Have You Played... Strife?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Yesterday's Have You Played entry might be the beginning of a short trend. I'm thinking about the FPS games of my teenage years for fairly obvious reasons and some lovely games are bubbling to the surface of my memory. Today, it's Strife's turn.

As with Raven Software's many releases that used id Software engines and pushed them to new limits, Strife was created by a studio working with id tech. Indeed, Rogue Entertainment were based in the same building as id and would later work on mission packs for Quake and its first sequel.

Strife is the feather in their cap though. It's an FPS with elements of roleplay and stealth mashed into its frame, and the whole thing is running on the Doom engine. While there had been first-person roleplaying games of note before Strife's 1996 release (look to Origin, creators of worlds), the game's dialogue and stealth sections didn't wholly detract from its Doom-laden run 'n' gun foundations.

The game was re-released at the end of 2014 in a Veteran edition, which added support for higher resolution graphics along with other minor changes. I haven't played that version though. Strife is one of those games I'm happy to leave in my memories, where it still seems like a promise of change.