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Doom 3 vs. Half Life 2
Thanks to Laurie W, who writes "Sudhain.com has a great comparison of D3 vs. HL2 (funny, too)." From the article: "Since Half Life 2 was released this week, I thought it'd make a good time to take the two games head to head and see which came out on top. I've spent a few hours in the beginning of each, playing through the first few levels. Although I haven't completed either, I've spent enough time in each (I think) to develop a feel for what the later sections of each game will be like. Given that each has been fairly consistent thus far, it'd take a major shift for my opinion of either to change significantly."
All I have to say is my out-of-box experience with HL2 has been smooth overall. After 4 months, my Doom III is still virtually unplayable with a ton of white spots. My ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128MB has been a total disappointment for Doom III after a million different catalyst drivers.
pc game developers are externalizing the cost of producing multiplayer elements to the modding community. the multiplayer versions will come, and they will be bad-ass, and nobody will get paid. maybe someone will get a job.
a small, dedicated crew of xbox hackers will have moderate success mucking with halo2, but will receive the opposite of the encouragement the pc scene sees, due to ms's business model for the xbox and evident goal of using the xbox as a springboard for trusted computing.
(ps, my kingdom for a hl2 reincarnation of creeper rune CTF. mmm new physics on a grappling hook.)
Really? When I played Doom3 on the medium difficulty setting, playing through the game seemed like a leveling treadmill. Everything got a little harder as things went along like all games do, but this one just seemed that once you've played the first few levels, the gameplay was exactly the same, kill the mobs, find the key, finish level...
I found HL2 to constantly change the gameplay experience (maybe too often!).
A good game for gameplay progression I thought was Farcry. It seemed like there was always something new to master, but you would still utilize the skills you learned earlier in the game.
Bye!
HELLOOO?!? Barren wasteland? No humans left? This is obviously the future.
HELLOOO?!? The movie was about a new trend in creating intelligent robots. Maybe these robots continued on after the humans died?! Maybe that's slightly more plausible than fucking aliens! Idiots.
I never saw it in the theatre, but my mom was completely appauled at how everyone thought they were aliens at the end. We are both extremely unimpressed with the ambient stupidity. But I thought slashdot readers were smarter than that.
Finally, A.I. was an excellent fucking movie, and is totally underrated. It was not a sci-fi movie so much as a sci-fi fairy tale. It started out a bit more "normal" but became much more "fairy-tale like" by the end.
I think the only mistake was not making it more obvious, sooner and up front, that this was a (almost prototypical) fairy tale and not a hollywood "blockbuster" like Independence Day.
The extra ending made the movie much more sad, more poignant (though I can't spell the word), and more rememberable.
Sure they could have ended it with him sunk in the ocean.
But even sadder than that is to let the viewer know that yes, he sat in the ocean for no less than 1000 yrs.
Even sadder than that is the fact that he is discovered and eventually "re-integrated" back into a "society", but that his fellow beings have evolved so much that he doesn't really belong.
Even sadder than that is that they can recreate his mother, but only for a day.
Even sadder than that is knowing that after 1000 years, he finally found his happiness, only to have it taken away within 24 hours. That is fucking tragic, and it appears it was lost on everyone but me.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
UT2k4 is by far the most moddable, but HL has developed the "mod stereotype" - people think of it as the ultimate moddable engine because of the success of CS and TF and the way that Valve supports its modders (DE has cought up on that issue).
So for most moddable, I insist that UT2k4 will remain - but HL2 will have more mods because of its popular perception as "the platform to mod".
Because one of these games will get the better mods. I'm hoping it's D3 so that Linux users can run the popular mods natively.
UT uses a Java-like embedded language with a full OOP class tree to work with. Also, UT's tri-paradigm mapping system (BSP+mapmodel+landscape) is very easy to use and allow mappers to work in whatever way feels most comfortable to them.
Plus, UT is most conducive to small mods - UT mods don't have to be TCs, as they're non exclusive - you can make a mod that replaces one vehicle in Onslaught, and another guy can make a mod that replaces a different vehicle in ONS, and a third guy replaces some weapons, and the server can use all three of those mods at once.
DE has gotten hardcore about supporting their mod teams, including a million-dollar-grand-prize contest called "Make Something Unreal" to encourage them.
I expect similar reactions from Half-Life, but Valve has always been far more C++ -oriented, which, while I find is better for experienced programmers, is worse for newer coders. As I understand it though, HL2 mods work like HL1 in that they are completely exculsive to each other.
Id, of course, has fallen far behind in cultivating their mod community. Carmack's apis are often inscrutable, and I don't know that Id has any interest in the kind of epic mod conferences and contests the other two have.