The contrast between having to choose a bunch of oblique stats before you begin, then your first quest presuming you don't know how to move the camera in a game.... mid 2000s pc gaming in a nutshell.
RPG fans were a knowledgeable bunch back then. Fallout, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale, NeverWinter Nights, Morrowind, Gothic, VtMB etc. The genre as a whole was on fire. If you were a fan then the stats screen was usually pretty straightforward ( if it could even match the complexity of Arcanum's )
Would you like to put your one skill point into Long swords, short swords, daggers, spears, sledgehammers, ball-peen hammers, bows, pickaxes, shields, maces, blunt weapons (but not maces or hammers), weaponized masonry or dildo bats? Except then it turns out everyone uses ball-peen hammers as a weapon and there's only two weapons for each weapon type other than 140 different ball-peen hammers. And the best weapon in the game is a dildo bat.
+Dreadnought That's why it was funny, the game throws all these complicated things at you with little explanation, and then has a tutorial telling you how to move a camera, something you don't need to be told! +liger04 That gives me flashbacks but I can't recall to what game/games. Neverwinter Nights maybe?
Hey can you read me, you've never left the game! QUICK you have been there for far too long, you gotta press "Okay" to exit Don't click "Yes" that never closed the game many are still trapped!
I love how Wolfhound ended the bad ending cutscene with his arms crossed. "Wolfhound has lost his soul and turned evil!" Wolfhound: "heh, well I'll be damned!" (Cue laugh track.)
Hey Ross, you'd happen to know a link to the soundtrack? i'm a fan of that sax track that was playing at the shore but i can't find the OST to it on youtube :/
I was the one the people pointing this out but real talk, with everything wrong with this game, I bet the 'voice actors' would pronounce it this way too
So apparently since this video's release, someone has uploaded the game's soundtrack to youtube. One noteworthy track is simply called "Silent" which is just a full minute of silence. Which implies the game had no system in place to just _not_ play a music track, so they had to make a deliberately empty track just to have moments with no music.
The game's actually based on the book. The Russian version just took advantage of the fact a movie had come out at the same time and tried to market it as the movie game, when it's not actually.
Yeah, after Ross said that I told everyone we were watching Wolfhound for family Movie Night. Unfortunately my destiny is REALLY hard to fulfill, cause I'm still looking for a copy.
41:24 "Hello, how are you?" >Good >Bad Good ending: *remain silent* Bad ending: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH This is story telling done right, ladies and gentlemen.
I know I'm typing into the void given how old this vid is, but my theory behind why bloom got so big is we just moved off of CRTs around that time. CRTs had bloom and other graphical artifacts built in that devs got used to and even took advantage of. You could see this especially in pixel art, where devs used to make things 1 pixel knowing it would bleed into the nearby pixels. So when everyone was on LCDs they tried to recreate some of these effects. Maybe even unintentionally just from being so used to seeing it up until that point. I also think it's why our memory of old games never matches up with seeing them today. We saw them on a CRT which hid a lot of the shortcomings.
as someone who regularly games on a CRT - almost. a lot of games really did just look better in your memories, especially early 3d. good lord the ps1 mostly looks awful with it's wobbly vertices and affine texture mapping, and it is NOT something that goes away on a CRT i think it's both thanks to our faulty memory making up half the things you think you remember, and also limited exposure to things when you were a child, so your standards of curation were lower
@@dirtfriend True. I never noticed the wobbly effect as a kid but notice it as an adult even on a CRT. I think it is is a mix of both. Being a kid and also the fact the faults weren't so obvious at 240p on a blurry screen. It also depends on the CRT. Monitors were way higher res than TVs.
A faithful movie-based game that tells a different story from the movie that I can think of is Alien: Isolation. From the horror atmosphere to the surrounding aesthetic design of the first movie, it's claimed by many as the best Alien game ever made. On the other hand, it's not for everyone, and you would probably enjoy it only if you are enjoying both Horror AND Stealth genres!
Unraveler There's also RAMA I think. Except that one does follow the book and the only new thing other than some character differences or quirks only clear in the book is that you are the new guy sent to replace the man Sabatini and the angry bald man murdered back on the shuttle. This new guy doesn't exist in the book and his only purpose is to stumble around the inside of Rama II, solving puzzles, occasionally watching the real cast do their bits and even taking over from Michael O Toole when it comes to disarm the bomb. His QI trivia about the prime number sequence in his opening email is actually the answer to the bomb defuse code according to the book.
AVP 2 is the best alien game ever made. 3 full campaign and nowhere near as repetitive as Alien Isolation. I finished Alien Isolation, but I wanted to kill myself mid campaign.
Reminder that Ross died long ago and the mold took over his body. This mold-based Ross is only making videos to keep up appearances. Soon the age of mold will begin, and he will personally welcome us all to the family.
That is his first line of dialogue! He says later that he first s peaks after beating the wizard and I was like "wait... you just made a big deal of that other line he said!:
The REAL ROSS would have told us why WolfHound had a pet bat on his shoulder the entire game or why it randomly stunned a bandit in one clip, hell that would have been a good launching point for talking about it.. This convinces me Mold Ross has taken over and will soon attempt to take over the rest of humanity. Grab your flamethrowers boys, we're committing genocide.
I'm glad someone else noticed that. It's perfectly resting on the character's shoulder even when he's flat prone at the very beginning of the game, which looks hilarious. After that I was waiting the entire video for Ross to mention it and how pointless it seemed (I didn't notice that bandit stunning thing) and how it didn't show up in any of the movie clips he showed.
What a relief, mold and all!!! Mr. Scott, you made my night. I work in food, had a 300 dollar order tonight out of nowhere. I saw this pop up in my feed, my night ends on a positive note. Thank you Mr. Scott, THANK YOU!!!!!!!
As far as movie-based games go, Peter Jackson's King Kong actually had a fantastic game. It switched between an action survival-horror feel playing as a human explorer and a third-person brawler when you played as Kong.
The problem with the bloom effect is it can only apply to the pixels you see. A white sun is the same brightness as a white piece of paper to the effect. So if you wanted the sun to look bright the paper had to look just as bright. Later we got HDR bloom which was better. A few games had a special rendering buffer for bright objects, and bloomed that. Like Supreme Commander.
The mid 2000's was probably the golden age of movie based games and games based on movie universes. We had the lord of the rings games which were all good, the Spiderman 2 game, the Star Wars battlefront games, KOTOR 1 and 2, the early licenced Lego games, star Wars Starfighter series. Probably some more that I never played.
I think the 'I already saw the movie' argument has a good counter argument in Spiderman 2. Why play the game if you already saw the movie? So you can swing through the city like Spiderman does in the movie.
42:27 - Aeon Flux!? OOH! Ross - _THERE WAS AN AEON FLUX GAME!_ Based on the actual MTV series instead of the Charlize Theron movie. Well... sort of. Cryo Interactive was developing it for PSX/PC back in the late 90's, lost the license partway through development and did a quickie conversion job to turn it into an original IP so they could release it. But when you know it was an Aeon Flux game for 70% of development, it's SUPER OBVIOUS. I haven't played it personally so I can't vouch as to the quality of it, but look up 1997's Pax Corpus sometime.
Everyone thumb up the OP. Ross needs to learn about this. While I'm here, I think it's worth mentioning that the Aeon Flux movie tie-in game actually has an original story that supposedly ties together both the movie and the animated series. At the very least, it has elements from the cartoon that the movie dropped. Admittedly, I haven't actually played it, but it was apparently built on the same engine as BloodRayne and assumedly plays like it. Still, I think Pax Corpus would make for better Game Dungeon material anyway, and unlike the Aeon Flux game, it's available on PC.
Ross is already aware of that. I made a post on the forums pointing this out: www.accursedfarms.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=8975 But I've tried to search the game for myself and couldn't find any .iso for the PSX version, and the only images for the PC version that are around the web are DEFECTIVE! They have missing files and the game crashes at one point as a result. Combined with the fact that there's very few footage on TH-cam, and none of it is about anyone beating the game, this is a true game in extinction. There's still physical copies flying arond eBay/Amazon but they are also extremely rare. Dunno if Ross will even cover this one.
I bought a viking-style sword for fun, but also had an ancestor who was alive for part of my lifetime and had a sword from WWII (he showed it to me) so it might have even been used in battle in what is arguably the greatest war in history. But I didn't inherit it when he died. I don't know what happened to it. I guess I have to go on a quest to find the lost ancestral sword. BRB
The whole killing your allies part reminded me of Jade Empire. You can actually make a few evil choices that put you so at odds with some of your party members that they fight you and you can kill them. That game really made me feel evil.
Right but admittedly when you do that, you aren't playing a pre-scripted named character who has been a pure hero the entire game all the way up until the end where you just randomly kill everyone out of nowhere.
The "bloom" bit at the beginning really reminded of what I liked to call "The Brown Period" of console games. Just like PC art directors; console art directors also lost their damned minds except in this case they made everything brown. In their minds brown equaled "realism". Also they were trying to copy Resident Evil 4. A lot of trends from the seventh generation of consoles can be traced back to RE 4.
oh I think they moved on to Ray-Tracing. while better the brown generation, It will probably spit roast GPUs for little to no change. I dont care how good it is.
@@GHL24845 Neon bullshit ? I don't know what you mean. Every game has an art style, I really can't think of any games I have recently played that are "Neon Bullshit." Do you have any examples ? Personally I would rather have more color than brown and washed out. There's that retrowave aesthetic but I really can't think of many games that use it, not quite like how brown was overused back in the day. Recent newer games I have played. Horizon Forbidden West, Resident Evil 8, Re2make, The Last of Us 2, CoD Modern Warfare & Black Ops Cold War, Control, Jedi Fallen Order, Splitgate, Disco Elysium. Probably some other ones and I really can't think of any that are Neon Bullshit, I guess Doom Eternal has some neon but that's just in weapon pick ups. There's indie games like Angerfoot, is that what you are talking about ?
@@Gatorade69 Neon particle effects. Rage 2 is the magnum opus of neon bullshit. Outer worlds, Overwatch, cyberpunk 2077, dying light 2 and destiny are also pretty heavy on those neon particle effects. Try comparing Borderlands 3 gameplay to Borderlands 2
@@GHL24845 Ahh, I haven't played most of those games except for Doom Eternal which I'm mixed on the neon drops. One one hand they seem out of place and on the other they make it easy to distinguish what is health, armor or ammo. Still, I think the brown filter was worse, but that's just me.
Our Father, who art in dungeon, Mold Ross be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in the dungeon. Give us this day our daily wait. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
10:41 Not that anyone cares but here's why he's called "Wolfhound". The book makes a big deal out of "true names" kinda akin to "Wizard of Earthsea". Our young protagonist was undergoing his coming of age ritual, where the tribe elders take a boy's name away and give out a new, "grown-up" name. But the ritual was interrupted with attacking marauders, who murdered everyone and took our protagonist to the slave mines. So, the boy had his name taken away and not given one, so he was nameless in the slave mines. Then, he dueled one of the guards by the name of Wolf for his freedom and won. The slaves rejoiced and named him "Wolf-killer" or "Wolfhound". Edit: btw big points to you Ross for knowing what the hell "the Wolfhound" is, it's kinda obscure. Maybe you'll review the Night Watch games sometime? They were enjoyably awful and very 00-s.
I definitely like the rise of the undead's campaign compared to the drama-filled Night Elf's campaign, even though the Night Elves faction are my more favorable one.
@@mildpassThat has to be nostalgia talking. Arthas's fall feels impactful because his dialogue, especially with Uther, is written well for a video game of its time. However otherwise it's a pretty barebones "hero falls for the dark side" plot. Not even that exactly because his blade explicitly seems to mind-control him, instead of e.g. feeding him delusions about how he's actually saving his people
Yeap. The (in)famous masters of "trash and cash" game design philosophy. Basically, they made Steam Greenlight level trash before Steam Greenlight even became a thing.
StarForce... the only DRM worse than Denuvo. Eugh. I still remember Cenega (part of 1C, another russian publisher) replaced DRMs in polish version of Fallout3. They removed GfWL (not supported in Poland, yet) and Securom then put StarForce. Hated that crap, constant BSoD. It was in Divine Divinity too so I had to wait for GOG release for it. It was worth it, game is amazing. Divinity, not Fallout3....
I saw Akella logo. Akella. That crappy russian publisher that put its crappy StarForce DRM in every single game in mid-2000s. That crap could literally kill PCs of users. Not even starting on their translations. They were beyond awful. Sometimes to the level of "It's so bad you should see this" of awful. Yeah...
As a Russian, I agree, they suck, like BAD. There are rarely any good (or correct) vocal and text translations, at least those that are good, are more than good, they are better.
There was nothing worse than seeing that white scribble Fargus-killer wolf on the covers. At least it has been put down by now, so we can rejoice. (1C isn't going anywhere ever ever ever though and Noviy Disk was assassinated, so... things are still bad)
Holy cow! I did not expect this to be a Volkodav game - this guy is one of my favourite characters in slavic fantasy literature. But I was even happier to find out that you knew who Volkodav was at all :D Thanks for the awesome episode, Ross!
I own a large metal prop scimitar, but I bought it some time ago in another state while visiting my girlfriend, and was unable to take it directly back with me, so I left it with her. She has since moved in with me, and it was only just today that I finally received the package from her mother containing it, and I left it next to my bed. When you said that if you own a sword, perhaps next to your bed, then you need to see Wolfhound, my mind was fucking blown.
One of my favourite Game Dungeons! I haven't laughed like that in ages! Thank you Ross for making this gem, I love all your videos and I really appreciate how much effort you put in them! It's funny to say, I've been your fan for more than ten years now...
Ross, your recommendation of the Wolfhound movie is the best. As someone with a sword next to his bed and basic armor hanging on the wall, it was the perfect movie to spend my weekend off watching.
Ross, I really miss seeing the awards at the end of the video. It makes more sense that way. It wraps the game and the video into a sense of finality. Plus it calls back to what we have seen, and we get to smile as we remember these various highlights from the game.
It's surreal that the person overlooking the production of this game heard those lines and went: "Good enough. Send out the gold master!". It sounds exactly like these were placeholder lines to be replaced by the actual lines, but somehow that's what was shipped instead. Amazing. I especially enjoy this as someone who's done voice work for games myself.
During the 2000s, video game developers in Eastern Europe didn’t have ready access to professional voice actors who knew English, so they compensated by writing out the English dialogue _phonetically_ and had whoever they had doing the voice clips read it without actually knowing what they were saying. So the delivery is always hilariously weird, because all the direction they got was ‘read out this string of gibberish sounds you don’t understand in a scared tone of voice.’
This video makes a lot more sense after I watched the movie last week. Because Ross kept talking-up the movie, so I had to know what I was missing. It was pretty good. The awkward staring and the laser-sword at the end was a bit much, but still a good movie.
That wobble effect on the terrain is not the same as the psx, I can tell you that's caused by a level of detail system, the terrain uses less polygons in the distance and adds stuff as you walk by, but a good game does that still at a distance where you don't notice it much
It didn't look like the polygon count was actually changing, though. And usually that happens when you get a significant distance away; that stuff was popping up and down right under Wolfhound's feet. I dunno. I think this merits further research.
I have to agree, this doesnt look like terrain LOD, aka adding more detail closer to the camera. This is totally PSX triangle "wobble” due to low precision Fixed point math vertex storage/calculations. I bet they did something "clever", like stored surface height in a bitmap(I didnt see any overhangs), but generate Vertexes in real time every time you move(no glitches when camera is only rotating), ala voxels, except said bitmap is too detailed and interpolation too expensive, so they just resample.
Yay, a new episode! It immediatly cought my attention that this game was made by Akella, which is a Russian game studio. Of all games I've expected to appear in your videos, Russian ones are the least expected. Also, I haven't completed watching this video yet, but I think this is a game "Волкодав" (Volkodav), which was made after the movie with the same name. The movie was pretty lacking (and I guess so is the game, because we all know how much movie-based games usually suck), but it was based on a book that is actually pretty good (or so I've heard). Anyway, thank you for continuing this series, Ross. You are awesome. Know that you have fans in Russia, too :D Although not too many, but I will recommend this series to all of my friends who are into videogames and who can understand English more or less. P.S. I apologise for any possible grammar mistakes in this comment. I don't comment on English-speaking videos very often. P.P.S. Although having a reply from Ross himself would be pretty awesome :D
9:09 - "Do you own a sword? As you watch this video right now, is there some sort of a sword hanging on your wall or sitting next to your bed or something?" *actually owns three swords, two of which are in the room with me* ...Guess I have to watch that movie now.
Whoa whoa whoa Ross. Conan is a barren movie?! the cultests, snake and camel are it?! What about Conan's prayer to Krum? And his fathers speech to him as a boy?! and at the end, Thusal Doom's plea for his life "For who now is your father if it is not me?" "What would your world be without me? My son." Thanks for the videos tho. keep them coming
I could be wrong here in interpreting what Ross said, but I think he was talking about foliage when he talked about things looking barren. Aside from the snowy forest in the beginning, most of the places we see in Conan: The Barbarian are deserts (or at least sparse when it comes to vegetation).
Somehow that "Hi..." in response to the hilariously bad voice acting (like the guy at 7:00 for example) is the funniest thing to me, and that specific exchange has been stuck in my head for years.
I absolutely love the choice of games on this channel, from well-known titles such as Deus Ex or The Crew you delve straight into obscure games such as The Chosen or Requital - the latter a game I have never heard of. Thank you for the great content, Ross!
Ross, if you want a good Russian RPG for a change, try Space Rangers. It has everything: open world, crazy-ass aliens, hilarious quests, intricate AI and oh my God minigames.
The contrast between having to choose a bunch of oblique stats before you begin, then your first quest presuming you don't know how to move the camera in a game.... mid 2000s pc gaming in a nutshell.
RPG fans were a knowledgeable bunch back then. Fallout, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale, NeverWinter Nights, Morrowind, Gothic, VtMB etc. The genre as a whole was on fire. If you were a fan then the stats screen was usually pretty straightforward ( if it could even match the complexity of Arcanum's )
but the camera tutorial! the damn camera tutorials!
Would you like to put your one skill point into Long swords, short swords, daggers, spears, sledgehammers, ball-peen hammers, bows, pickaxes, shields, maces, blunt weapons (but not maces or hammers), weaponized masonry or dildo bats?
Except then it turns out everyone uses ball-peen hammers as a weapon and there's only two weapons for each weapon type other than 140 different ball-peen hammers. And the best weapon in the game is a dildo bat.
+Fedacking
That's why I miss the isometric ones :'(
+Dreadnought That's why it was funny, the game throws all these complicated things at you with little explanation, and then has a tutorial telling you how to move a camera, something you don't need to be told!
+liger04 That gives me flashbacks but I can't recall to what game/games. Neverwinter Nights maybe?
New RGD? Thanks Ross. You son of a good mother.
I wonder if this is the forgotten friendly counterpart to a certain other phrase.
Hey kid, I need your tape.
I love how the end screen says "Click okay to exit," but then the only option is "Yes."
Hey can you read me, you've never left the game!
QUICK you have been there for far too long, you gotta press "Okay" to exit
Don't click "Yes" that never closed the game many are still trapped!
I love how Wolfhound ended the bad ending cutscene with his arms crossed.
"Wolfhound has lost his soul and turned evil!"
Wolfhound: "heh, well I'll be damned!"
(Cue laugh track.)
*cue Seinfeld theme*
@@ihear2paceverywhere *shoots you* no.
Requital is filmed in front of a live studio audience.
(to the conga line tune) "I-am-evil-Wolfhound, I-am-evil-Wolfhound!"
>ending of half life
>Gman: "time to choose"
>me: *walks into portal*
>Gman: *"LOUD UNINTELLIGIBLE SCREECHING"*
- Freeman! How are you?
- It's not a Freeman anymore. G-man ate all the donuts! I mean - he has eaten his soul!
@@igorthelight I'm so happy I came back to rewatch this video so I could find this magnificent comment.
@@Gunslingerwashere Thanks :-)
@@igorthelight
Gordon: _(crosses arms.)_
Well, I guess that's what you get for siding with G-Man.
holy shit I can't help imagining the NPCs as players rp'ing with shitty mics. it fits too well
I mispronounced "Requital" the entirety of the video, oops. At least I'm in good company, the game itself didn't get everything perfect either.
New upload required, with all new gameplay footage, especially the caravan.
Please review: Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos
PLEASE SHOW MORE CARAVAN
Hey Ross, you'd happen to know a link to the soundtrack? i'm a fan of that sax track that was playing at the shore but i can't find the OST to it on youtube :/
I was the one the people pointing this out but real talk, with everything wrong with this game, I bet the 'voice actors' would pronounce it this way too
So apparently since this video's release, someone has uploaded the game's soundtrack to youtube.
One noteworthy track is simply called "Silent" which is just a full minute of silence. Which implies the game had no system in place to just _not_ play a music track, so they had to make a deliberately empty track just to have moments with no music.
I swear to God if that is the reason lol
Should've called it "Remain Silent"
>What kind of music should we have for our epic fantasy game when you're wandering in the verdant wilderness?
>"That's gonna be smooth jazz, fam."
"I'm never gonna dance again...."
You know it's mature with FREEFORM JAZZ
Pokemon games
@@Shoxic666still fit
Yacht Rock
Game completed
Press OK to exit.
A great ending! Better than those NES style "Conglaturation" endings. A holy grail for endings.
Button says "Yes"
@@teh_supar_hackr I didn't even finish my beer...
@@proteus2103 While you were finishing your beer, I drank 12. My kidney's fucked!
That is basically what you see upon your death.
33:30
The grass isn't loading in too late, Freeman. You're just being paranoid
*places bucket on head* WELCOME TRAVELER.
*remains silent*
well met, o son of a good mother
thedungeondelver when is LGR or technoman going to review this old piece of technology?
That was a good read. Can you give us another take? I didn't put the recorder close enough to the conference call speaker.
Health and prosperity to you t-trrrravler.
Also, gotta love how there is no punctuation in the *spoken words.* XD
"It's him. Kill him." "He's here. Kill him"
Top notch writing.
It's realistic, that's my everyday life.
@@Demiglitch He's in the comment section. Kill him.
The game's actually based on the book. The Russian version just took advantage of the fact a movie had come out at the same time and tried to market it as the movie game, when it's not actually.
Oh, so like the first three Harry Potter games!
@@JayTohab Or the first Game of Thrones game.
Or the Ps2 Fellowship of the Ring game
Why are you rude? > Jesse B
And btw there are handful of books about him and they’re not that bad most of the time
"Is there a sword hanging on your wall..."
No.
"Or next to your bed?"
Yes...
Yeah, after Ross said that I told everyone we were watching Wolfhound for family Movie Night. Unfortunately my destiny is REALLY hard to fulfill, cause I'm still looking for a copy.
mine is hanging on my wall over my bed, right above my head like a modern day Sword of Damocles.
My garage is a veritable medieval armory.
Mine is in my closet
@@TheJabbate1 Mine is buried with my dead wife.
*broadcasts on AM radio* WELCOME SON OF A GOOD MOTHER
34:42 To help you remain tranquil in the face of certain death, smooth jazz will be deployed in 3...2...1...
hahahahahhahaa
AHHAHAHAHAHHAHAH
Excellent comment o son of a good mother.
"Its time to talk to the boatman so you know what that means, YEP, timeto talk about Somic the Hedgehog"
I love these transitions
41:24
"Hello, how are you?"
>Good
>Bad
Good ending:
*remain silent*
Bad ending:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
This is story telling done right, ladies and gentlemen.
Ccc
KroneYT
o
"Some more hot escort action."
One of the best 'out-of-context' Ross quotes ever.
You're the mold I want in my life, Ross.
I do have swords in my wall, but I wish it were mold, if only to be a bit more like Ross
*Ring Wood Goblin*
Worst case in years.
Yes, that's the thing from reactor. It's laying around not far from Monolith.
Thank you based Ross
I should have known when Ross says the next game will be a movie game I would have no clue what movie he was talking about
Stephen I hope one day there will be a game about Ross's movie.
I'm always impressed by Ross's ability to dig up shit I've never heard of.
Stephen
Goldeneye was the best movie game
I actually knew about the movie but I never knew anything about the game. I would never have guessed Волкодав, though.
At this rate we'll get a game of THE MOVIE before THE MOVIE comes out.
I know I'm typing into the void given how old this vid is, but my theory behind why bloom got so big is we just moved off of CRTs around that time. CRTs had bloom and other graphical artifacts built in that devs got used to and even took advantage of. You could see this especially in pixel art, where devs used to make things 1 pixel knowing it would bleed into the nearby pixels. So when everyone was on LCDs they tried to recreate some of these effects. Maybe even unintentionally just from being so used to seeing it up until that point. I also think it's why our memory of old games never matches up with seeing them today. We saw them on a CRT which hid a lot of the shortcomings.
as someone who regularly games on a CRT - almost. a lot of games really did just look better in your memories, especially early 3d. good lord the ps1 mostly looks awful with it's wobbly vertices and affine texture mapping, and it is NOT something that goes away on a CRT
i think it's both thanks to our faulty memory making up half the things you think you remember, and also limited exposure to things when you were a child, so your standards of curation were lower
@@dirtfriend True. I never noticed the wobbly effect as a kid but notice it as an adult even on a CRT. I think it is is a mix of both. Being a kid and also the fact the faults weren't so obvious at 240p on a blurry screen. It also depends on the CRT. Monitors were way higher res than TVs.
Hey, void here, I never considered that the switch from CRT partially influenced bloom.
I personally see it as you always notice how things look. You've just never had something else to compare it to to make it look "bad"
A faithful movie-based game that tells a different story from the movie that I can think of is Alien: Isolation.
From the horror atmosphere to the surrounding aesthetic design of the first movie, it's claimed by many as the best Alien game ever made.
On the other hand, it's not for everyone, and you would probably enjoy it only if you are enjoying both Horror AND Stealth genres!
Unraveler There's also RAMA I think. Except that one does follow the book and the only new thing other than some character differences or quirks only clear in the book is that you are the new guy sent to replace the man Sabatini and the angry bald man murdered back on the shuttle. This new guy doesn't exist in the book and his only purpose is to stumble around the inside of Rama II, solving puzzles, occasionally watching the real cast do their bits and even taking over from Michael O Toole when it comes to disarm the bomb. His QI trivia about the prime number sequence in his opening email is actually the answer to the bomb defuse code according to the book.
Colonial Marines server in Space Station 13 also exists. It may as well be the best Aliens game there is for now.
The Ghostbuster games as well
AVP 2 is the best alien game ever made. 3 full campaign and nowhere near as repetitive as Alien Isolation. I finished Alien Isolation, but I wanted to kill myself mid campaign.
Several Star Wars games as well
33:29 "Making me think I'm crazy, but THIS time I'm not." Ross, right before breakdown.
"The grass isn't following you Freeman, you're just being paranoid."
Every game should screech in your ear if you side with evil. Your punishment for joining the dark side is permanent deafness.
"Making me think I'm crazy, but this time I'm not." Every word in that quote was chosen so carefully and so deliberately that I am in awe.
Deliberate is the operative word there. He wanted to make it clear that, that time he wasn't and the viewers noticed it too.
Ross has a good history of just this sort of thing.
I appreciated this original comment a lot tis why I responded (again).
Ross voice is also perfect for that line. So good.
"We're under attack."
*"OH MY GOD, TRY NOT TO PANIC!!!"*
This is why I love you, Ross. XD
I think we should take a moment to appreciate at 32:00 where Ross's guy is killing fire by poking it with a wooden stick.
Reminder that Ross died long ago and the mold took over his body. This mold-based Ross is only making videos to keep up appearances. Soon the age of mold will begin, and he will personally welcome us all to the family.
Not funny, dude.
Welcome to the family son
MrCairo283 I, for one, welcome my new mold overyoutuber.
Holy shit, Ross is my last dog?!
New Resident Evil 7 dlc featuring Mold Ross.
*REMAIN SILENT*
That is his first line of dialogue! He says later that he first s peaks after beating the wizard and I was like "wait... you just made a big deal of that other line he said!:
↑ ask
← sarcasm
↓ vault 69
→ remain silent
He didn't say that one line. He remained silent.
The REAL ROSS would have told us why WolfHound had a pet bat on his shoulder the entire game or why it randomly stunned a bandit in one clip, hell that would have been a good launching point for talking about it..
This convinces me Mold Ross has taken over and will soon attempt to take over the rest of humanity. Grab your flamethrowers boys, we're committing genocide.
Bionis Spider I mean, he did casually mention the minigun in dungeon siege video without any explanation.
I'm glad someone else noticed that. It's perfectly resting on the character's shoulder even when he's flat prone at the very beginning of the game, which looks hilarious. After that I was waiting the entire video for Ross to mention it and how pointless it seemed (I didn't notice that bandit stunning thing) and how it didn't show up in any of the movie clips he showed.
Embrace the moss, IT'S ALTERCATION TIME
Um, no, he wouldn't. Just like how in Wolfenstein video he didn't mention all of the enemies having pumpkins instead of heads.
what pumpkin heads?
R E M A I N
S I L E N T
“Remain Silent” is pretty much the dialogue option I have to pick every time I deal with my family :c
Mine is the one that leads to the loud screeching.
Much love
What a relief, mold and all!!! Mr. Scott, you made my night. I work in food, had a 300 dollar order tonight out of nowhere. I saw this pop up in my feed, my night ends on a positive note. Thank you Mr. Scott, THANK YOU!!!!!!!
That "Wear iz ow-uh lay-dee?!" line was very Schwarzenegger-esque, colour me impressed!
Sword & Sorcery? No. Only Pointy Stick & Silence for Ross.
As far as movie-based games go, Peter Jackson's King Kong actually had a fantastic game. It switched between an action survival-horror feel playing as a human explorer and a third-person brawler when you played as Kong.
The problem with the bloom effect is it can only apply to the pixels you see. A white sun is the same brightness as a white piece of paper to the effect. So if you wanted the sun to look bright the paper had to look just as bright. Later we got HDR bloom which was better. A few games had a special rendering buffer for bright objects, and bloomed that. Like Supreme Commander.
Nah nah. Bloom is best used sparingly - right when the sun rises over the horizon. Spotlight in the face. Things like that.
Game Dungeon always brightens up my day. Today just got a little better.
i liked the part where he remains silent
[remains silent]
shhhh
Dark brotherhood, wolfhound edition.
Wolfhound's Mind anyone?
...
"You know what that means: It's time to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog." may be my favorite segway
The mid 2000's was probably the golden age of movie based games and games based on movie universes. We had the lord of the rings games which were all good, the Spiderman 2 game, the Star Wars battlefront games, KOTOR 1 and 2, the early licenced Lego games, star Wars Starfighter series. Probably some more that I never played.
The Thing videogame was pretty fun
Matrix: Path of Neo deserves a mention. Same devs as Messiah.
I think the 'I already saw the movie' argument has a good counter argument in Spiderman 2. Why play the game if you already saw the movie? So you can swing through the city like Spiderman does in the movie.
@@overratumawesome game ❤
Don't forget all the Harry Potter games
The introduction of the 'bloom' effect.... Those were dark times.
Dark times that were ironically overly bright.
I love it so much when you say "what?"
42:27 - Aeon Flux!? OOH! Ross - _THERE WAS AN AEON FLUX GAME!_ Based on the actual MTV series instead of the Charlize Theron movie. Well... sort of. Cryo Interactive was developing it for PSX/PC back in the late 90's, lost the license partway through development and did a quickie conversion job to turn it into an original IP so they could release it. But when you know it was an Aeon Flux game for 70% of development, it's SUPER OBVIOUS. I haven't played it personally so I can't vouch as to the quality of it, but look up 1997's Pax Corpus sometime.
No problem. Years of absorbing otherwise-useless (but interesting!) information from unseen64 had to come in handy at some point, right? ;)
Everyone thumb up the OP. Ross needs to learn about this.
While I'm here, I think it's worth mentioning that the Aeon Flux movie tie-in game actually has an original story that supposedly ties together both the movie and the animated series. At the very least, it has elements from the cartoon that the movie dropped. Admittedly, I haven't actually played it, but it was apparently built on the same engine as BloodRayne and assumedly plays like it.
Still, I think Pax Corpus would make for better Game Dungeon material anyway, and unlike the Aeon Flux game, it's available on PC.
Ross is already aware of that. I made a post on the forums pointing this out: www.accursedfarms.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=8975
But I've tried to search the game for myself and couldn't find any .iso for the PSX version, and the only images for the PC version that are around the web are DEFECTIVE! They have missing files and the game crashes at one point as a result.
Combined with the fact that there's very few footage on TH-cam, and none of it is about anyone beating the game, this is a true game in extinction. There's still physical copies flying arond eBay/Amazon but they are also extremely rare. Dunno if Ross will even cover this one.
Ross just needs to play EYE divine cybermancy
Isn't that exactly what Ross said in the fucking video?
"Do you own a sword?"
Yes. Even better, they were swords I inherited, passed down through generations.
Well damn, I guess I got to see this movie now.
Did you ever actually go and see it?
@ArvelDreth as someone who inherited a sword and watched it tonight, I can say that it was a good time
I bought a viking-style sword for fun, but also had an ancestor who was alive for part of my lifetime and had a sword from WWII (he showed it to me) so it might have even been used in battle in what is arguably the greatest war in history. But I didn't inherit it when he died. I don't know what happened to it.
I guess I have to go on a quest to find the lost ancestral sword. BRB
The whole killing your allies part reminded me of Jade Empire. You can actually make a few evil choices that put you so at odds with some of your party members that they fight you and you can kill them. That game really made me feel evil.
Right but admittedly when you do that, you aren't playing a pre-scripted named character who has been a pure hero the entire game all the way up until the end where you just randomly kill everyone out of nowhere.
The "bloom" bit at the beginning really reminded of what I liked to call "The Brown Period" of console games. Just like PC art directors; console art directors also lost their damned minds except in this case they made everything brown. In their minds brown equaled "realism". Also they were trying to copy Resident Evil 4. A lot of trends from the seventh generation of consoles can be traced back to RE 4.
oh I think they moved on to Ray-Tracing. while better the brown generation, It will probably spit roast GPUs for little to no change. I dont care how good it is.
I'd rather have the brown period back instead of the neon bullshit period we're going through now
@@GHL24845 Neon bullshit ? I don't know what you mean. Every game has an art style, I really can't think of any games I have recently played that are "Neon Bullshit." Do you have any examples ? Personally I would rather have more color than brown and washed out.
There's that retrowave aesthetic but I really can't think of many games that use it, not quite like how brown was overused back in the day.
Recent newer games I have played. Horizon Forbidden West, Resident Evil 8, Re2make, The Last of Us 2, CoD Modern Warfare & Black Ops Cold War, Control, Jedi Fallen Order, Splitgate, Disco Elysium. Probably some other ones and I really can't think of any that are Neon Bullshit, I guess Doom Eternal has some neon but that's just in weapon pick ups. There's indie games like Angerfoot, is that what you are talking about ?
@@Gatorade69 Neon particle effects. Rage 2 is the magnum opus of neon bullshit. Outer worlds, Overwatch, cyberpunk 2077, dying light 2 and destiny are also pretty heavy on those neon particle effects. Try comparing Borderlands 3 gameplay to Borderlands 2
@@GHL24845 Ahh, I haven't played most of those games except for Doom Eternal which I'm mixed on the neon drops. One one hand they seem out of place and on the other they make it easy to distinguish what is health, armor or ammo.
Still, I think the brown filter was worse, but that's just me.
Ross is a talented swordsman who has never let fear best him in a fight
Our Father, who art in dungeon,
Mold Ross be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in the dungeon.
Give us this day our daily wait. And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Byoutiful.
I feel like this should be a national anthem.
On Flaming Wings.
Amen.
This made my day. Ross deserves to have an our father prayer in his honor
The final boss screeching just sounds like someone micspamming in a source game!
10:41 Not that anyone cares but here's why he's called "Wolfhound". The book makes a big deal out of "true names" kinda akin to "Wizard of Earthsea". Our young protagonist was undergoing his coming of age ritual, where the tribe elders take a boy's name away and give out a new, "grown-up" name. But the ritual was interrupted with attacking marauders, who murdered everyone and took our protagonist to the slave mines. So, the boy had his name taken away and not given one, so he was nameless in the slave mines. Then, he dueled one of the guards by the name of Wolf for his freedom and won. The slaves rejoiced and named him "Wolf-killer" or "Wolfhound".
Edit: btw big points to you Ross for knowing what the hell "the Wolfhound" is, it's kinda obscure. Maybe you'll review the Night Watch games sometime? They were enjoyably awful and very 00-s.
The fact that the first line in this game isn't "oh, you're finally awake!", Or something along those lines, but "Welcome, kind man" is just perfect.
Loved your portal video about he moron theory or whatever.
Good to see you in Ross-town
WELCOME, OH
(checks notes)
OH DAUGHTER OF A GOOD FATHER
👋 nice to see a fellow girl gamer
Warcraft 3's first two campaings consist of main character becoming evil and murdering all his previous friends
And it was fucking great. I think the fall of Arthas stands as one of the best in it's class in all of media.
They really should have made the movie for that game instead of the earlier ones, it has the most solid plot of the lot.
I definitely like the rise of the undead's campaign compared to the drama-filled Night Elf's campaign, even though the Night Elves faction are my more favorable one.
@@mildpassThat has to be nostalgia talking. Arthas's fall feels impactful because his dialogue, especially with Uther, is written well for a video game of its time. However otherwise it's a pretty barebones "hero falls for the dark side" plot. Not even that exactly because his blade explicitly seems to mind-control him, instead of e.g. feeding him delusions about how he's actually saving his people
*sees Akella logo*
Oh no
Yeap. The (in)famous masters of "trash and cash" game design philosophy. Basically, they made Steam Greenlight level trash before Steam Greenlight even became a thing.
StarForce intensifies
StarForce... the only DRM worse than Denuvo. Eugh.
I still remember Cenega (part of 1C, another russian publisher) replaced DRMs in polish version of Fallout3. They removed GfWL (not supported in Poland, yet) and Securom then put StarForce.
Hated that crap, constant BSoD. It was in Divine Divinity too so I had to wait for GOG release for it.
It was worth it, game is amazing.
Divinity, not Fallout3....
SpecShadow actually starforce create special driver in Registry to work ONLY with starforce copy protection system
>1C
I played some good games from them. Though I think a lot of it was just published by them for the region I live in and not developed by them.
I saw Akella logo. Akella. That crappy russian publisher that put its crappy StarForce DRM in every single game in mid-2000s. That crap could literally kill PCs of users. Not even starting on their translations. They were beyond awful. Sometimes to the level of "It's so bad you should see this" of awful. Yeah...
I thought their english-to-russian translations were bad, but today I heard russian-to-english. Ugh!
all i know Akella for is that one weird POSTAL 2 expansion
As a Russian, I agree, they suck, like BAD. There are rarely any good (or correct) vocal and text translations, at least those that are good, are more than good, they are better.
Wouldn't surprise me if they had a hand in making the Gulman games
There was nothing worse than seeing that white scribble Fargus-killer wolf on the covers. At least it has been put down by now, so we can rejoice. (1C isn't going anywhere ever ever ever though and Noviy Disk was assassinated, so... things are still bad)
Holy cow! I did not expect this to be a Volkodav game - this guy is one of my favourite characters in slavic fantasy literature.
But I was even happier to find out that you knew who Volkodav was at all :D
Thanks for the awesome episode, Ross!
I own a large metal prop scimitar, but I bought it some time ago in another state while visiting my girlfriend, and was unable to take it directly back with me, so I left it with her. She has since moved in with me, and it was only just today that I finally received the package from her mother containing it, and I left it next to my bed. When you said that if you own a sword, perhaps next to your bed, then you need to see Wolfhound, my mind was fucking blown.
Well then... how was Wolfhound?
@@PasserMontanus Still haven't seen it!
@@Pirateyware how was it?
@@Pirateyware Come on, it's your destiny! Go watch it!
@@Pirateywarehave you fulfilled your destiny yet?
Im glad the mold uploaded this game dungeon
The voice acting in this game makes "The Chosen: Well of Souls" seem professional by comparison
THE EVIL ONE
@@AtlatlManmy personal favorite Chosen line is when "The Evil One?" is said by an old man with the energy of this emote: 🙄
Oh neat, we use the same hex editor.
*Bonding*
@teebles HURRRRRR
That basically makes you guys the same person.
great minds think alike
i just woke up on christmas with ur videos playing passed out last night watching them. best Christmas eve ever
One of my favourite Game Dungeons! I haven't laughed like that in ages! Thank you Ross for making this gem, I love all your videos and I really appreciate how much effort you put in them! It's funny to say, I've been your fan for more than ten years now...
" Next we head down the road and talk to the boatman. And you know what that means"
I did not know what that meant.
I’m going to admit when he said remain silent I thought he actually looked at the bad guy and said”remain silent”.
Gotta point out: A bat is SUCH a cool animal buddy. It's endearing, but also bad ass.
Ross, your recommendation of the Wolfhound movie is the best.
As someone with a sword next to his bed and basic armor hanging on the wall, it was the perfect movie to spend my weekend off watching.
Ross, I really miss seeing the awards at the end of the video. It makes more sense that way. It wraps the game and the video into a sense of finality. Plus it calls back to what we have seen, and we get to smile as we remember these various highlights from the game.
It's surreal that the person overlooking the production of this game heard those lines and went: "Good enough. Send out the gold master!". It sounds exactly like these were placeholder lines to be replaced by the actual lines, but somehow that's what was shipped instead. Amazing.
I especially enjoy this as someone who's done voice work for games myself.
During the 2000s, video game developers in Eastern Europe didn’t have ready access to professional voice actors who knew English, so they compensated by writing out the English dialogue _phonetically_ and had whoever they had doing the voice clips read it without actually knowing what they were saying. So the delivery is always hilariously weird, because all the direction they got was ‘read out this string of gibberish sounds you don’t understand in a scared tone of voice.’
I actually love the mid to late 2000's obsession with bloom. I don't know what it is, but it just feels charming to me.
I hate it so much. Looks so damn ugly. Feels like my eyes are breaking.
@@smergthedargon8974 it's great isn't it
You probably played games like fable, farcry, and oblivion at that time, all games with lots of bloom and charm
@@thenoblepoptart yup. Except far cry. That game was less charming and more infuriating
YEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAW SOMETHING NEW TO LISTEN TO WHILE I WORK :D!!!
oh shit it that mad boi.
on Project Nexus 2, I hope
Krinkels what the fuck are you doing here, never thought the guy behind madness combat would watch ross
hope you dont work in a slave mine lol
Holy toast, what are you doing here my man? Good to see ya!
This video makes a lot more sense after I watched the movie last week. Because Ross kept talking-up the movie, so I had to know what I was missing. It was pretty good. The awkward staring and the laser-sword at the end was a bit much, but still a good movie.
Ross, massive props for that Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis shout out. Murdered countless hours on it back in the 90s. What a fantastic game!
34:41 Okay that saxophone caught me off guard
'NeedForSleep ' ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Might I suggest the chronicles of Riddick games those fit most of the checklist you listed.
That wobble effect on the terrain is not the same as the psx, I can tell you that's caused by a level of detail system, the terrain uses less polygons in the distance and adds stuff as you walk by, but a good game does that still at a distance where you don't notice it much
Yeah I wasn't sure, the two effects can look extremely similar actually, despite being very different processes.
It didn't look like the polygon count was actually changing, though. And usually that happens when you get a significant distance away; that stuff was popping up and down right under Wolfhound's feet. I dunno. I think this merits further research.
I have to agree, this doesnt look like terrain LOD, aka adding more detail closer to the camera. This is totally PSX triangle "wobble” due to low precision Fixed point math vertex storage/calculations.
I bet they did something "clever", like stored surface height in a bitmap(I didnt see any overhangs), but generate Vertexes in real time every time you move(no glitches when camera is only rotating), ala voxels, except said bitmap is too detailed and interpolation too expensive, so they just resample.
"They try to kill me retroactively back in time" might be the best line I heard all year. Thank you for this! Laughing my ass off!
man i just love watching these videos please keep em comin love you
Yay, a new episode!
It immediatly cought my attention that this game was made by Akella, which is a Russian game studio. Of all games I've expected to appear in your videos, Russian ones are the least expected.
Also, I haven't completed watching this video yet, but I think this is a game "Волкодав" (Volkodav), which was made after the movie with the same name. The movie was pretty lacking (and I guess so is the game, because we all know how much movie-based games usually suck), but it was based on a book that is actually pretty good (or so I've heard).
Anyway, thank you for continuing this series, Ross. You are awesome. Know that you have fans in Russia, too :D
Although not too many, but I will recommend this series to all of my friends who are into videogames and who can understand English more or less.
P.S. I apologise for any possible grammar mistakes in this comment. I don't comment on English-speaking videos very often.
P.P.S. Although having a reply from Ross himself would be pretty awesome :D
Alexey Elyseev I mean Ross mostly does obscure games and most russian games are pretty obscure
isn't akella really bad?
Now I really, really want Ross to play Pathologic for some reason.
...bonus points if it's the old version.
Quadruple bonus points if he does it together with Dybovsky and/or Alphyna.
Make it triple the points if it's pathologic 2
These games with the legendary voice acting are bringing a certain joy to my life that I just can't explain
9:09 - "Do you own a sword? As you watch this video right now, is there some sort of a sword hanging on your wall or sitting next to your bed or something?"
*actually owns three swords, two of which are in the room with me*
...Guess I have to watch that movie now.
I am amazed how underrated your videos are. TH-cam doesn't favor content like this and that is sad.
Whoa whoa whoa Ross. Conan is a barren movie?! the cultests, snake and camel are it?! What about Conan's prayer to Krum? And his fathers speech to him as a boy?! and at the end, Thusal Doom's plea for his life "For who now is your father if it is not me?" "What would your world be without me? My son."
Thanks for the videos tho. keep them coming
It's kind of barren in the last stretch, so that's how some people tend to remember it.
to be fair conan spends a good chunk of the movie in need of rescue
conan the barbarian? more like conan the kidnaped
It also only has 2 maybe 3 music tracks and its 2 hours long...so I do agree it drags on a bit. But I love it in spite of its flaws
Are we forgetting the part where Conan infiltrates an orgy and Darth Vader turns into a snake?
Cus that happens too.
I could be wrong here in interpreting what Ross said, but I think he was talking about foliage when he talked about things looking barren. Aside from the snowy forest in the beginning, most of the places we see in Conan: The Barbarian are deserts (or at least sparse when it comes to vegetation).
Somehow that "Hi..." in response to the hilariously bad voice acting (like the guy at 7:00 for example) is the funniest thing to me, and that specific exchange has been stuck in my head for years.
"They look like storks" got me good
I absolutely love the choice of games on this channel, from well-known titles such as Deus Ex or The Crew you delve straight into obscure games such as The Chosen or Requital - the latter a game I have never heard of. Thank you for the great content, Ross!
i like how the caves are just hills that lead up to a black skybox
"Hope you like walking next to wagons." -- Ross Scott
That is the perfect band name.
"Walking Next to Wagons"
Zombies must be resistant to blunt force. (Due to 'Oblivion' logic, a n axe is considered a blunt weapon... Thanks, Todd!)
22:28
This voice acting ...
it's ... beautiful ...
almost like ... perfection.
I swear whenever I see a new game dungeon video is posted my day gets 100 times better. I love these videos
“It’s a chore that the computer does for me”
Factorio in a nutshell
Lost it at the counterfeit watch guy jab
hi iron, what bring you here? You play good games.
Ross, if you want a good Russian RPG for a change, try Space Rangers. It has everything: open world, crazy-ass aliens, hilarious quests, intricate AI and oh my God minigames.
I heard English localization for it was kind of crappy though.
Dang , it has a playthrough by Grimith & Lethal . . . i'll watch , thanx !
Cheers from Russia) Thanks for bringing up this game) You're the best! Aroooound! :D
I would recommend you making an episode on Dungeon Cleaners, its an RPG and made by russian devs) its an old but pretty good game
You are right, sorry, but the only name I've found was Dungeon Cleaners. At least thats what Google linked me to on a russian wiki.
Thanks for the ear worm, comrade.
Yes! A long episode I’m so excited to watch this! Made my night
That was the quickest 43 minutes I've ever experienced. Love your stuff, Ross! Here's to you guys getting back on track IRL! :)