I was hoping he'd come back and lose and then Alex would be like, "Sorry to say this...but you wagered $1337 and lost, which now means, *holds up sign* 'j00 4r3 n0t 1337.'"
Either that or Alex would just look at him and say, "pwn3d".
Most simple remapping of the controls. You can just use one analog stick, and then use the shoulder buttons for the rest of it. But this does fall right in line with Cubivore, I actually thought this game WAS for the GC at first.
What was funny was that if you bought it USED in Japan, it was still almost twice the price of buying it NEW in the US. The head of Namco US thought the product would be a complete failure, but everyone else thought it would sell, so they sold it cheap.
I had the best bard ever. He was a Gnome. Named Warren.
Warren G-Nome. Coolest Bard ever. I think I got him to level 6 before we finished the campaign and went onto something non-D&D.
As "punishment" for naming my character "Warren G-Nome" the DM said I'd have to actually have a song when I cast spells. So I came up with fresh freestyle rap songs for each of my spells for the first 3 weeks, until the DM realized the one being punished was him. =)
Re:trilinear filtering = UGLY - That AND no FSAA!
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1
Look man, there's no need to be upgrading your CPU every freaking year. I upgrade mine as soon as it gets doubled. I don't want devs aiming for a 3.2Ghz as baseline specs when it means I have to spend EVEN MORE cash on gaming.
I also have problems with people on high-end machines writing reviews that expect everyone to have top of the line crap. For the most part, these game don't have optimized code, and could run phenomenally well on lower-end machines. Nothing that Far Cry did should needed a 3.0 Ghz. Not after you see how much more HL2 crams onto the screen and keeps framerate solid. My machine barely ran that game on the lowest settings.
HL2 I can run 800 x 600 with most of the settings turned up with a 1/2 GB of RAM, and a video card with 128MB of RAM. The game runs sweet. I've had maybe 2 or 3 areas of choppiness that all fade after a second or 2, and everything's cool. More powerful machines just leads to lazier code.
Ok, now that I got the smarmy response aside, here's the new stuff (Single-player only):
The physics engine adds a lot of the gameplay. You do a lot of stacking or weight based pulley/lever puzzles and those are new. That and killing people by dropping 40 ft containers on them. That was fun.
There's also some nice squad based scenes where you're involved in some rather large scale fighting.
A big part of what people liked in Half Life was the cinematic feel to the action. There's a lot of that present in the progression of HL2. The game kind of just...draws you in.
There's not a whole lot that is both new and an improvement. There's a lot of stuff that's new and good, but I wouldn't say it's better necessarily, especially the ending. I'd definitely say it's worth playing, and I'm someone who didn't bother going all the way through Half Life 1.
Crap! I totally forgot about that! I had the same thing happen, too. It's not hard to get up that rubble. Got myself a HUGE amount of momentum, even hit the "turbo boost" and PANG! right off the invisible wall in the air. As soon as I blew up the cargo container it let me make the jump. Ugh.
What's the biggest misconception the general public seems to have about the job of Lead Designer, and what's the best path for me to take to get your job? (you know, like, at a different company...heh.)
I saw the combat system at E3. Is it still Massively Multiplayer Rock Paper Scissors? Becuase that's what they showed at E3. (hence, your NDA wouldn't apply to revealing if it was just something that was already revealed.) You choose Fast attack, it got in before a Strong or a Throw, Throw beat Special, Special beat Fast.
Combat featured as much as 2 on 1 combat! What was pathetic was how they were talking about how the game was completely unlike anything else out there, because it was a huge city (you know, just like City of Heroes.), and besides that, all they talked about was the combat animations, which you had 0 control over.
That's not a "cheat", it's the way the game works. That's a "bug". You can find a good player who won't exploit it, but the blame lies on the company for producing it not the player for using it.
This isn't the first completely retarded Madden bug. The first version on the PS2 I had, it took me 2 games before I figured out an onside kick didn't have to travel 10 yards in the Madden world. Pretty soon, the computer was getting blown out 210-7.
Sometimes I can excuse that, so long as the reviewer doesn't try and say that the game dialogue is crappy and the character development is lame.
I mean, it's not like there are a ton of games out there, where you start into the game for the first 1-2 hours, and then all of a sudden, 15 hours into the game, the AI suddenly becomes intelligent, the ganeplay becomes intuitive, and the camera stops going for messed up camera angles that block your view.
It's very easy to project what a game is like 2-3 hours into the game nowadays. In general, the reviewers that know this don't tend to rail endlessly about the game, and are the type that understand, "Hey, this is my opinion, I couldn't be troubled to play this through to the end, this is what I didn't like about it...take it as you will."
No, I drive a normal sized car. I've had people back into my car and tell me, "Man, my car's so big, I totally couldn't see you in any of my mirrors."
Now, you're supposed to actually, you know...look the hell behind you when you reverse...but that wasn't apparently on the SUV drivers' who hit me to-do list.
I'm no SF III master, in fact I hated all incarnations of III, but as far as I recall, parry required you to tap forward (i.e. not the block.) at a precise moment to completely ignore the damage.
What's dumb is, the Chun-Li player is parrying, too, those fireballs Ken's tossing at him are getting parried (The tech bonuses) before he lets off that fateful super. So it's not like the result is completely unexpected. It looks like he just got frazzled after getting pummeled in the corner and whipped out a "Jana Novotna at Wimbledon" to eat the loss.
Oh yeah, it was the Director of Sega right before the Dreamcast launched.
Yeah...he was great. Haven't seen him around so much since he, you know...get demoted into oblivion, his company became the 3rd wheel in a 2 console industry, and eventually got bought out by a competitor...
You know...maybe history doesn't always repeat itself and maybe people learn from other people's mistakes sometimes...
I do get it, but you apparently still don't. Stock their shelves for Christmas? Wow. Good thing they were all stocked up with those Half-Life 2 and Doom III for Christmas 2003...didn't want them to get caught with their pants down or anything.
Way to get your one big game all this buzz generated for it that it can't possibly sustain for 2 years.
I've worked both sides of the show, as the Media, and as the Exhibitor. I know what both sides are looking for, and NOBODY'S needs are met by showing off a 10% completed game that won't be finished until 2 years from now. Nobody's going to get wooed into moving 250,000 units of your game when all you can do is move around on one screen.
The Square-Enix booth is great, because every single thing they show at their booth is going to be on a store shelf before the next E3 rolls around.
Less unfinished crap means that the stores are going to actually be stocking more of what we want. It also means that the unheralded games that are nearing completion are going to get more publicity instead of battling it out for name recognition with 8-10 titles in the same genre that won't be finished for 2-3 years, if at all.
Everyone is better served by limiting the scope of the convention to games that are going to be hitting shelves before the next show.
If E3 would just pare out the crap games, games that are like 10%-30% complete they could breathe some life back into the show.
They could put some of the suprise back in the show by not giving out Best of Show E3 Awards to games 2 years in a row, or even better, not giving those awards out to games that aren't going to be out within the next year.
It's just like movies that release trailers for their movie 1 year in advance. You can't possibly expect me to care for that long.
E3 could be significant again if they didn't leak every big surprise 3 days before the actual announcement.
It could also be made better by not acting like you have a big announcement and hpying things up that are not that interesting in the least, you know, like Sega pulling that crap they did this year. ("Hey! We're co-publishing the Matrix Online!")
You gotta have Kentia Hall, and you gotta have your Phantoms, Gizmondo, and other spectacular failure ideas...they make the place look crowded, and give everyone an easy to find Worst of Show.
So, if they had less games displayed, games that we could play, and determine what would be worthy in the next 6 months, that'd make for a much better show. As it is, you're overwhelmed with like 500 titles, and there's no way you can get a feel for one game without ignoring the rest, and every single game is competing to be that one that you ignore the others for.
Never played the most recent iteration of FIFA, SSX3 didn't look that hot in my opinion, and it still has map holes, and I noticed TONS of slowdown.
In any case, NBA Live 2004 was crap, looked bad, and was soundly thrashed by ESPN NBA 2K4.
I've never considered EA #1 in anything, and I'never hated them, just the bad games they spit out. They make the big budget everyman game as far as I'm concerned. They don't just suck by default, but they also don't usually go the extra mile to polish up a game to take it from a 7.5 to 8.5-9.
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I was hoping he'd come back and lose and then Alex would be like, "Sorry to say this...but you wagered $1337 and lost, which now means, *holds up sign* 'j00 4r3 n0t 1337.'"
Either that or Alex would just look at him and say, "pwn3d".
Most simple remapping of the controls. You can just use one analog stick, and then use the shoulder buttons for the rest of it. But this does fall right in line with Cubivore, I actually thought this game WAS for the GC at first.
What was funny was that if you bought it USED in Japan, it was still almost twice the price of buying it NEW in the US. The head of Namco US thought the product would be a complete failure, but everyone else thought it would sell, so they sold it cheap.
I had the best bard ever. He was a Gnome. Named Warren.
Warren G-Nome. Coolest Bard ever. I think I got him to level 6 before we finished the campaign and went onto something non-D&D.
As "punishment" for naming my character "Warren G-Nome" the DM said I'd have to actually have a song when I cast spells. So I came up with fresh freestyle rap songs for each of my spells for the first 3 weeks, until the DM realized the one being punished was him. =)
Look man, there's no need to be upgrading your CPU every freaking year. I upgrade mine as soon as it gets doubled. I don't want devs aiming for a 3.2Ghz as baseline specs when it means I have to spend EVEN MORE cash on gaming.
I also have problems with people on high-end machines writing reviews that expect everyone to have top of the line crap. For the most part, these game don't have optimized code, and could run phenomenally well on lower-end machines. Nothing that Far Cry did should needed a 3.0 Ghz. Not after you see how much more HL2 crams onto the screen and keeps framerate solid. My machine barely ran that game on the lowest settings.
HL2 I can run 800 x 600 with most of the settings turned up with a 1/2 GB of RAM, and a video card with 128MB of RAM. The game runs sweet. I've had maybe 2 or 3 areas of choppiness that all fade after a second or 2, and everything's cool. More powerful machines just leads to lazier code.
Uh, this thing called "STEAM".
Ok, now that I got the smarmy response aside, here's the new stuff (Single-player only):
The physics engine adds a lot of the gameplay. You do a lot of stacking or weight based pulley/lever puzzles and those are new. That and killing people by dropping 40 ft containers on them. That was fun.
There's also some nice squad based scenes where you're involved in some rather large scale fighting.
A big part of what people liked in Half Life was the cinematic feel to the action. There's a lot of that present in the progression of HL2. The game kind of just...draws you in.
There's not a whole lot that is both new and an improvement. There's a lot of stuff that's new and good, but I wouldn't say it's better necessarily, especially the ending. I'd definitely say it's worth playing, and I'm someone who didn't bother going all the way through Half Life 1.
Crap! I totally forgot about that! I had the same thing happen, too. It's not hard to get up that rubble. Got myself a HUGE amount of momentum, even hit the "turbo boost" and PANG! right off the invisible wall in the air. As soon as I blew up the cargo container it let me make the jump. Ugh.
No. It needs a DDR pad.
Two-parter:
What's the biggest misconception the general public seems to have about the job of Lead Designer, and what's the best path for me to take to get your job? (you know, like, at a different company...heh.)
YES! Finally my dreams have come true!
The glory of the Matrix as it should have unfolded:
Agent Smith: "Choose wisely, Mr. Anderson..."
Neo (Thought): "Predictable Agents...he's probably going to go with 'Rock'."
Agent Smith (Thought): "Good ol' dependable Rock."
Neo & Agent Smith: "1-2-3!"
*Neo shows paper, Agent Smith shows rock.*
Why, Monolith? You know how to make a GOOD game! Why must you make a crappy one?
I saw the combat system at E3. Is it still Massively Multiplayer Rock Paper Scissors? Becuase that's what they showed at E3. (hence, your NDA wouldn't apply to revealing if it was just something that was already revealed.) You choose Fast attack, it got in before a Strong or a Throw, Throw beat Special, Special beat Fast.
Combat featured as much as 2 on 1 combat! What was pathetic was how they were talking about how the game was completely unlike anything else out there, because it was a huge city (you know, just like City of Heroes.), and besides that, all they talked about was the combat animations, which you had 0 control over.
That's not a "cheat", it's the way the game works. That's a "bug". You can find a good player who won't exploit it, but the blame lies on the company for producing it not the player for using it.
This isn't the first completely retarded Madden bug. The first version on the PS2 I had, it took me 2 games before I figured out an onside kick didn't have to travel 10 yards in the Madden world. Pretty soon, the computer was getting blown out 210-7.
Seriously. Peasant's Quest was WAY cool and free...and somehow totally ignored by the article.
http://www.netjak.com/review.php/668
What's extra cool is how the guys at HSR kept updating the game. =) Try making friends with Kerrek now.
Anyone who actually reads the article will discover...it's a reprint of something from November 2003. Whoopty-freaking doo.
Sometimes I can excuse that, so long as the reviewer doesn't try and say that the game dialogue is crappy and the character development is lame.
I mean, it's not like there are a ton of games out there, where you start into the game for the first 1-2 hours, and then all of a sudden, 15 hours into the game, the AI suddenly becomes intelligent, the ganeplay becomes intuitive, and the camera stops going for messed up camera angles that block your view.
It's very easy to project what a game is like 2-3 hours into the game nowadays. In general, the reviewers that know this don't tend to rail endlessly about the game, and are the type that understand, "Hey, this is my opinion, I couldn't be troubled to play this through to the end, this is what I didn't like about it...take it as you will."
No, I drive a normal sized car. I've had people back into my car and tell me, "Man, my car's so big, I totally couldn't see you in any of my mirrors."
Now, you're supposed to actually, you know...look the hell behind you when you reverse...but that wasn't apparently on the SUV drivers' who hit me to-do list.
Because this is an SUV. It has the power to kill the driver of a normal sized car, something you can't say for the Prius.
Plus you get to not see stuff in your rearview mirror accurately and totally run into other cars in the parking lot.
I'm no SF III master, in fact I hated all incarnations of III, but as far as I recall, parry required you to tap forward (i.e. not the block.) at a precise moment to completely ignore the damage.
What's dumb is, the Chun-Li player is parrying, too, those fireballs Ken's tossing at him are getting parried (The tech bonuses) before he lets off that fateful super. So it's not like the result is completely unexpected. It looks like he just got frazzled after getting pummeled in the corner and whipped out a "Jana Novotna at Wimbledon" to eat the loss.
You didn't just...reveal the formula for the "next big gimmick game" in an publicly accessible online forum did you?
When was the last time we saw this?
Oh yeah, it was the Director of Sega right before the Dreamcast launched.
Yeah...he was great. Haven't seen him around so much since he, you know...get demoted into oblivion, his company became the 3rd wheel in a 2 console industry, and eventually got bought out by a competitor...
You know...maybe history doesn't always repeat itself and maybe people learn from other people's mistakes sometimes...
I do get it, but you apparently still don't. Stock their shelves for Christmas? Wow. Good thing they were all stocked up with those Half-Life 2 and Doom III for Christmas 2003...didn't want them to get caught with their pants down or anything.
Way to get your one big game all this buzz generated for it that it can't possibly sustain for 2 years.
I've worked both sides of the show, as the Media, and as the Exhibitor. I know what both sides are looking for, and NOBODY'S needs are met by showing off a 10% completed game that won't be finished until 2 years from now. Nobody's going to get wooed into moving 250,000 units of your game when all you can do is move around on one screen.
The Square-Enix booth is great, because every single thing they show at their booth is going to be on a store shelf before the next E3 rolls around.
Less unfinished crap means that the stores are going to actually be stocking more of what we want. It also means that the unheralded games that are nearing completion are going to get more publicity instead of battling it out for name recognition with 8-10 titles in the same genre that won't be finished for 2-3 years, if at all.
Everyone is better served by limiting the scope of the convention to games that are going to be hitting shelves before the next show.
If E3 would just pare out the crap games, games that are like 10%-30% complete they could breathe some life back into the show.
They could put some of the suprise back in the show by not giving out Best of Show E3 Awards to games 2 years in a row, or even better, not giving those awards out to games that aren't going to be out within the next year.
It's just like movies that release trailers for their movie 1 year in advance. You can't possibly expect me to care for that long.
E3 could be significant again if they didn't leak every big surprise 3 days before the actual announcement.
It could also be made better by not acting like you have a big announcement and hpying things up that are not that interesting in the least, you know, like Sega pulling that crap they did this year. ("Hey! We're co-publishing the Matrix Online!")
You gotta have Kentia Hall, and you gotta have your Phantoms, Gizmondo, and other spectacular failure ideas...they make the place look crowded, and give everyone an easy to find Worst of Show.
So, if they had less games displayed, games that we could play, and determine what would be worthy in the next 6 months, that'd make for a much better show. As it is, you're overwhelmed with like 500 titles, and there's no way you can get a feel for one game without ignoring the rest, and every single game is competing to be that one that you ignore the others for.
But, I'm just revisiting Front Mission 3 to go through the 2nd path...that's still a damn good game.
I don't care about you and your hunt for sailors...so long as you STAY THE HELL OFF THE FORKLIFT RACETRACK!
Never played the most recent iteration of FIFA, SSX3 didn't look that hot in my opinion, and it still has map holes, and I noticed TONS of slowdown.
In any case, NBA Live 2004 was crap, looked bad, and was soundly thrashed by ESPN NBA 2K4.
I've never considered EA #1 in anything, and I'never hated them, just the bad games they spit out. They make the big budget everyman game as far as I'm concerned. They don't just suck by default, but they also don't usually go the extra mile to polish up a game to take it from a 7.5 to 8.5-9.