while also being realistic in a fantastic sort of way.
The tower of Eleh in Orenia, The vast marketplace of Lenelle, the island Iona and the great library. It was all so great! What made it even better was you came back to all of the medevan cities after some shit hits the fan and they all feel apppropriately different and freaker. I'll stop now, I just loved summoner for those reasons.

P.S. The world in summoner 2 was a piece of ass. As were the characters, and the story.

Apart from summoner, Don't forget The Mansion of Resident Evil and the police station of RE2.

and two words...

Silent Hill
*screams with terror*

[HyperFlash]

Halo: The second level of Halo. It's a huge outdoor level with rivers, boulders, hills, mountains, and a few inside places.

343 Guilty Spark: The sixth level of Halo. It starts out in a dark mushy swamp and leads into an underground structure via an elevator. And then at the end of the level you emerge from the structure and back into the swamp. It's creepy.

Assault on the Control Room: The fifth level of Halo. It has its mix of indoor/outdoor environments and the outdoor sections are the best. It's an underground snowy level with frozen lakes and other obstacles.

Silent Cartographer: The fourth level of Halo. It's this awesome beach/island level with it's share of underground level environments.

Come to think of it, almost all of Halo's levels are excellent environments.

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http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/181580f6d247da/www.msnbc.com/news/1501180.jpg
Whose ass is next?

[ToXiCFLUFF]

I really liked Quake1's gritty gothic feel. The morgue in Blood was one of the scariest environments I've been in. The Circus of Horrors was excellent too. Blood 2's version of Hell was pretty cool, with all the crumbling ancient architecture and rivers of blood.

Doom's hell levels were really nice. Some of Battlezone's areas (as DD said) were really nice, especially if you got the hi-res effects pack and increased the viewing range. I really liked some of the windy alien hive levels in the first AVP.

Goddamn it, I still have never got to play either of the thief games, and they sound so good :(

[Fallen Man]

They're easy to find, just remember this:

DON'T BUY THE PLATINUM EDITION! GET THIEF GOLD AND THIEF II SEPERATELY!

Thief Gold is the original Thief with three extra levels. I don't know if there's a special editon of Thief II out there, but if there is, buy that. Stupid Eidos made the Platinum Edition without Thief Gold, so DON'T BUY IT!

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"And the brave hero stood before the oncoming maelstrom of evil, his blinding sword in hand, ready to slay darkness once and for all."

http://www.freewebs.com/fallen_man/signature.gif

[Aliotroph?]

Knew Deep in the Dead! Romero did an awesome job of giving all of it a unique atmosphere making it really scary.

Andoria That city was one of the neatest parts of Heretic II. The big stone architecture was familiar yet alien. There was loads of good use of corona and water effects in that part of the game.

AvP space station One of the marine missions is on a very very creepy space station. Everything is in shadows and it was damn scary.

That swamp place in HeXen The third level (second hub) of Hexen had a sweet swamp place that was really creepy and one of the best fog uses in an old game.

A Borg Cube! I'd really love to see a well-done Borg Cube level in a game. I love those things. They scare the crap out of me.

Some kind of ice planet I can't ever remember seeing something like this in a modern game but something like Hoth would be fun to fight in.

Arrakis The Fremen culture in Dune was cool. There should be a game with lots more of them in it. Time for big open dunes and big cave mazes, where water is at a premium.

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[Doom_Dude]

There is an awesome Ice planet in Battlezone. Not sure if it was on Pluto or some moon....... ackkkkk! It was really cool though.

Aliotroph? there is some awesome Borg missions in Star Trek Voayger: Elite Force and you do end up on a Cube! It looks just like the what you see in the series. You should get that game.

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Vilecore@The Megawad (http://megawad.newdoom.com)
http://megawad.newdoom.com/sig/vilesig1.GIF
The NewdooM Community Project (http://megawad.newdoom.com/ndcp)

[Aliotroph?]

Never played that Battlezone thing. Everytime I hear of it I think of the arcade Battlezone from 1980 or whatever.

Must get Elite Force! Have wanted that for a while. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/biggrin.gif

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"Once in a while a programmer really writes something he's proud of, a slick, elegant, blazingly fast routine that stands as a benchmark against which other code will be judged by. However, this is not the case with TED's fill routine. This slow, stupid algorithm will casually fill one plane of data in a painfully creeping manner. Press ESC when it gets confused." - John Romero on TED (Tile EDitor)

Aliotroph?.postCount++;

[Fallen Man]

Elite Force is fun.

D_D: there was Pluto, but there was also an ice planet. Heck, all the environments in Battlezone II rocked. http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/biggrin.gif

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"And the brave hero stood before the oncoming maelstrom of evil, his blinding sword in hand, ready to slay darkness once and for all."

http://www.freewebs.com/fallen_man/signature.gif

[ToXiCFLUFF]

I loved the Battlezone mission on the ice planet (Europa?) where you had to go on foot and snipe a soviet scout unit and embark on their patrol route to avoid detection. Man that was tense when you started intercepting the satellite data at the last checkpoint and they started questioning you. When they all turned against me, I bailed out 200ft into the sky and floated back to the pick-up point http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smile.gif Bailing out had to be one of the best feelings ever in that game, especially with the special effects patch. Shooting up so fucking fast, with your view spinning all over and your vehicles debris flying around. Ah what a great game. Battlezone II looked really pretty from what I can remember of the demo I played.

As for Elite Force, I quite liked it, but it kind of lacked something for me. I dunno, it might have been the weapons, or the way you often only got one type of enemy per level. End boss was one of those ones that didn't move at all, which was disappointing. The Borg cube maps were really cool though, where you'd blow a distribution node and all the borg in the area would go limp http://forums.newdoom.com/UBB/smile.gif