Anybody recall a game called XS? I remember there being two demo levels, the first one awesome - large level with lots of "verticality" where you need to hunt down powerful enemies, and the second one a year or two later rather disappointing - a pretty flat arena level.

Perhaps the first demo was for a different game and I'm just confusing them. Need to look through my PC Gamer disk back covers from mid 90s...

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL4bRVDYf8Q only footage I've found

okay like i said for those that are interested: my thoughts on malice for quake now i have progressed a bit in the game.

There are apparently 18 levels of which there are 2 secret levels. The secret levels are accessed very early on and the second one follows the first one (so you only have to find 1 secret exit). I now have played 6 levels (4+ the 2 secret ones). There are no difficulty levels so it's starts of rather difficult till you get used to it. It plays somehow differently then quake ( it just feels different: you have to react faster but you move slower i think).

It's a total conversion mod so everything sounds and looks a bit different. I looks good ( keep in mind it's still quake engine so nothing too special) and different enough from quake to be enteresting. At this point they only used warehouse type levels so nothing outdoor or rocky like the second mission pack. I really like the soundtrack and it sounds a bit like quake 2 if my memory isn't too fuzzy about it.

The gun look and sound great and are fun to use. This games uses active reload and when your clip is up you have to reload (the game does not do this for you). That took some getting use to but i find it a quit fun mechanic to be honest. The enemies are fun and well placed but with some death rooms (spawning enemies). Luckily this doesn't happen often and they are not impossible on the first try (when you have no idea what's coming).

There is a story here and they use cutscenes (nothing impressive but fairly new at the time I think) at the beginning of each 'episode' (after the first 6 levels i got another cutscene and when the next level started i only had my first gun, so i gues they use a episode structure without using a episode of difficulty select screen).

This was all rather positive and i'm having more fun with it then i would have thought (being a total conversion mod turned retail game). But there are negatives. The level design is very confusing. You have to find switches and keys(what you can expect from games in that time), but the levels are confusing to navigate and some switches are really difficult to find are difficult to know what they did. It's also so confusing that i get lost a lot, something that rarely happens to me in games (or in real life for that matter). A map could have fixed this a bit but as far as i know there isn't any. The secret levels are some of the most confusing levels i have ever played, with lots of hidden switches, portals, sneaky elevators and strange puzzles.

Lastly the secrets. I love secrets but half of them are of the wolfenstein 3d variety, as in there is nothing that makes you think there is a secret unless you push it. In this game you have to shoot walls and some of them look exactly the same as other walls so changes are you only find them by accident.

Conclusion after the first third of the game: it's fun, but if you get frustrated fast when trying to find the right then this is probably not for you. The shooting, graphics, sound and music are good.

dude, i racked my brain to come up with 3 fps's he might like. how in the world did you FIND all those?

A love for the obscure!

http://www.mobygames.com/game/secret-service-security-breach
http://www.mobygames.com/game/secret-service-in-harms-way

There is also another newer one that Moby doesn't have a page for yet.

http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/mortyr-series
http://www.mobygames.com/game/mace-griffin-bounty-hunter
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/patriots-a-nation-under-fire

Actually I didn't have to search. I really just sat down and tried to remember what I had played or read about throughout the 90's to early 2000's. The eerie part is that I was ten years old when Half-Life was released.

You have a very good memory. :)

Yes it's impressive. Some i have, some i played, some that i know i don't have interest in BUT i'll look into Kreed, Nitro Family, Devastation and Gore. Strangly they are (if you're not counting vivisect, that i own) all on the top of your list. Was the order random or where they your favorites?

Random.

For those interested, a continuation of my experiences with malice for quake:

I have now completed the second "episode", or an other 4 levels. They were better in terms of layout. I didn't get lost and everthing seemed a bit more logical.

Less secrets, but better ones: flashing lights or enemies close by secret walls so you shot the wall by accident giving you a change to notice the different kind of sparks telling you it's a secret wall,...

The levels looked a bit like chasm the rift (the first episode), a little know fps that came out when everybody was using more advanced levels so i got overlooked. I still like the music in malice but it doesn't remind me as much of quake 2 anymore.

As i said in earlier posts you can use extra stuff like a submarine, spybot, parachute and hoverboard but they dissapear every level and to be honest only the parachute is helpful (you take a lot of damage falling from heights). I find the other stuff completely useless (why give me a submarine in a little swimmingpool with no enemies, items or secret corridors).

Big problem: the exit portal of the last level in this episode was broken. It was there but stepping through it didn't end the level. Only way past this was a level skip cheat and so you also lost the cutscene (nothing much just an other job description, but still). Because of the skip i also lost my weapons but as it was the end of the episode i think that would have happened anyway. I checked the let's play mentioned in this topic and he had the same problem years ago and now too (he checked it via his steam version and his cd version running through dosbox), I play it through darkplaces.

Summary episode 2: I had even more fun then the first episode because the levels seemed a bit more logical. The game does seems to have some game breaking bugs and that's a shame. Now back to episode 3 ;)