[Found: Mercenary] Fairly niche vector graphics FPS

[Mountaingod]

Well, it wasn't really a first person shooter, more of a free-roaming exploration thing. It's only a vague memory of mine, but I'll try to explain...

It's just vector graphics, and the game starts with a long intro sequence consisting simply of you crash-landing on a planet. On-screen, the planet is just a coloured circle that gets bigger until it fills your view, while radio communications (or was it space-ship warning systems?) pop up as text basically saying "crash imminent" and so on.

You 'wake up' in a vector-line city on the surface of the planet, near your spaceship which is stuck nose-first in the ground. Nearby there is a (working) aircraft, which I always used to just steal and whizz off in, to the annoyance of the owner. A few other aircraft would scramble and attack you for it, which I'd shoot down. I remember you could fly really high up and see the whole city, line-drawn below - or fly outside the city limits, although there was nothing to see.

That's about all I can remember, I was too young to play it properly. It was possible in some places to take big lifts below the surface, walk around a few subterranean bunker-style rooms, 'talk' to other people/computers inside who would give you stuff that was probably related to the storyline, as well as hijack other craft that looked similar to the aircraft but couldn't fly, just go along the ground.

Due to the vector graphics it looked quite distinctive, but that's hard to describe in words. Any help would be appreciated

[Shoonay]

Democles / Mercenary?

[DH]

The Experiment

http://hol.abime.net/3764

Edit: Remind me to read the threads properly, didn't see vector graphics, forget about the linkie, stupid, stupid, stupid

[Mountaingod]

Originally Posted by 5h00n4y

Democles / Mercenary?

Yes! Escape from Targ! The screenshot even has the spaceship nose-first in the ground. Thanks, man.

[DDNI]

NICHE!!!!! HOW VERY DARE YOU!!!!

It is only the greatest most compulsive and engrossing Amiga game of all time!

[Shoonay]

... which I've never played, seen only the first few seconds of the longplay, got bored and forgot all about it...

[Mountaingod]

I thought / assumed it was niche, because all previous searches had turned up nothing. Didn't realise it was such a classic.

Well, I'm playing it again on WinUAE, so cheers. It puts me in the mood for vector graphics generally, I remember there was another game called Eco...

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by 5h00n4y

... which I've never played, seen only the first few seconds of the longplay, got bored and forgot all about it...

that is because you are too young, padawan!

[Photon]

As it happens, Galahad's crack is in the Zone, according to this thread, http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=20174

[onkelarie]

i always got stuck after the crashlanding, never really figuring out what to do next... I really should try it again with some help from a manual

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by DDNI

that is because you are too young, padawan!

I wished
This may sound funny to most of you I'm sure, due to my age, but back when I was young I considered every game as a huge and wonderful adventure.
I was afraid of dieing in the game or doing something immoral and moved slowly with exploring new regions of the game. And every bad thing that happened in the game world made me sad in the real world.
Even the graphics were "accelerated" by my internal imagination chip and everything was so wonderful and new.
It's not that I'm considering those games crappy now, I do realize it's age and the time it came out, but...
These days it's hard for me to find a reason, a motive, an impulse to play and actually finish a game. Any game.



Ah shit, who turned my depression chip on?

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by 5h00n4y

Ah shit, who turned my depression chip on?

Got the Harbinger virus maybe.

If you see some guys looking like the attached picture coming to you, I suggest you run away.
Signed: your benevolent Eurocorp friend.

[DDNI]

From here on Shoonay will be known as Marvin the android....

[Adropac2]

Sure right about that imagination chip.With graphics so good these days of course, nothing gets left to the imagination.It's good and bad i guess but modern games need to grow up so their very archaic design is left where they worked so much better in the past - can't ever remember questioning an Amiga or C64 game like i do for something i see on my 360

Great graphics need more real type action and consequence otherwise those graphically well realised worlds become nothing like as convincing as games like Mercenary

The great graphics of today expose the lack of any advance in other areas basically and that's why the old stuff feels so much more real as a result

One day maybe but so far nothing touches the old games here in terms of your absortion into their world, because there was nothing to suggest anything was really out of place back then -your imagination filled in all the gaps PERFECTLY

Some great stuff from these super machines that i deeply enjoy in fun terms but nothing like as deeply as the captivation regularly had from the older times

Do devs even realise this or is it just too much of a struggle cash wise attempting this much needed advance

[onkelarie]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

The great graphics of today expose the lack of any advance in other areas basically and that's why the old stuff feels so much more real as a result

What's also adding to the problem of modern games is the fact that it seems that the gamestudio's deliberately make their games 'too easy'. Too many games are accompanied by in-game tutorials that almost reach as far as towards the end-sequence, which makes you feel like a control-knob-hitting-zombie so to speak

On top of that, many games might also be made easy so people will crave for yet another game after 14 hours of play. In that respect, old games threw you more often into the deep.

[DDNI]

Add the wonderful artwork, maps and novellas that came with games like Mercenary to your imagination and the game world truly comes to life.

[Adropac2]

yup fairly awesome all that stuff