GC9X #48: Clive Barker's Undying (PC)

[scotthdc]

Technical point: I switched to my laptop from my HTPC, and I encountered a game breaking problem with slowdown. On my laptop, I was using a background Nvidea configurer that does things like force v-sync and antialiasing. Undying seems to be sensitive to this (Glide or D3D), so I set everything in the Nvidea panel to be "application controlled", and the game performance went back to normal.

I also find on the medium setting that I die a lot.

[dskzero]

I'm moving out of the country so I can't play this one right now, but it's one of my favorite games ever.

A point i'd like to clear out is that the "homoerotic context" is largely based on the design of the main character, who was asked to be made by Barker as "someone he would like to fuck". Frankly, I think it's more of a values dissonance and how the main character's close friendship to the owner of the mansion plays out than anything else.

I loved Eternal Autumn. It was so freaking awesome and beautiful. Fuck that boss though.

[Weevil]

Oct 18, 2015 19:29:58 GMT -5 dskzero said:

I'm moving out of the country so I can't play this one right now, but it's one of my favorite games ever.

A point i'd like to clear out is that the "homoerotic context" is largely based on the design of the main character, who was asked to be made by Barker as "someone he would like to fuck". Frankly, I think it's more of a values dissonance and how the main character's close friendship to the owner of the mansion plays out than anything else.

I loved Eternal Autumn. It was so freaking awesome and beautiful. Fuck that boss though.

Which boss? Bethany wasn't bad at all but the boss after was stupid. I had no way of knowing if I was actually doing substantial damage. I used a phoenix egg to hit the top of its exposed area and it crashed the game. Not sure why but I avoided doing that again. I felt like it was a case of The Forgotten One where your splash damage was what actually was hitting some unreachable spot.

Oct 18, 2015 16:15:13 GMT -5 scotthdc said:

Technical point: I switched to my laptop from my HTPC, and I encountered a game breaking problem with slowdown. On my laptop, I was using a background Nvidea configurer that does things like force v-sync and antialiasing. Undying seems to be sensitive to this (Glide or D3D), so I set everything in the Nvidea panel to be "application controlled", and the game performance went back to normal.

I also find on the medium setting that I die a lot.

I had some issue as well. When I would run the game in windowed mode, the game would speed up near fire. It would cause dialogue overlapping in cutscenes. I simply opted to run in full screen rather than stress about figuring out why the issue was happening.

As for dying a lot, there are certain portions that were like that for me as well. I am pretty sure the fight with Ambrose was a common place to repeatedly die for a lot of people. I also died a lot early on in the Eternal Autumn because I hadn't realized healing roots were the equivalent of that worlds medpacks. So I was running around thinking I was out of healing items. I know healing was in the name but considering other input issues (reloading and accessing the journal) I had encountered, I assumed it was something separate that I had overlooked.

[Feynman]

How is it that so many of y'all had problems figuring out the journal? The game literally prints "New Journal Entry" followed immediately by "Press F3 to access your journal" in big bold text on your screen as soon as you first gain control of your character. It isn't some kind of obscure hidden command.

[gadzy]

Just want to say I am so happy you guys covered this game. I still have my disc and box somewhere in my basement for it. The game really did just reek of atmosphere, and had some legitimately scary parts throughout. I can still remember that sort of dusky unsettling weirdness the outdoor sections. The ending certainly was weird, and the game sort of fell apart - for some reason the final sections remind me of how Doom 3 ended as well. Too bad we never got another one of these.

[Weevil]

Oct 20, 2015 19:11:36 GMT -5 Feynman said:

How is it that so many of y'all had problems figuring out the journal? The game literally prints "New Journal Entry" followed immediately by "Press F3 to access your journal" in big bold text on your screen as soon as you first gain control of your character. It isn't some kind of obscure hidden command.

I will have to run the game from the beginning again. I assume since I am running at 1920x1080, I overlooked it since text is small on that setting. Also, even if you are on a smaller resolution, it's still possible to overlook. While it IS in the manual, if we are just playing it for the first time through GOG, it's likely we haven't even checked it out. Not saying that's exactly the games fault, but my first reaction was to check the keybindings, not the manual. 

[kal]