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Decent is a game I wish still existed. Same with Wing Commander. These games (both space flight/combat) were very fun, and Descent had some very fun multiplayer.

Oh, It still exists., now on wiiware... Since the source code was released, it's been and ported to at least XP (don't know about Vista or 7 -- been a while since I had a MS OSs).

(Wait...What the hell am I doing replying to an Anonymous Coward's wall of text?!)

They could just rip-off the engine in Die By The Sword in actual sword movement mode (using the wiimote instead of the mouse) and it'd be fantastic!

It might have been changed since I bought my copy of Freespace2 oh so many moons ago, but the EULA on the disc I just popped in reads like standard boilerplate....but there is the bit about giving it to "friends" (in bold)

This software product, FreeSpace 2 (the "Software"), is
intended solely for your personal noncommercial home entertainment
use. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, or disassemble the
Software, except as permitted by law. Interplay Productions and
Volition, Inc. retain all rights and title in the Software including
all intellectual property rights embodied therein and derivatives
thereof. You are granted a revocable, nonassignable limited license
to create derivative works of this Software solely for your own
personal noncommercial home entertainment use and may publicly
display such derivative works to the extent specifically
authorized by Interplay in writing. A copy of this authorization, if
any, will be provided on Interplay's World Wide Web site, located at
http://www.interplay.com/ or by contacting the legal department of
Interplay Productions in the US at (949) 553-6655. The Software,
including, without limitation, all code, data structures, characters,
images, sounds, text, screens, game play, derivative works and all
other elements of the Software may not be copied (except as provided
below), resold, rented, leased, distributed (electronically or
otherwise), used on pay-per-play, coin-op or other for-charge basis,
or for any commercial purpose. You may make copies of the Software
for your personal noncommercial home entertainment use and to give to
friends and acquaintances on a no cost noncommercial basis. This
limited right to copy the Software expressly excludes any copying or
distribution of the Software on a commercial basis, including,
without limitation, bundling the product with any other product or
service and any give away of the Software in connection with another
product or service. Any permissions granted herein are provided on a
temporary basis and can be withdrawn by Interplay Productions at any
time. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

etc. etc.

Oh, one more thing: how's Interplay going to make an online game when they can't even afford to keep their own damn website up?

since, following this comment, i didn't manage to snag any answers as the the whereabouts of interplay's online mp3 collection that they were serving up here, i'd like to ask again: any ideas why they took it down? are the mp3s available anywhere else? it had the soundtracks to many classics including the baldur's gate series, fallout, planescape torment...

Granted, star control 2 had some of the best mod's to ever grace my ears. more recently, however, the baldur's gate series, planescape torment, system shock 2, the fallouts, and the "newer" lucasarts adventures like grim fandango or curse of monkey island all have tunes permanently lodged in my brain. if you think all video game music has to be dull, lifeless, or uninspired, please do yourself a favour and buy these games or leech their soundtracks.

inertplay had, up until a short while ago, an online mp3 collection of the soundtracks to a good chunk of the games they put out. not sure why the page was taken down.. used to be here .. anyone know what happened to it?

Granted, star control 2 had some of the best mod's to ever grace my ears. more recently, however, the baldur's gate series, planescape torment, system shock 2, the fallouts, and the "newer" lucasarts adventures like grim fandango or curse of monkey island all have tunes permanently lodged in my brain. if you think all video game music has to be dull, lifeless, or uninspired, please do yourself a favour and buy these games or leech their soundtracks.

inertplay had, up until a short while ago, an online mp3 collection of the soundtracks to a good chunk of the games they put out. not sure why the page was taken down.. used to be here .. anyone know what happened to it?

In the article that has Infinium all pissed, there is a quoted press release with the slogan "Built By Gamers For Gamers (tm)"

Am I mistaken, or is that slogan already taken and trademarked by Interplay?

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel
http://www.interplay.com/falloutbos/
Wouldn't this be considered Fallout 3?

I'd like to point out that no vault is safe from having its water purification chip break down.

One of many reasons why Black Isle Studios' Planescape Torment is my (and many others') favorite computer RPG is its haunting ending. The nameless protagonist, having finally achieved self-knowledge, descends unresistingly to his ultimate fate. The single cutscene made sense regardless of whether you played the game as good or evil. An exceptionally nice work, that game.

Dear God I hope you are right! Fallout 3 is what I've been hoping for for a long long time.

Anyone seen the horrible Brotherhood of Steel game that Interplay has planned? Man it looks good from a console game-design standpoint... BUT... it's Fallout for the console, which anyone who is a die-hard Fallout fan, will agree is sacrilege!!!

What we all want is an epic Fallout SP game that has great diversity, whit and charm. We don't want any more Fallout Tactics, or BOS crap.

I guess what we want is something untainted by Interplay!

Dear God I hope you are right! Fallout 3 is what I've been hoping for for a long long time.

Anyone seen the horrible Brotherhood of Steel game that Interplay has planned? Man it looks good from a console game-design standpoint... BUT... it's Fallout for the console, which anyone who is a die-hard Fallout fan, will agree is sacrilege!!!

What we all want is an epic Fallout SP game that has great diversity, whit and charm. We don't want any more Fallout Tactics, or BOS crap.

I guess what we want is something untainted by Interplay!

Snake is a great character for a video game. Plus the gadgets in the movies would also be good to develop. I wonder what engine this will use, but I'm guessing it'll be akin to the Doom 3 engine.

The character art looks pretty darn cool too. If they do this right, it could generate the kind of popularity Vice City did, yet with a Fallout flavour.

Reading that review made my intelligence drop by about 2 (I now only have a +1 modifier D:). I didn't think it was humanly possible to mindlessly fellate the developers that severely, but it seems that I was naive in that respect.

At least the IGN review was informative and (slightly) balanced, much better than the 'OMG!!11 BIOWARE R TEH GODS OF TEH ROLEPLAYEINGE GAMEZ OLOLOLOLOOLO =DDDD' of the Unlimited Lives one. Press like that only appeals to cretins and 14 year olds (oddly the apparent target audience for Fallout: Enforcer.

Who am I kidding, I'll likely buy the game anyways. I sure hope it's a damn sight more interesting than the NWN OC.

Where did you see the graphics? As far as I've heard, they haven't even announce the game officially, let alone released any graphics. Maybe you're thinking of the FO:BoS game, IMHO a very different beast to FO3.

To me it looks, well, sucky, completely departing from what the originals were all about - gameplay, atmosphere, kickass story, etc over graphics. *shrug* oh well, at least it seems to be a console only title, so I won't be playing it :)

What were their reasons? I also wonder why twenty of the lead developers working on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault left an Electronic Arts funded studio to found Infinity Ward. Is it really the money, or is it something else? I have no knowledge in this field, so if anyone has any inside information or pertinent experience, please post, I'd love to hear it.

As far as the reallocation of talent goes, I had high hopes for Troika's Arcanum, seeing as how Troika consisted of several key members of the fantastic team which produced Fallout, but wound up disappointed at its lack of polish, whereas Inifinity Ward's soon-to-be-released Call of Duty looks by all means to be incredible even in its juvenile state. Maybe high-level-folk like doing things their way, for better or worse, without the interjections of a publisher seeking marketability. Once again, I'm only hypothesizing. Are there any game-developers out there willing to testify?

Any one of the Baldur's Gate games, from Shadows of Amn to the newer additions and such, are well put together and easy to learn. There is freedom if you like that, and also a strong enough plot line so you know what you're doing, and plenty of customization available.

Well, I suppose you could call it a rip-off if you *really* wanted ...

But check out Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil by Troika. Designed to be a faithful adaption of the original module to the computer and 3.5 edition D&D rules.

These are the guys who made Arcanum, and includes many of the principal designers and developers of Fallout and Fallout 2.

Well, I suppose you could call it a rip-off if you *really* wanted ...

But check out Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil by Troika. Designed to be a faithful adaption of the original module to the computer and 3.5 edition D&D rules.

These are the guys who made Arcanum, and includes many of the principal designers and developers of Fallout and Fallout 2.

A FPS without gravity

This Laser Rifle? I got one of these stored away with my Power Armor Mk II.

makes me think of the world's most interesting bomb from MDK

What's wrong with dark, depressing and dystopian? I like dark, depressing and dystopian!

It is true that many mind-less first person shooters have spawned into existence since the release of Doom, but certainly this is not the only sort of game that is unleashed upon humanity today.

As for 3D adventure games, I liked Under A Killing Moon a lot. It has a compelling storyline, great graphics and yes, a dark, depressing and dystopian 3D environment. It's awesome!

More recently, I finished Sierra's Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. It too has beautiful 3D graphics (for its time) and a great in-depth plot. Lots of things to explore and figure out, and I think it does justice to the old adventure genre in that respect.

As for RPG's since Doom, you may have forgotten about Baldur's Gate, which is-- God forbid-- a 2D game, as is it's successor Baldur's Gate II, but if you want 3D exploration, let's have a look at Neverwinter Nights or maybe you've got more interest in mindless hack & slack ala Dungeon Siege. Let's not forget the more recent hits in mindlessness; I think good fun can be had with Grand Theft Auto 3, despite it being mindless, but if you want something more intelligent in that vein, have a look at Mafia.

So, no. I don't think the gaming industry is totally down the drain. It could be better, it always can be. There's no such thing as the perfect game for everybody.

What's wrong with dark, depressing and dystopian? I like dark, depressing and dystopian!

It is true that many mind-less first person shooters have spawned into existence since the release of Doom, but certainly this is not the only sort of game that is unleashed upon humanity today.

As for 3D adventure games, I liked Under A Killing Moon a lot. It has a compelling storyline, great graphics and yes, a dark, depressing and dystopian 3D environment. It's awesome!

More recently, I finished Sierra's Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. It too has beautiful 3D graphics (for its time) and a great in-depth plot. Lots of things to explore and figure out, and I think it does justice to the old adventure genre in that respect.

As for RPG's since Doom, you may have forgotten about Baldur's Gate, which is-- God forbid-- a 2D game, as is it's successor Baldur's Gate II, but if you want 3D exploration, let's have a look at Neverwinter Nights or maybe you've got more interest in mindless hack & slack ala Dungeon Siege. Let's not forget the more recent hits in mindlessness; I think good fun can be had with Grand Theft Auto 3, despite it being mindless, but if you want something more intelligent in that vein, have a look at Mafia.

So, no. I don't think the gaming industry is totally down the drain. It could be better, it always can be. There's no such thing as the perfect game for everybody.

What I find funny is that I can't run the original Fallout under Windows 2000, but can run it under Wine/WineX.

That's funny. I picked up the Fallout/Fallout2 CD pack (only $10!) just a few months ago, and it ran fine on my Win2k box (with the exception of installing, which you have to do manually). Don't know if there was a difference between this and the originals, though.

They need to ship each one of these Lindows PCs with this game pre-installed.

there was even a special controller for it, SpaceOrb 360. I got one and it's terribly hard to use in real life -- so it was back to joystick w/ hat control. but the theory is good. i have heard of people getting really good on that thing. the company seem to be out of business now -- their "space orb" technology used to be marketed as a specialized input device for molecular visualization / CAD etc... but i guess that never picked up either; again, great theory, TOUGH (i mean it) learning curve.

waiting for direct mind contolled video games

Hehe, yeah, maybe that was going overboard. Didn't even notice. Guide for the uninitiated:

IWD = Icewind Dale
IWD2 = Icewind Dale 2
IE = Infinity Engine -- powers BG/BG:TotSC/PS:T/IWD/IWD:HoW/BG2/BG2:ToB and IWD2
NPC = Non-Player Character
NWN = Neverwinter Nights
DS = Dungeon Siege
TA = Total Annihilation
OP = Original Poster
TotSC = Tales of the Sword Coast. BG1 add-in adventures
PS:T = Planescape: Torment
ToB = Throne of Bhaal. BG2 expansion.
HoW = Heart of Winter. IWD add-in.

I am appalled. Is nothing sacred ?!

I think this is what youre looking for. It might be available here.

Forgotten Reals Dual Jewel . has all the old SSI gold box games if you like Pool of Radiance and all those games.

A lot of other old-school RPGs are available from abandonware sites. Anyone have info on how to get a collection of the old Dragonlance SSI games? I think there was a CD collection published but I could never get a hold of it. Also, anyone have info on Cluebooks? I'd love to have a run through some of these games but I dont have the time to figure them out! I'd be willing to trade scans...

dbc

"seti@home makes a lot of assumptions in order to make it's goals seems plausible. . ."

Not new, but still the very best of the best: Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate 2.

It's been mentioned before, but Return to Wolfenstein looks amazing, and the multiplayer demo is a blast. I will refrain from recapping what has already been said about this cool looking game.

I was watching TechTV's Extended Play recently on my TiVo and they had a Holiday Gift Guide show on games for the holidays. It discussed the PC, as well as PS2, GameCube, and XBox and made recommendations on games for all of them.

PC game development is a marginally profitable endeavor anyway. For every iD, there are lots of losers. Aside from Wal-Mart specials like Deer Hunter and Millionaire, PC game development is a risky proposition at best. Retail software in general is an incredibly competitive business; the retail game software business is brutal.

Linux gamers, as a group, are willing to pay for games, but only for mega-elite titles. These are games that are already successful on Windows. In particular, multiplayer games are only successful with a large gamer population, most of which will be running Windows.

Console gaming is the only profitable market for most game companies. The margins are higher, the technology is simpler due to uniform hardware, losses to piracy are low, and there is significant revenue from rental outlets.

To those of you unwilling to dual-boot to Windows, do what I did - buy a cheap second (3rd/4th/etc) machine and a KVM switch. Or get a game console and rent software. Don't let funky OS advocacy blind you to reasonable alternatives. Hey, I love my TiVo, but the fact it runs Linux means diddly to me.

What I'd really like to see, beside stunning graphics which have become the norm for recent FF games, is a story in which a decision you make matters. I'm currently playing FF9 and it annoys me that when I have a choice to take a variety of actions, whichever I choose I see the same outcome.

1. I'd really like to see something like old-school choose your own adventure books (Lonewolf was my favorite) which provide a number of different endings or varried paths to the same outcome.

2. Moral dileams would be nice. Perhaps even a choice to be good or evil ala Fallout.

I realize the game is written for teenagers and even at 22 I will certainly buy it (and see the movie), I just wish they were more challenging and had some replay value.

Two words:

Neverwinter Nights

Dungeon Master, Wizardry, and like games, started a tradition of dungeon crawl RPGs that are currenly best explemfified by Diablo II on one end of the spectrum, and Baldur's Gate II on the other. But it looks like Bioware's Neverwinter Nights is about to take the crown.

And for good reason... it's a blast to play. I have the original, as well as the sequel, and have already pre-ordered the "squad based combat" version called Fallout: Tactics. It is a "real time" game but you disable the real time play for the classic Fallout turn-based mayhem.

I highly recommend Fallout if you like the isometric view of Diablo but don't like the real time game play.

Plus, you get the fantastic post-apocalypic environment of The Road Warrior with some good humor (making fun of themselves at times). Definitely worth picking up a used copy on eBay or from a friend.

Some Fallout sites:
Duck And Cover
No Mutants Allowed

Here is a discussion about real time games vs. turn based games.

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True. Don't forget to add Diablo 2 to the list of games that didn't quite live up to their hype (although it was worth a play through, replay value went out the window).

The only game I've played recently that I thought lived up to its hype was Baldur's Gate 2. Now of course I'm playing that while waiting for Masters of Orion 3 to come out which seems like its going to be great :)

" Role play is dead. "


47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)

i'm guessing that you've never played Redneck Rampage , eh?

eudas

Starfleet Command was a truly inspired Trek game - taking the complexity of SFB, and trying to shove it all into a video game couldn't be easy. SFC managed to come out of it, not only playable, but really, really enjoyable *if* you knew what you were doing (being an SFB player, I was enjoying it =)

If only it hadn't been ruined by a buttfuck of a setup interface, it could have kicked ass - as it was, playing mulitplayer was excruciatingly painful.

I'm truly, truly looking forward to the next iteration of SFC - I'm really thankful that it sold well enough to justify a sequel, as there was alot that needed fixing. Fortunately, the actual gameplay wasn't one of those things.

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I am sorry to burst the bubble, but Icewind Dale is out.. Check out the website below for more info:
Icewind Dale

vi
i
"Enter your comments here!"
ESC
:q!

Did anyone else not like the original because of the empty space and the talking?

It seems the empty space, the path-finding and the Fed-Ex quests (go to Beregost and bring me back my bottle of wine) are the two biggest complaints about the original, judging from alt.games.baldurs-gate and the Gameplay FAQ.

Needless to say, they've promised to fix them all - pathfinding will include bumping others out of the way instead of walking half-way around the world (like Icewind Dale apparently, but I've never played it), walking speed will be up 50%, empty spaces won't be there and quests will be more interesting.

I liked some of the voices - Minsc in particular had good lines ('RASKKKKKKKKKKKKK'). At the moment though, I have Safana in my evil party and her American accent is annoying me. That and being greeting by 'Yes darling' when I click on her as a female PC (her personality description makes it seem she'd aim that stuff at males).

Definitely get the Original and TOSC, both are great games. If you get these two, then you can bring the characters you create into the new game. Also if you're looking for another cool game, check out Deus Ex. Great Game!

Definitely get the Original and TOSC, both are great games. If you get these two, then you can bring the characters you create into the new game. Also if you're looking for another cool game, check out Deus Ex. Great Game!

Definitely get the Original and TOSC, both are great games. If you get these two, then you can bring the characters you create into the new game. Also if you're looking for another cool game, check out Deus Ex. Great Game!

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