The Crusader series: remorseless slaughter made fun!

Anyone remember these games? I'm trying to track down copies of these gems as they were just so much fun to play.

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He may look like a Boba Fett ripp off, but don't let ol' Mr. Silencer hear that, or he'll come to your home and blow your thumbs off.

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In the opening cutscene of No Regret for example, the Silencer casually picks up an evil lacky by the neck, and proceeds to empty a magazine or two into his midsection with the gun in his other hand. The Silencer really didn't appretiate uninvited guests...

For those of you that don't know, the Crusader games can actually be considered (on a funny technical reference) to be the prequel to the Wing Commander games. It was made by the same company, but the tone of the game was very very dark.

Typical set up, you're a super soldier assassin ninja for the bad guys called the WEC, an oppresive world corporate government. You get stabbed in the back, join the resistance (for your own ends not theirs) decide to go "Beatrix Kiddo" on some collective corporate asses.

And man oh man, could you get bloody vengeance in this game. For pure visual carnage this game still surpasses Grand Theft Auto by far.

You could shoot, shred, incinerate, vaporize, disintegrate, freeze, shatter, melt, microwave, blow to bloody chunks and slaughter your way through the never ending supply of company lackies, war droids and hardened shock troopers. Missions usually ended in the destruction of a major WEC installation, and in one mission you had to do a bit of nuclear terrorism on a WEC command center. At one point you even crashed the government capital attempting to capture a Senator. Good weapons? This game still has the most well rounded, powerful and lethal arsenal I've ever seen put together in a game, and the sequel only adds more. Even WEC civilians in this game were fair play, as they usually tried to sound an alarm on you or generally curse you. If you wished, you could play the game as an honorable warrior only killing those who could fight back... but where's the fun in that? Secretaries, civilian gaurds you could mow down without a second thought. The WEC were such bastards in the game no matter what atrocities you commited, you could say, "tough luck you brought it on yourself". You had also had a pretty good support team both in the field (though you were always doing the killing) and back at the base. The black market weaponeer was particularly funny I remember. Destructible enviroment? You bet! Nearly everything in this game could be blown apart, and in some situations you could use steam, fire vents etc to do some major damage. The game also came with fantastic in universe poster and game manual. Better yet, as you progressed through the game your reputation grew until people basically soil themselves at your approach (excepting elite troops). Throw in some great subplots at your resistance HQ (including a hideous betrayal), high quality cutscenes and a great story and you had one of the best action games of the DOS/Windows era. This game was all out total war. If you haven't played it, get your hands on a copy or you don't deserve to call yourself an action gamer.

 

Ingrats! You darn kids and your 3D polygons!

Show some respect to the best.

Come on, no one has played these games?

 

Looks fun, might have to take a look for it.

 

Oh yes, and how could I forget? You can liquify your opponents as well.

This game made Fallout look like a Barbie goes to Malibu adventure.

Oh yes, another feature of this game was the multiple tactics you could use to play the game. You could go in guns blazing, sneak around and try to avoid heavy fighting (as much as possible and it does save you some trouble), use traps meant for you agains the enemy, and in some cases highjack enemy mechs to unleash some real carnage. It was one of the first games to use remote detonated bombs too IIRC.

The difficulty and weapon balance was perfect as well. With a pistol or SMG, the "chicken walker" mech was an absolute terror. However, if you had a rocket launcher you could take out a score of them without a problem.

 

I've played No Regret. Oh, but I was such a bastard..

 

Both games were lots of fun. You could kill people in so many creative ways, it's simply unbelievable...

You could even use glass-walls to reflect your laser-fire around corners or simply block the teleporter with a device so that everybody who used it would die.

Running around guns blazing didn't really work, as things were often protected by shields who you had to shut down first.
Although sometimes total destruction would show you some paths you never would have discovered otherwise.

The only thing I really hated was the countdown near the end of...I think it was no remorse. I hate countdowns

 

No Remorse was the first game I ever played on Playstation. Simply outstanding.

Nothing like setting a scientist on fire and sending him running into all his colleagues. And then blowing them all up with a rocket.

 

I still have No Remorse. That game was sweet. I LOVED the soundtrack. It always got the blood pumping--even during the installation process.

I never found No Regret, though.


Will these games run on an Windows XP system?


EDIT:

Didn't No Remorse also feature that chick from Terminator 1 & 2?

And yeah, the weapons dealer, Weasel, was great.

 

Apparently these two games are practically impossible to make work on new PCs.
Maybe DosBox?

 

DosBox?

Hmm...are both of them available on the PS?

Maybe I'll just get an old PS and buy them.