You got mission objectives, equipped your fighter and went off blasting the other side's ships in space. The first instalment was a fairly straightforward story of a space war with two opposing factions. From what I can tell, this is a one-man team that basically keeps refining its space combat sim game, but the series has an interesting history. Both had a lengthy tutorial with voiced-over instructions that I didn't have the patience to sit through, so I fiddled around with the controls and then moved back to the Sacred demo.Īnd I guess I'd never remember what these games were called if it weren't for the fact that much later, after 2010, when I started to actively look for free and "liberated" (commercial-made-freeware) games, I rediscovered them because StarWraith 3D Games liberated their old titles. Anyway, I found two space sim games that looked very similar (and fairly nice, although the graphics were more on a simple side), coming from the same developer. Sometime in 2006 I got my hands on a magazine coverdisk from two years prior, and, being somewhat bored and without fast Internet connection, I proceeded to install and try out everything playable that I could find on it (including a pretty lengthy demo of Sacred). But it did not make me want to play the full game.īack to the topic of obscure games. I also played only the demo, but I liked it, although I'm not generally into "early" 3D RTS games, I prefer some good 2D spritework. I only played the demo, or, rather, I installed and launched it, looked at one mission and then switched to something else altogether.ĭark Reign 2 transitioned to full 3D. It also had a quite configurable advanced unit AI. In fact, it pioneered some features which later became de rigeur of the genre, such as unit queuing or different unit line of sight depending on terrain elevation. The first Dark Reign (1997) was praised by contemporary reviewers as a highly innovative RTS, along with Total Annihilation. Looks good in that video, I like that dystopian scifi world they have there. But I only occassionally played RTS so I missed that one. I remember seeing full-page ads for Dark Reign 2 in PC gaming magazines in that time and thought it looked interesting. Specnaz Antiterror: Afghanistan - PC - 2005 - modified Quake 2 Engine (Stencil shadows and smoothing).Specnaz Antiterror: The Mission In The Balkans - PC - 2005 - modified Quake 2 Engine (Stencil shadows).Specnaz Antiterror - PC - 2004 - modified Quake 2 Engine (Stencil shadows).Lendlease - PC - 2004 - Quake 2 Max Engine - (Quake2Max Engine) - Developed by Fragmaker, as were most of these, including Operation Trondheim, done by Sheppard - Visually at UT2003.Castle On Eczema - PC - 2005 - Quake 2 Evolved Engine - Also known as Exeter Castle, Medieval FPS but with Evolved UI - Zamok na Ehkze in Russian, Game Factory Interactive, Fragmaker - Russobit-M published it.Snake Pit - PC - 2004 - Cube Engine - Bilby Games Studio - Also known as Zmeinoe Gnezdo.Soldier Of Empire/Soldier Of The Empire - PC - 2004 - Quake 2 Evolved Engine (Quake2Evolved) (From Quake 2 Evolved) - Scifi FPS - Also known as Soldat Imperii, Fragmaker, Russobit M, Games Factory Interactive - Visually has some Doom 3 visuals, stencil shadows, limited normal mapping, self shadows - Still requires only Pentium 2 400 and 32 MB VRAM.Operation Trondheim 3: Iron Cross - PC - Quake 3 Engine - Standalone RTCW mod by Sheppard - 2003.Operation Trondheim 2: Red Alert - PC - Quake 3 Engine - Standalone RTCW mod by Sheppard - 2002.Operation Trondheim: Special Forces - PC - Quake 3 Engine - Standalone RTCW mod by Sheppard - 2002.Various standalone games were made that provided similar visual florish as Doom 3, but through Quake 2. Especially Quake 2 was much loved, especially after it got open sourced. But they also did some interesting work regarding the Quake Engines. Russian homebrew devs were very active plagiarizing assets (The game Cube for instance was re-released as a paid game, Snake Pit) or terrible standalone mods (Fear: Dead Phantom). Since we are talking russian stuff and Russobit-M, there is more. Just because it isn't an AA title doesn't mean it's obscure. Ubersoldier is one of the better known Return to Castle Wolfenstein clones. I have no further information about them and don't even know if they were Russian or Ukrainian. It's an okay old-schoolish FPS with by the numbers gameplay, sometimes feels a bit bland.ĭeveloper Secret Sign released space shooter StarCalibur prior to that. Your character is supposed to be a journalist visiting dangerous places on various planets, encountering alien monsters, futuristic soldiers and cyborgs. Rat Hunter, an FPS by Secret Sign, released 2006.
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