Strife: Quest For The Sigil

Strife (also known as Strife: Quest for the Sigil) is a first-person shooter role-playing video game developed by Rogue Entertainment. It was released in May 1996 in North America by Velocity Inc., and in Europe by Studio 3DO. The shareware version was released on February 23, 1996, while the full version was released on May 31, 1996. It was the last commercially released standalone PC game to utilize the id Tech 1 engine from id Software. The plot takes place in a world taken over by a religious organization known as "The Order"; the protagonist, an unnamed mercenary (sometimes referred to as Strifeguy), becomes a member of the resistance movement which aims to topple the Order's oppressive rule.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game adds RPG elements to the first person shooter genre, which was something innovative for it's time.
 * 2) Decent graphics with nice looking hand drawn illustrations during dialogue and cutscenes.
 * 3) Deus Ex would later go on to improve upon the FPS with RPG elements concept, and this game is considered to be it's precursor because of this.
 * 4) You can choose to kill the NPCs.
 * 5) The game has hub areas, which is another thing FPS games at the time didn't have.
 * 6) Good soundtrack.
 * 7) A solid plot.
 * 8) Thanks to a special Iwad known as voices.wad, there is voice acting during cutscenes. With source ports, you can choose to use this Iwad or just play the game without the voice acting.
 * 9) Speaking of the voice acting, it's pretty solid.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The later levels have hard puzzles with difficult to find objectives and will require a guide or walkthrough to help out.
 * 2) There is only one save file (unless you're playing on a Doom source port such as ZDoom/GZDoom which allow unlimited saves or playing the remaster which adds 5 more save slots).
 * 3) The game uses the outdated Id Tech 1 engine (used for Doom and Doom 2), and it lags behind Duke Nukem 3D and Quake which had more technically impressive engines.
 * 4) Wrong decisions can make the game unwinnable, although the remaster removes all of these "fail states" except for one which is really obvious.
 * 5) The source code, unlike with Doom, Heretic and Hexen, is lost and as such certain parts of the game are impossible to mod.