Reality check -- playing PS1 for the past three days

[Rivenshield]

It's been a blast, and can only get better throughout July. Old friends, old names, recollections of epic struggles with new ones to fight. And it forced a number of game design issues upon me afresh -- ones we've been arguing about in exhaustive detail for months. It made me see them clearly through fresh experience, rather than through the looking-glass of nostalgia....

1) Fuck BFR's. Fuck them in the ear. I'd forgotten how badly I hate them. They have mobility, overwhelming firepower, and are impossibly freaking hard to kill. Ditto on the Galaxy gunship. Nothing that just sits there and farms you while you repeatedly throw everything you have at it should be in a first person shooter. They're game breakers.

2) It is exasperatingly difficult to get gunners, even when you broadcast hey, Raider loading up at the front door, hop in and ride in style... and then spam WE NEED A GUNNER! at the line of foot zergers streaming past you and out the front gate. I still think single-manned armor is an iffy idea, but..... I understand it much better now, and I am much more willing to give it the college try than I was a week ago.

3) The new system of forgiving grief will be a blessing -- particularly those of us who can't do twitchy-combat for beans and largely rely on grenade launchers and Pounder MAXes. It's hard to shoot around or above people when they are strafing back and forth in front of you like a congo line on a caffeine high.

4) Whatever resource system they come up with needs to be simple and comprehensible, because I can't understand what mods give you access to which base features *now,* and I was there when they introduced most of it. It's a tangled mess that grew almost organically over the several years I played, and seems to have gotten more complex after I left.

5) The time to kill with handheld weapons against other infantry in PS1 seems to be just right. I can't imagine it being worse, what with the vast new territory we have to cover and the gigantic bases we'll have to fight in. 'Spawn, run for a full minute, AHH I'M BEING SHOT AT DODGE SHOOT BLARGH respawn' being replaced by 'spawn, run for TWO minutes, DIE INSTANTLY' is not much of an improvement no matter how nice the graphics are.

6) The TTK for most ground vehicles is far too long. I remember the Decimator before it got nerfed, and it was a good anti-armor weapon. Now it's an armor-annoyance weapon that I haven't scored a single kill with in three days. We need something we can carry around and definitively thump enemy vehicles with, as it was of old. Even some kind of dedicated anti-tank mine would be nice -- something that goes off like a squib if a soldier or light vehicle runs over it, but blows half of the health off a Vanguard.

7) I still get completely disoriented and run around for fruitless frustrating minutes trying to find things like the vehicle pad or the gen room. These new big giant bases better have a user-friendly map you can bring up in your HUD, with everything clearly labeled.

8) I'd forgotten how much fun being a cloaker was. It put a great big grin on my face. And I found myself thinking, yes, I would LOVE to pack a sniper rifle and cloak while I position myself. Not being able to take the thing out while I'm cloaked would be fine with me. I imagined it from my own POV -- a bunch of goddam Vanu cloakers running around with ray-gun sniper rifles, say -- and how I would feel about that... and figured, hey. As long as I can see them while they're SHOOTING at me, that's gravy. It adds spice and zest and more sneaky challenges to the thing. I predict there are going to be whole mass duels between the new sniper class and their wholly-cloaked counterparts that are out there trying to kill them, and they will be delightfully nerve-wracking.

9) Despite my grousing about their foot-zerging habits, my beloved TR is much as I remember it. They demonstrably lay more mines, pull more AMS's, do more ANT runs, and fix/heal/help each other more than our enemies do. If we can preserve that Psychotic Combat Engineer corporate culture when we transition to PS2, I'll be well content.

Anyone else been playing, rediscovering old loves and ancient frustrations, and pondered what they portend for PS2? And of our hopes and fears for it?