The later areas get especially punishing with the sheer rush of enemies, with even the inquisitor enemy class introduced towards the end of the game being frightening in training difficulty by just how much ammo they can take while they pelt you with explosives. Strife may be a shooter/RPG hybrid, but it’s still a game running on the DOOM engine from 1996, and that brings with it all you would expect. This isn’t that central an element after the sigil plot starts, but it’s nice to know you can spend the gold you find on your missions to restock on supplies, and you may just find yourself doing that quite a bit.
Instead, you’re free to explore and visit shops to get ammo, armor, health items, and upgrades the various shops may be selling. In these places, the guards won’t attack you on spot, though they can be put into action mode easily on certain difficulties. The RPG set-up also has a very un- DOOM-like element in the inclusion of hub areas. The stakes even raise properly, with more areas being crowded by tougher enemies as you go deeper in enemy territory. When the sigil weapon is introduced, a magical device the Order is obsessed with, you’ll feel like you’ve earned your position as the hero in the story, which is hard to pull off in a game like this. That involves wheeling and dealing with other factions, doing some sabotage, and even launching a prison break to bolster the ranks. You have a long term goal of launching a siege, so none of these missions feel like a waste and put you in the mindset of a struggling resistance agent putting the pieces in places for a bigger play.
Strife actually begins with a series of missions where you’re just doing small deeds for the resistance, but those deeds add up. Like a proper RPG, the design of the game is based around what fits with the narrative, resulting in a very memorable first third.
The story is sold further is the game’s structure. He sadly passed away in 2005, but he left a surprisingly huge list of work in his wake. His music has a ton of variety and a great atmospheric feel to it a lot of titles at the time lacked, with a solid mix of pumped battle tunes and dread building melodies. Special mention must also be given to Morey Goldstein, a real deal sax player who worked as composer for the project. That comic art is also incredibly 90s while never reaching Liefeld levels, which keeps it nice to look at and gives all significant PCs a good deal of personality with just their portrait. You get the emotion of every character, and they leave an impression with a series of ridiculous accents, hiding that there were only three voice actors on staff. This is due partly to the use of comic art and the voice acting, which is all very cheesy but well delivered. However, it sells the situation very well and makes an engaging adventure anyways. Strife doesn’t do anything too new or inventive with its narrative, nor has much under the surface beyond some vague commentary on the use of science and knowledge. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a game from 1996 made in the DOOM engine isn’t particularly deep. The story initially begins with a series of small time missions to prepare for a siege, but then evolves into something more supernatural as you gain a piece of a powerful magical artifact that could end the conflict for good. There in enters you, a wandering merc who escapes capture and quickly finds themselves recruited into the resistance. They use strange cybernetics and superior firepower to control the populace, but a resistance is growing and planning to take them down. A horrible virus from a fallen comet is slowly destroying humanity, and a mysterious cult called the Order has come in and taken hold of the land. Strife‘s narrative is basically an edgy tabletop campaign. It’s nowhere near as good as arguably one of the best games ever made, of course, but it’s kind of amazing just how forward thinking it is in so many ways. Rogue Entertainment’s Strife, released in 1996, tried to do a lot of what Deus Ex accomplished on the DOOM engine (the id Tech 1, to be precise, and the last official released game made with it), and it actually had a fair bit of success. The funny thing is that Deus Ex may have finally established what had been building since 1994, but its unique blend of shooter and role playing had already been tried once before.
It was designed to allow players to think and experiment with how to use the game systems in inventive new ways, taking two genres that shouldn’t function together at all and finding magic with them mixed.
It merged first person shooting mechanics with RPG elements, creating a new type of game called an “immersive sim,” built from the early work of the System Shock series. On June 17 th, 2000, Deus Ex was released and changed the gaming landscape. Note: Screenshots are taken from the 2014 Veteran Edition, which has enhanced graphical options.