Alright, so let's rewind to the few days prior to the last Freeform Friday of February 2022. I wasn't feeling the best that week, as I kept trying to fight off my personal demons from 2021, along with some frustrations trying to make Rise of the Triad multiplayer work out.
This resulted in taking time off of Twitch live streaming for a bit due to a mental breakdown. Prior to announcing my break, I announced Soldat for Freeform Friday at the DOSBox Deathmatch Club on the same day. I started to recover faster after talking with my close friends in voice chat and my mother.
But anyways, I actually had a lot of fun playing Soldat, especially with all the knife throwing. Basically, Soldat is a 2D side-view multiplayer shooter inspired by a mixture of Liero, Quake, Counter Strike, and Worms. The game was first released in May 2002 and is currently somewhat active, especially when the game is also on Steam.
I'm actually fond of these kinds of games because of the fast-paced action they give you. You got the open-source Teeworlds being known for that fluid grapple hook and a fork titled DDRaceNetwork, and you got Soldat being known for having great movement. Liero is also interesting to me because when I first tried to play, the controls took some time to get into, a bit similar to when I started playing Tomb Raider. I recently picked it up via WebLiero (the only version with internet play at the time of this writing), and I was pretty hooked.
Liero is originally a MS-DOS game released in January 1998 by Finnish programmer Joosa Riekkinen. It was best described as Real-time Worms (an artillery game by Team 17). The game was mostly played hotseated, which is a shame if this is nowadays considering the global pandemic we currently have going on. Thank God for WebLiero. If you are ever interested in picking it up, I recommend starting with WebLiero and getting used to the controls in a private room first. I have my controls like this:
Left/Right Arrows = Moving
Up/Down Arrows = Aim
Z = Fire Weapon
X = Jump
C = Ninja Rope
Space = Dig
A/S = Weapon Switching
* Also do some target practice on medkits to get the hang of it. ;) *
That wraps up a somewhat quick article. See you around!
www.liero.be
