Slashdot Mirror

I disagree; it's a serious addiction and you can't just talk him out of it. I fell into a similar trap last Spring; after years of video game addiction I threw away a semester of tuition by playing games 12 hours a day (nighttime), sleeping 12 hours (daytime), and eating a few times a week when I woke up early enough for dinner. I grew seriously disturbed and my depression swallowed me up.. it literally culminated in a suicide attempt that left me with a broken neck.

I still play video games, but no TF2 or Insurgency, the games I burned my nights on. They're fun games but they just suck you dry.. whenever I try to play them that familiar thrill of a big exciting moment (lots in TF2) makes me sick remembering how hollow it leaves you.

It's really like a drug addiction.. not physically obviously but the game is so fun and the rewards so immediate and thrilling compared to a crap life.. I think anyone who's come off an all-day frag session really knows what I mean. It was great and fun and you had some epic moments, but you take away absolutely nothing from it. "Well, that was a waste of my weekend." Your weekend just vanishes into completely forgettable minutiae and come Monday you feel like you just left work for the weekend.

Video game control legislation like China's is obviously absurd, but everyone knows someone whose life has been ruined by WoW.. it's shocking how many people get trapped in self destructive patterns by the rush of victory and pride of being superior (level, armor, whatever). It should at least come with a warning label or something.. whatever.

Posted AC for obvious reasons

I'll agree to some extent: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/5/23/

For me though, one of the biggest helpers in making sure I get a wide variety of genres is the mod community. I play Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods quite a bit, and I get everything from ultra-realism "one-shot-one-kill" in Insurgency and Resistance and Liberation to hilarious adventures in bayoneting with The Battlegrounds (seriously, this mod is fun), to unrealistic sci-fi (in that "limited by only the imagination of the developers" scene) brought by Dystopia.

I haven't found the need to buy any games in the past several years for the sake of entering a new genre; the third-party mod community has me taken care of.

Try the free Half-Life 2 Insurgency mod where you get to play US Marines or Iraqi and Afghanistani insurgents. It's won awards and is one of the best mods out there.

http://www.insmod.net/

It's now out on Valve's steam, and will work with any Valve Source engine game.

It's pretty badass plus the sound and graphics production value is amazing for a mod -- rivaling or better than commercial games like Counterstrike Source or Day of Defeat Source.

The "iron sights" aiming model where instead of GUI crosshairs you see your character aim with your gun barrel and sights also makes it a bit different and refreshing compared to most other FPSs.

Another refreshing aspect is the way the US Marine uniforms provide camouflage in Middle-Eastern terrain and urban environments, same with the insurgents' outfits. Friendly fire servers are pretty cool too for the extra realism aspect as douchebags on current servers are pretty rare.

Give it a go! You won't regret it :)

Counter-Strike: are you joking? You freeze up for half a second (like 9000 seconds in CS <= 1.6) every time you're shot- you're not going to be strafing anywhere. Realistic shooters like Insurgency obviously have nothing like circle strafing.

Not many good pc games coming out? Who cares about new games when you have such a massive library of games available? Just have to have your madden 09? Then go away. Like a good game despite Windows 95 graphics? Break out Chip's Challenge and see if you still remember how to beat it. Craving something new? How about Steam's library, which is massive and is actually priced reasonably unlike any console game at all. And has free mods for the more popular games that are good for more play hours than the game itself-- how many people have bought Half-Life 2 Deathmatch just so they they can play SourceForts, and never even launched HL2DM? How about Insurgency? PC gaming is dead? Does netcraft confirm it?

Call me a slashdotter, but I think they should get gamers' input for things like this. After hundreds of hours of Insurgency and BF2 I can also attest that overhead maps are insanely helpful in planning large maneuvers when in command, though you need to actually know the level inside and out to actually get anything done as a foot soldier. Not really appropriate to the less-realistic Battlefield, but in Insurgency at least, effective peer-to-peer communication is absolutely essential to winning the round. I mean like if you haven't played those ultra-realistic style shooters you can't even imagine.. to be pinned down by SAW fire and call for help from the forward squad, they take a detour through a side building and take out the SAW so your squad can move up.. but at the same time, if real life squad leaders are sitting there watching deployment videos during a battle his squad's gonna get slaughtered around him..

Oh of course- but then games like TF2 that explicitly zooms in on who killed you aren't real battlefield simulators. There are no respawns in Counter-Strike so it doesn't matter that you can spec after death. I also prefer the instant blackout though.. I've been playing a ton of Insurgency lately and my roommate can attest to how many times I've perched over my laptop barely breathing for minutes then jumped a mile high at the sound of bullets ripping through my insurgent's flesh. The Ins death effect is great.. some insanely well-done post process effects kick in for half a second to simulate your eyes glazing and closing as the point of view rolls over.. and you hear bullets through flesh or hitting your helmet and your body rolling over in the dust.

As it is, the engine is pretty modular. If you want to make a mod that uses all of HL2's base weapons, textures, etc, you just want to include maps, then there's practically no coding involved, you just have to make the maps. See Minerva or Combine Destiny. On the other hand, if you wish to create a mod from scratch, that's perfectly possible too. See Eclipse or Insurgency. (note: Eclipse isn't even an FPS per se, so it's possible to even do genre changes)

I actually recommend trying out some map-making in the Hammer Editor. If you follow a tutorial, it's fairly easy to get something like an Iceworld clone (or an "orange" map), and if you turn out to be good at it, then maybe you can even join a mod team!

Even better for them is to try the Insurgency mod for Half Life 2 where they can actually play as terrorists.