New Wave of Thrash Metal : Part 1 Posted June 27, 2013
2013's looking to be a good year for metal. With Black Sabbath and Ghost (I am fucking not calling them Ghost BC. Maybe Ghost BS, but not BC) releasing new albums and rap music slowly dying off,
things are looking brighter day-by-day. With digital distribution easing entrance into the market, anyone with a guitar
has pretty much picked it up and pumped out an album through Garageband.
Now, to anyone with even half a brain, the implications of this are scary; millions of tweenwave emo idiots cranking out
complete hazardous garbage that they deserve to be strangled with their guitar strings over. The flip-side is that
with a greater amount of albums and bands coming out, even amongst the dross, there's quite a few good bands
coming out. One style notably, is good ol' fashioned thrash metal.
Now, just to be clear, I'm not talking yet another metalcore band or some Swedish buttlick "we sweep-pick until
the cows come home" nonsense. I'm talking straight, no-BS, classic thrash metal done today.
There's way too many of these bands, like Municipal Waste (award should be given for "Best Video Ever") and Warbringer, to catch them all Pokemon-style in a single blog entry, so this is going to be an
ongoing thing. I find 'em, you get 'em. It's that simple.
Ahhh... The Terminator franchise... Back before Bethesda Softworks got their groove on with the whole Elder Scrolls series,
they were one of very few companies to actually get a license to create games using that IP. Pretty much every other
company took a giant dump on the Terminator name (though it's hard to beat Christian Bale in this department), but,
to give Bethesda proper credit, they actually got it right.
There were only a few games worth mentioning; Terminator : 2029, Rampage, Future Shock, and Skynet.
Terminator : 2029 played like an old orthogonal RPG. It's also worth noting that it's hard as nails. It's probably
the weakest of the group, but that's not to say it's not worth playing.
Terminator : Rampage attempted to capitalize on the whole Doom FPS craze of the early-to-mid 90's. It did this to
pretty good effect. I mean what's not to like about running through office buildings after the shit's already hit
the fan, hunting for ammo and weapons, fending off HK's, Seeker Bombs, and T-800 Endoskeletons to find components
of a super weapon that was in development to destroy the heart of Skynet? Fucking nothing, that's what.
Terminator : Future Shock / Skynet is where they really hit their stride though. Utilizing Xngine, one of the first
full 3D engines available and the first entrant into the now-standard Mouselook, which they also used to great effect in Daggerfall, they really captured what it would
feel like to be a resistance fighter, running for your life, and fighting Terminators and cybernetic organisms from
Skynet. These two form more of a sequel package, with the bonus of Skynet allowing you to play Future Shock in highres.
These games in particular really allow you to explore large maps in a fairly nonlinear fashion, stocking up on supplies,
rumaging through buildings, and reveling in the amazingly created post-apocalyptic setting that the creators
managed to form. It really does feel like you're in one of the burning battlefields of the future. They nailed it.
All-in-all robots and technology are often annoying, thanks largely to the fact that they're created by annoying humans
with their equally annoying human frailties. So, it's a fantastic form of catharsis to smash the hell out of said
tech via pounding a Terminator or 2.. 20.. 200.. 2000 into a bent-up pulverized mess. Hard day at work? Crush a bunch of Terminators.
I promise you you'll feel better.
For Future Shock / Skynet, simply run the .bat file included and it'll do all the hard work for you. Dosbox
and everything are already included, so just unzip and play away! Skynet is the sequel, so you'll want to start
the game and select Future Shock from the bottom of the menu. Once in the game, go to Options->Details->640x480
to run in highres. That's it. Super-fricking-simple.
Before the advent of the Golden age of Triangles and the GPU's that powered them, pretty much anything went for alternative rendering techniques.
Whether it be Ray-Casting used in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom or Ellipse-rendering. Whatever. If was weird and new
developers were willing to throw it at the wall and see if it stuck. In the case of NovaLogic they went with
tech that few others outside the medical community have used, with the notable exceptions of the great Action RPG "Outcast" and "Minecraft". That being Voxels or "Volume Pixels". This technique's
capabilities are still being explored, even being used indirectly to help texture id's newest game "Rage" via it's
Mega-Texture technique. Cool stuff you say, but how does this relate to the actual games? Well good question.
NovaLogic had a love affair with Voxels and thrust them into every damn game they made. Basically Voxels excel at rendering organic looking outdoor scenes. The downside is they're purely CPU-intensive
which means they look better the more clock cycles you throw at them. They can also look extremely pixelated at the
low resolutions they were rendered in at the time they were originally used. Later games in the series allowed for
mods to alleviate this. Luckily, this tech was paired with fun straight-forward arcade-like simulations that didn't
burden the player the way some games do.
For Comanche, the game is based on the stealth helicoptor that was the basis for the one used to infiltrate Osama Bin Laden's
place, assuming that actually happened. Weird angular panels made the radar bounce off masking it from radar. Not to
say this makes your mission easy or aything. Far from it! Just that using stealth and staying out of direct sight
is your main priority to stay alive and complete the short but sweet missions.
For completeness' sake, NovaLogic also released an A1 Abrahms simulator titled "Armored Fist", letting you play the other side of the equation
from Comanche. Both had their fun in different ways. If you like them you can pick up the newest ones for dirt cheap.
Let me just sum it up and say Comanche is the closest thing to flying Airwolf or Blue Thunder you're going to find.
