Expansion Packs: Your best, okay, and worst

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, DeadAstronaut said:

Seeing Diablo 2 mentioned here a couple times, I'm curious if anyone ever played the Hellfire expansion to the original game. 

 

I had no idea an expansion existed to the original Diablo back in the day. I only learned about it on the internet many years after Diablo 1 had died out in favor of Diablo 2. 

 

Diablo 1 I liked better and it certainly has fans, but we tend to be more of a small niche of dedicated players. Nostalgia plays a key role in the love for the old game, since Diablo 2 is a great improvement over it. The original game hasn't been updated since 2000 and I never figured out how to get it to run on Windows 10, so safe to say I have not properly played it in years now (it did work on Windows Vista and 7). The expansion always interested me though. 

I played Hellfire, and while it offered some new features to the game that were quite nice, (the new areas not so much) including two hidden classes you can enable via a command.txt IIRC it ended up restoring bugs back into the original Diablo that Blizzard patched out which Hellfire itself needed its own patch to fix bugs specific to it. Seeing as the new content like the Hive and Crypts are poorly implemented as well as clashing in theme and unbalanced in difficulty it's not recommended. Blizzard had no hand in the development and its technically unauthorized (developed by Synergistic and published by Sierra). If you happen to get a hold of it however, 'The Hell' mod for Diablo requires Hellfire to operate and is the definitive way to play Hellfire, albeit radically overhauling the difficulty and content on offer, akin to a new game altogether.

Diablo can still be played on modern OS with this: https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/wiki/Diablo

Otherwise if you want more Diablo II flavor in your Diablo 1 the 'Belzebub' aka Diablo 1 HD mod will improve the gameplay akin to its Blizzard sequel, restore quests that were cut from the original game and add more classes, in addition to enabling 60 fps, modern resolutions and colored lighting. It's in beta however, but still very much playable. Do know it will considerably raise the difficulty, so consult the forums for Belzebub if you run into problems.
 

1 hour ago, Master O said:

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Shadow Warrior's two mission packs "Wanton Destruction" and "Twin Dragon".  Both are as good as the original game.  

Not really, Wanton Destruction has some good levels, but it's mostly a mixed bag (the secret levels are clearly unfinished) and Twin Dragon is just amateur from top to bottom.
 

[DeadAstronaut]

1 hour ago, Lila Feuer said:

I played Hellfire, and while it offered some new features to the game that were quite nice, (the new areas not so much) including two hidden classes you can enable via a command.txt IIRC it ended up restoring bugs back into the original Diablo that Blizzard patched out which Hellfire itself needed its own patch to fix bugs specific to it. Seeing as the new content like the Hive and Crypts are poorly implemented as well as clashing in theme and unbalanced in difficulty it's not recommended. Blizzard had no hand in the development and its technically unauthorized (developed by Synergistic and published by Sierra). If you happen to get a hold of it however, 'The Hell' mod for Diablo requires Hellfire to operate and is the definitive way to play Hellfire, albeit radically overhauling the difficulty and content on offer, akin to a new game altogether.

Diablo can still be played on modern OS with this: https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/wiki/Diablo


 

 

Thank you for the reply, going to give that a shot to play Diablo again in my free time. 

 

That's pretty bad that Hellfire brings back bugs and errors. From what I had read about Hellfire, the main appealing feature was that it left open the shortcuts into the level areas from the town, so you could access the Catacombs, Caves and Hell by starting a new game. From replaying the single player over and over, it can be annoying at times having to go through all those levels again just grinding a few levels up. The old habit I had back in the day was to just start a new game on the same character and go through the early parts again to grind up. 

 

Quote

Otherwise if you want more Diablo II flavor in your Diablo 1 the 'Belzebub' aka Diablo 1 HD mod will improve the gameplay akin to its Blizzard sequel, restore quests that were cut from the original game and add more classes, in addition to enabling 60 fps, modern resolutions and colored lighting. It's in beta however, but still very much playable. Do know it will considerably raise the difficulty, so consult the forums for Belzebub if you run into problems.
 

 

 

I saw this some time ago and thought about trying it. The colored lighting sounds really cool. It's nice to see the original Diablo still getting love to this day. 

[Devalaous]

I think im the only person that enjoyed Diablo Hellfire.

[Avoozl]

I guess my favorites are:

 

Oblivion - Shivering Isles, Morrowind - Tribunal and Bloodmoon, Half Life - Opposing Force, Doom 3 - Resurrection of Evil, Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon, Blood - Plasma Pak, Mass Effect 2 - Lair of the Shadowbroker, Diablo 2 - Lord of Destruction, GTA4 - The Lost and Damned, Quake - Scourge of Armagon, Quake II - Ground Zero, Quake III - Team Arena, Hexen II - Portal of Pravous, Duke Nukem 3D - Life's a Beach, Empire at War - Forces of Corruption, Dragon Age Origins - Awakening, Shadow Warrior - Wanton Destruction and Twin Dragon.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Avoozl

[seed]

9 hours ago, Master O said:

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Shadow Warrior's two mission packs "Wanton Destruction" and "Twin Dragon".  Both are as good as the original game.  

 

Damn, replaying the original SW and I completely forgot about them.

 

So glad the series got a reboot considering that the original never got the attention I feel it deserved. Maybe it wasn't quite as good as DN3D or other Build engine games, but it's still solid and my favorite of all of them. Pretty underrated.

 

"It's good day to die."

[Avoozl]

Honestly I didn't like the reboot as much as the original.

[MFG38]

It's already been mentioned, but I'll mention it as well. Starcraft: Brood War is the best.

 

Also, Doom 3: RoE. To me, it somehow feels more like a Doom game than the original Doom 3. Granted, it does have some questionable things about it, but they don't take too much away from my overall enjoyment of it.

[Rosh Fragger]

~Expansion packs that I liked:

 

1) Roller Coaster Tycoon 1: Corkscrew Follies and Loopy Landscapes (new rides and many new parks to complete)

2) Roller Coaster Tycoon 3: Soaked and Wild (both brought new rides and scenarios; good stuff!)

3) Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors.

4) Age of Empires 3: The Warchiefs and Asian Dynasties.

5) Skyrim: Dragonborn, Dawnguard, and Hearthfire (All 3 DLCs were good)

6) Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (mainly because of SSG and Grabber)

7) Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania and Extinct Animals (cuz I love Dinosaurs and Aquatic creatures!)

8) The Sims 3: Seasons, Generations, Pets, and University Life (these one's I like the most)

9) The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs, and Get to work. 

10) GTA 4: The Lost & Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony (both had amazing storylines and other gameplay additions)

11) Outlast: Whistleblower (can never get enough horror games...)

12) Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (Standalone Expansion pack)

13) Watch Dogs: Bad Blood.

 

and more... 

[Lila Feuer]

16 hours ago, DeadAstronaut said:

From what I had read about Hellfire, the main appealing feature was that it left open the shortcuts into the level areas from the town, so you could access the Catacombs, Caves and Hell by starting a new game.

It also lets you select your difficulty upon starting a new game, something that was impossible to do in the original. Eventually Normal would become too easy and you'd have to grind Hell over and over to level up at all, which is boring and no fun.

There is a way to play on the other difficulties, but it requires launching multiplayer (local, solo) and only 4 of the game's 16 quests will be available, you still have to unlock the other difficulties also (the Sorcerer trivializes this process). Then you can fool the single player by loading your MP character and then loading your SP character to trick the game into changing the difficulty to Nightmare or Hell for them. But as you can see it's a lot of really unnecessary steps, just to play on a higher difficulty in the vanilla game, just play a mod instead.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

On 5/25/2018 at 12:25 AM, scalliano said:

Worst. Quake II: Ground Zero. TURRETS! NO! PLEASE! NOT THE TURRETS! A shame too, because the Black Widow is one of the most underappreciated bosses in gaming history.

 

There was also a distinct absence of ambient sounds, that greatly enhanced the original and the other mission pack.

[DooM_RO]

Shivering Isles and Dragonborn are definitely up there. 

[Shaviro]

Oh man. So many great expansions over the years.

Balance of Power turned X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter from fine to great and gave that game a much needed single player campaign. It still lacked some of the awesomeness from X-Wing and Tie-Fighter, but it was good enough and the missions were excellent.

 

Mysteries of the Sith for Jedi Knight was amazing. Sure, the ingame cutscenes were a step down from the ones in Jedi Knight, but the tone, atmosphere and puzzles made up for it. I can definitely see why this expansion would turn some people off, but the theme of the game was so well executed and spending hours alone out in some dark and mysterious swamp, facing a mirror image of yourself sold the personal journey of a jedi and the themes surrounding it perfectly.

[Avoozl]

It's a shame that the later JK games never got expansions. I could also say the same for Soldier of Fortune 2.

[DooM_RO]

The Old Blood was atypical during its time, full of content and expanded upon what The New Order lacked, namely city levels and castle action. Other companies would have charged full price for it. A true old-school expansion.

 

I'm still pretty sore about Doom 2016 not getting similar treatment.

[DoomUK]

1 hour ago, DooM_RO said:

I'm still pretty sore about Doom 2016 not getting similar treatment.

 

Yeah they really dropped the ball with that one. The campaign was what everyone was raving about, so they release nothing but multiplayer maps and snapmap updates? Senseless. 

 

Then, to add insult to injury, they made the season pass free. I didn't buy it because I don't give a damn about Doom multiplayer, but I feel sorry for those who did.

[DooM_RO]

54 minutes ago, DoomUK said:

 

Yeah they really dropped the ball with that one. The campaign was what everyone was raving about, so they release nothing but multiplayer maps and snapmap updates? Senseless. 

 

Then, to add insult to injury, they made the season pass free. I didn't buy it because I don't give a damn about Doom multiplayer, but I feel sorry for those who did.

 

They could have made the maps more popular if they had added a 4 player coop mode in the maps. I would pay for a Mass Effect 3 style multiplayer in a Doom game. 

 

All that art going to waste... Moreover, some of the Hell MP maps could have added some much-needed variety to the SP hell maps.  Boneyard is what I thought Titan's Realm would be.

[Lila Feuer]

Nu-Doom is not future-proof either, since Bethesda doesn't believe in Linux, and it has an online component that is integrated into the main game. It's doomed, pun intended.

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

I haven't really played many expansions I didn't like that I can remember, but I'll list mine anyway.

 

Excellent:

Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots; what a big shock that I like Rise of Nations' only expansion. My favorite bit was the addition of several new nations (Americans, Iroquios, Lakota, Dutch and a couple others). The campaigns were interesting, but I never really cared for them.

Starcraft: Brood War; of course. A strong expansion for a strong game.

Half-Life: Opposing Force; I liked it for its difficulty and, of course, the BFG9000-- I mean, displacer cannon. The Race X were really cool to fight and it was really cool to explore the opposite view of things. As for its story, the whole thing is ambiguously canon.

Morrowind: Bloodmoon; An excellent expansion, massive and full of content for a great game. Definitely worth a play.Oblivion: Shivering Isles; Realm of Madness. 'Niff said.

Skyrim: Dragonborn; whereas Bloodmoon was a hint of Skyrim in Morrowind, Dragonborn is a hint of Morrowind in Skyrim, and it does not disappoint. Exploring an eldritch realm to face down against a demigod is pretty par for the course of Elder Scrolls, really, so nothing particularly special there, but revisiting the setting we so loved from Morrowind was what made it for me.

Ultimate Doom, of course! You can't have a list of expansions on Doomworld without mentioning Ultimate Doom somewhere. Episode 4 is my favorite of the original game only after KDITD for its difficulty and interesting settings after a (relatively, I think) weak third episode, though E4M8 left something to be desired.

I'm not sure if they qualify, because Plutonia and TNT are Doom games in their own right, but I'll list Plutonia here.

 

Okay:

Half-Life: Blue Shift; it wasn't what it could've been, if anything it seemed really narrow compared to Opposing Force, but it was still pretty fun.

Morrowind: Tribunal; it was cool, but really boring in the long run. There was too much running around gathering things for an ultimately cool dungeon delve and the end didn't quite compare to Dagoth Ur. Almalexia's powerful, sure, but if you're playing this when you're supposed to, you're practically a god yourself.

Oblivion: Knights of the Nine; was okay. Nothing to recommend it, really.

Skyrim: Hearthfire; it was neat, but it didn't add anything I really needed to the game, so it seemed like a big side-quest to me.

Skyrim: Dawnguard; I liked this one only for Serana, her essential flag and spells make her beastly, and the Forgotten Vale, which was awesome to explore, and the dragonbone weapons.

 

Poor:

Fallout 3: Point Lookout; the main quest was the only thing even remotely interesting about this one to me, and that still fell on its face because it was really just a revenge plot. Everything else was stupid hard or stupid boring.

Fallout 3: The Pitt; a boring slog that requires you to do a ridiculous amount of running around and talking instead of actually doing anything for a reward I can't even remember.

Fallout 3: Broken Steel; the only reason I didn't like this was because it was stupid hard, all the way through.

If TNT counts as an "expansion," then it goes here just for being so sub-par relative to what it had to compete with.

 

It's telling that Fallout 3 has most of the expansions I didn't like.

If we're allowed to count microtransactions, then those go further down the list than poor.

[amackert]

On ‎5‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 6:40 PM, DeadAstronaut said:

 

Seeing Diablo 2 mentioned here a couple times, I'm curious if anyone ever played the Hellfire expansion to the original game. 

 

I ran through Hellfire multiple times and did enjoy it. The Crypts were a major pain in the ass though if I remember correctly--it's probably been about a decade since I last ran through it. It's probably something you can live without, but if you have access to it and are a big fan of the base Diablo, it's worth a play with a fresh character.

[Avoozl]

I still have to play D1 but I hear it differs a lot from D2 particularly with simpler gameplay.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Diablo 1 plays more like a bullet hell game compared 2, it is by no means a must play (let alone finish it).

 

[Lila Feuer]

The best analogy between Diablo 1 and 2 is Torchlight 1 and 2, the first game was set indoors, whereas the sequel was mostly outside. The gameplay is effectively the same.

[Master O]

On 5/24/2018 at 7:37 PM, Starkiller said:

Haven't played Shadow of the Serpent Riders so far in, but I dig the medieval setting. And the weapons are great. Elven Wand is the best Doom starting weapon.

 

You're really gonna hate E4M1, though.

[explorix]

Best:

 

GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony: Best Story, best characters and and best missions ever done in GTA. I was really disappointed with #5, I consider that the weakest of all GTA's.

DOOM III ROE: Good length, new enemies (Bruiser... oO) and "the Heart". Best skin-altering animation I've ever seen.

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point: The very best EP I've ever played. It's scary but has a lot of action as well, just like the original. My favorite levels are the Church underground right after the start and the parking lots with the best robot fights in any game. And remember the nurse with the tortured face hammering against the glass in the deserted hospital? Scariest moment ever^^

Half-Life - Opposing Force: Great level design, great puzzles and fun to play. +AAA. Blue Shift was kinda boring for me.

Alan Wake - American Nightmare: Although standalone, it's got a nice setting in Arizona and some cool new stuff. But it's way too arcade-like for Alan Wake. The first is a masterpiece.

Quake - Scourge of Armagon: Awesome level design. It's just top tier even compared to the original which was really good for the most part. But this is too good to be true. The levels have more depth and are also much higher and offer great combats.

 

 

The worst:

 

Half-Life 2 - Episode 2: Great Episode, but where's Half-Life 3???????????????

Quake II - Ground Zero: How do you beat the turrets with low ammo? I've never managed to play it through without cheating...

Quake - Dissolution of Eternity: Boring maps, lame enemy placements. Just meh

[MortisCausaDonatio]

I joins the ones who said opposing force are one of the best expansion pack

 

Also paradise lost (postal 2) is pretty awesome 

[Vermil]

On ‎5‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 12:35 PM, explorix said:

Quake II - Ground Zero: How do you beat the turrets with low ammo? I've never managed to play it through without cheating...

I agree that the turrets in Ground Zero had too much health. But then the reckoning's shield enhanced bad guy variants at the end were also bullet sponges.

 

It is possible, though very slow, to 'cheat' and take out Ground Zero's turrets from around corners with the blaster; they won't fire at you and you can just clip the edges of a turret with your 100% accurate blaster shots.

[Lila Feuer]

@Vermil It's such a pace killer though, it makes you needlessly paranoid and doesn't allow for traditional play, I feel like the mappers went berserk with placing the damned things everywhere and forgot they were suppose to making the game fun. Well, as fun as Q2 can ever be anyway.

[jazzmaster9]

Best:

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss

Generals: Zero Hour

Allied Assault: Breakthrough and Spearhead

Quake: Dissolution of Eternity

 

Okay:

Final Doom

Yuri's Revenge (Mental Omega was pretty much better in everyway)

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Gank

 

Worst:

All of the Duke shovelware expansions.

Stronghold: Crusader Extreme (fun but not balanced)

[Avoozl]

I honestly can't see why anyone would favor DoE over SoA.

[jazzmaster9]

18 minutes ago, Avoozl said:

I honestly can't see why anyone would favor DoE over SoA.

I honestly can't see why anyone would have a different opinion than me...

Because I enjoy it more than SoA? Shocking!!

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by jazzmaster9