https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...astered-the-return-of-the-six-degrees-shooter
Forsaken Remastered - the welcome return of the six-degrees shooter
What made the original a classic, plus full analysis of the new release.
If there's one gaming genre that embodies the spirit of late 90s PC gaming, it's the six degrees of freedom shooter. Dropped into a labyrinthian mass of tunnels, players are tasked with navigating complex spaces utilising a full six degrees of freedom while dealing with enemies, hunting for keys and finding exits. Interplay's Descent popularised the concept, but other brilliant games followed in its wake, including Probe Software's stunning Forsaken. And now, thanks to the efforts of Nightdive Studios, Samuel 'Kaiser' Villarreal (the developer behind the EX versions of Turok, Doom 64 and Powerslave) and other talented coders, Forsaken has returned.
The original game launched in 1998 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Nintendo 64. It was developed in the UK for PC and PlayStation by Probe Entertainment while Iguana Entertainment UK handled the N64 version. Forsaken featured much the same gameplay formula as Descent, but thanks to its more advanced graphics engine, the visuals are less abstract than Descent, making it easier to navigate the complex structures. The action features a Doom-like quality to it with large numbers of enemies swarming the player at any point - and this mix of hectic action with fluid controls and puzzle solving feels great even today.
The good news is that now there's a fully official way to play the game. Forsaken Remastered by Nightdive Studios is basically a deluxe special edition. Every map from PlayStation 1 and PC is included along with all of the Nintendo 64 content too, repurposed to fit the flow of the original release. The end result is a singular whole, with one map also featuring a brand-new section designed just for this new version of the game. All told, you're looking at 32 maps in total.
The new remaster is available on PC and Xbox One, with full 4K60 support for the enhanced X console. We're told that dynamic resolution scaling is in place to maintain performance, but we couldn't find any drops in resolution, but this is an older game with different demands on the hardware. The game is mostly-single threaded, for instance, which places extra demand on a single CPU core. The menu is also fascinating for a console game. You can, for instance, toggle between different types of anti-aliasing, enable or disable ambient occlusion, enable motion blur and more! These seem to have little to no impact on performance, however, instead offering users a way to customise the experience. On the PC side, a few additional options are available including support for higher frame-rates, ultra-wide displays and three different rendering APIs - OpenGL, D3D11 and Vulkan.