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Max Payne 2 Shows Bullet Time Squared?
Thanks to IGN PC for their new preview of Remedy/Rockstar's Max Payne 2:The Fall Of Max Payne, as the October-due PC, December-shipping console title unveils a little more, particularly Bullet Time 2.0, the key new gameplay feature which "...will reward Max for good performance by increasing his action speed during Bullet Time. What this means is that you can start to move proportionally faster while in Bullet Time simply by killing multiple enemies." Elsewhere, GameSpot also get to "visit with the older, wiser Max Payne", particularly mentioning the "game's implementation of Havok physics", as this middleware physics engine also gets used in games such as Half-Life 2 and Starcraft: Ghost.
Dear Santa,
Generally, I'm a nice guy. I will only get violent if you try to tell me what I can and cannot watch, play or hear.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
with the creation of all the new physics engines such as the Havok system, i find that things get a little stupider in games. they seem to throw random objects in the game just so you can bounce them off the walls... the ragdoll physics on the models pretty much looks completely fake. it may look cool, but if you throw a body it wouldnt do that. there are points that you cant physically stretch past that they have the models go past. they turn all the joints into these springy balljoint's and it looks really....dumb. in the HL2 videos, the only stuff i didnt like was when he picked up the guy and he bounced all over the place. it just looked fake.... cant they add some resistance to the joints and a little stiffness like is natural???
Not only do they have too many gaming stories, it's usually about something academic or relatively insignificant. An obscure theory, or in this case, a single feature.
Considering that the Games section here averages less than 6 stories a day, it's hard to see your point, unless the other sections you don't ignore are putting out far less. As for obscure theories, well, as far as I'm concerned that's what most of Slashdot deals with in the first place. Just because the games section deals with game theory rather than rocket science or some such theory doesn't make it any less interesting to those few that can understand and discuss it.
As for the 'single feature', the article is 2 pages long and discusses 'Bullet Time 2.0' in one paragraph near the end of the 2nd page. It also discusses the physics engine, which is the same one many other games have licensed, and the story line. In fact, if I were to pick 2 things this article spent the most time discussing besides the story, it'd be the lighting effects and the things allowed by the physics engine, and related design choices (such as the decision not to allow bullets to penetrate wooden crates, though they will spin the crates according to force).
But no, instead of commenting on the article, we get a handful of people that feel the need to comment on the fact that Slashdot has a games section with a half-decent output, which most people visiting Slashdot won't even see because most of the (relatively few) stories don't show up in the default preferences for the main page.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
The Max Payne guy (at least the one whose face was used in the first Max Payne) wasn't an actor at all. He was Sam Lake, one of the writers for Remedy, which is based in Finland. You can actually see Sam in the picture of Remedy's staff at the back of the Max Payne manual.