Halo pretty much perfected a few elements that later FPS's have taken on.
The regenerating shield bar, and limiting your weapons - two features that are now becoming standard.
The graphics were quite outstanding for its time, too - nothing then had particularly successfully done bumpmapping, and the enviroments were huge, with very very little popup or fogging, and some very nice high res textures.
The controls (although not a patch on keyboard and mouse) successfully allowed the pretty much PC-only genre to move to new platforms - something many, many, people dont notice is that it will auto track a distant moving enemy if you leave the sticks alone - a little change that you dont notice but which greatly helps the controls.
If I remember correctly (it IS a long time ago, now) both Deus Ex and Half-Life got 9/10, which as I said is outstanding. Half-Life didnt really move anything other than plot and atmosphere along (although I must say it is one of my favourites), and Deus Ex was very, very good (another favourite), but again the graphic engine hasnt quite stood up to the ravages of time, and the RPG-like elements havent been taken up by many (if any) other games.
10/10 simply means its genre-changing. Many developers have taken elements of Halo and applied them to their games - the limit of 4 weapons in FarCry, and the regenerating shield in Mace Griffin (ok, not the best example) - it may not be the first to do it, but Halo added new ideas and had such polish that they have been adopted by other titles - and one of the reasons there have only been 4 titles in Edges 10 year history.
Now the question is, was the bug not mentioned because the reviewer didn't consider it to be important, or forgot about it, etc.? Or was the reviewer under pressure or edited by his superiors so as not to report bugs in the article, due to the financial pressures that a large console game company could potentially exert on a small online review site?
So, was it...
1. Forgot about/Ignored?
2. Pressure from the Publisher?
3. Cowboy Neil?
4. All of the above?
1. Penny Arcade - so far, in the few years ive been reading it, I havent once notice them bowing to pressure from publishers to 'overlook' titles that suck. Theyre pretty much some guys who play games, and let people know what they think of them. Sure they dont review, and dont score things, but ive bought a good few titles on the strength of their word-of-mouth, and havent been dissapointed yet.
2. Edge magazine - if a game gets a 9/10, review its outstanding - something that pushes the genre and is near flawless. Most games get a 6 or so - and those are the ones that ARE average, not the crap games (which get a suitable low score). As has been mentioned before, there have only been 4 10/10s in its 10 year history - Zelda64, Mario64, Gran Turismo and Halo. Each one of those were excelent examples of their genres, and introduced new ideas that have since become stock benchmark for all later games to be held against
Yes, its a print magazine, and all that means is you maybe wait a couple of weeks for a real review, not some half written garbage on a late beta. Oh, and its Edge because it is, ok?
...and the enormous guilt every time I do something evil trying to build up dark side points. I felt sad killing wookies.
Hmm, well... I played it through, making the choices I would personally in that situation, and ended up as Dark Side as you could get.
Myself, I found it enjoyable having the two families kill each other off, persuading people to give me all their money then assasinating them for rare items, and ruling the Galaxy.
And the Wookies? Well, they just smelt bad and I got bored of running around on Kashyyk.
Hey, I'm Sith and can throw lightning 50 foot, destroy Droids by waving my hand and kill people just by looking at them. The Jedi council couldnt even tell then I lied to them. What can anything do to stop me? I think HK said it best... 'Pathetic Meatbags'.
Hmmm, come to think of it, that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' thing... it might be on to something...
I have a vague memory of and old Codemasters collection on CD, which was sort of the same.
If i remember right, there was a cart for the Spectrum, which plugged into the headphone socket on your CD player (a luxury back in 1987!) and then it would load games from the cd, at about 4 times the usual speed.
I havent a CLUE what it was called. All I remember is a double page advert in Your Sinclair, with this device and a CD that was being sold with 40 or so Codemasters games.
Anyone else remember this? If it ever existed, it could pretty much be one of the first CD-Roms!
And for anyone whos wondering, heres an old game I wrote about the same time...
Yes, it can be simple and fun, but it's nowhere near as exciting as an oldie like Super Spike V'Ball, which is another 2-button volleyball game.
Agreed, but its less about the volleyball, but more about the social backstory and collecting. Personally I found the subgames such as the hopping game and casino quite fun and distracting.
Also, something of note, is that the game may only use two buttons by default, but it uses the presure sensitivity of the XBox buttons to make those two the equivalent of 4 - a hard press gives you a hard serve, etc.
That was truly one of the best first person shooters I ever played - incredibily atmospheric, and for the time had some very nice graphics.
For those of you who didnt play it (no excuse at all), its rather closely linked to the whole Star Wars (it was called that in '77, and so thats what im calling it) - not to mention the fun of running around Imperial Instalations being chased by Stormtoopers shouting "Stop, Rebel Scum!"
For a game released in early 1995, there wasnt much to touch it (apart from Doom) - you could Jump AND Crouch - pretty much a full year before Duke Nukem 3D.
Well, as someone who got to the 'Mr Big Lives' stage of the original, i'd say Mr Jarvis (yes, the Defender/Robotron guy) had done a fair bit of hands-on "research". Kinda explained why he was called Mr Big... (See the middle shot at The Klov).
Anyway, who do these people think they are? Acclaim?!?
Nope, its just Video Overlay - makes the playback MUCH smoother, and you can do fancy smoothing effects and so on with the video stream if its held in seprate video space and blitted over.
There are quite a few apps that will capture the fully rendered frame - most just capture whats in the screen buffer, however.
...he would have had no problem getting it for half the price from a non-official channel.
Erm, does that include cheap money?
PlanetSide, Ultima Online et al are Massively Multiplayer, and require a subscription. So unless bootlegging extends to currency, theres not much point pirating them, not to mention they need a CD key to set up an account and get your free month...
In the event they have finally perfected that Matter Compiler, can you ask your friend to send one over, and ill compile him some money for the shipping.
What, you mean like this? Ok, its on the PSone, but it looks like its still the old game, but with updated graphics.
The most worring thing, is that the Bitmap Brothers site hasnt been updated since May 1st, 2003. However they mention "Speedball Arena" there as being in production.
After a quick look around, it looks like theyre converting the recent Namco title "Kill.Switch" for PC, so they dont appear to be totally dead... which is nice.
Looks like I wont be seeing Gods or Magic Pockets on GBA for a while... damn.
Slashdot Mirror
The regenerating shield bar, and limiting your weapons - two features that are now becoming standard.
The graphics were quite outstanding for its time, too - nothing then had particularly successfully done bumpmapping, and the enviroments were huge, with very very little popup or fogging, and some very nice high res textures.
The controls (although not a patch on keyboard and mouse) successfully allowed the pretty much PC-only genre to move to new platforms - something many, many, people dont notice is that it will auto track a distant moving enemy if you leave the sticks alone - a little change that you dont notice but which greatly helps the controls.
If I remember correctly (it IS a long time ago, now) both Deus Ex and Half-Life got 9/10, which as I said is outstanding. Half-Life didnt really move anything other than plot and atmosphere along (although I must say it is one of my favourites), and Deus Ex was very, very good (another favourite), but again the graphic engine hasnt quite stood up to the ravages of time, and the RPG-like elements havent been taken up by many (if any) other games.
10/10 simply means its genre-changing. Many developers have taken elements of Halo and applied them to their games - the limit of 4 weapons in FarCry, and the regenerating shield in Mace Griffin (ok, not the best example) - it may not be the first to do it, but Halo added new ideas and had such polish that they have been adopted by other titles - and one of the reasons there have only been 4 titles in Edges 10 year history.
So, was it...
1. Forgot about/Ignored?
2. Pressure from the Publisher?
3. Cowboy Neil?
4. All of the above?
Hmm, Im going for #4...
1. Penny Arcade - so far, in the few years ive been reading it, I havent once notice them bowing to pressure from publishers to 'overlook' titles that suck. Theyre pretty much some guys who play games, and let people know what they think of them. Sure they dont review, and dont score things, but ive bought a good few titles on the strength of their word-of-mouth, and havent been dissapointed yet. 2. Edge magazine - if a game gets a 9/10, review its outstanding - something that pushes the genre and is near flawless. Most games get a 6 or so - and those are the ones that ARE average, not the crap games (which get a suitable low score). As has been mentioned before, there have only been 4 10/10s in its 10 year history - Zelda64, Mario64, Gran Turismo and Halo. Each one of those were excelent examples of their genres, and introduced new ideas that have since become stock benchmark for all later games to be held against
Yes, its a print magazine, and all that means is you maybe wait a couple of weeks for a real review, not some half written garbage on a late beta. Oh, and its Edge because it is, ok?
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
Hmm, well... I played it through, making the choices I would personally in that situation, and ended up as Dark Side as you could get.
Myself, I found it enjoyable having the two families kill each other off, persuading people to give me all their money then assasinating them for rare items, and ruling the Galaxy.
And the Wookies? Well, they just smelt bad and I got bored of running around on Kashyyk.
Hey, I'm Sith and can throw lightning 50 foot, destroy Droids by waving my hand and kill people just by looking at them. The Jedi council couldnt even tell then I lied to them. What can anything do to stop me? I think HK said it best... 'Pathetic Meatbags'.
Hmmm, come to think of it, that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' thing... it might be on to something...
If i remember right, there was a cart for the Spectrum, which plugged into the headphone socket on your CD player (a luxury back in 1987!) and then it would load games from the cd, at about 4 times the usual speed.
I havent a CLUE what it was called. All I remember is a double page advert in Your Sinclair, with this device and a CD that was being sold with 40 or so Codemasters games.
Anyone else remember this? If it ever existed, it could pretty much be one of the first CD-Roms!
And for anyone whos wondering, heres an old game I wrote about the same time...
Oh god... and the 'Honey Bee Inn' sequence in Final Fantasy VII... oh god... im not going into that...
Also, something of note, is that the game may only use two buttons by default, but it uses the presure sensitivity of the XBox buttons to make those two the equivalent of 4 - a hard press gives you a hard serve, etc.
Yes.
And DOA:X is actually a rather good 'social game', with some rather fun subgames tacked on, even bar the semi-nudity.
That was truly one of the best first person shooters I ever played - incredibily atmospheric, and for the time had some very nice graphics.
For those of you who didnt play it (no excuse at all), its rather closely linked to the whole Star Wars (it was called that in '77, and so thats what im calling it) - not to mention the fun of running around Imperial Instalations being chased by Stormtoopers shouting "Stop, Rebel Scum!"
For a game released in early 1995, there wasnt much to touch it (apart from Doom) - you could Jump AND Crouch - pretty much a full year before Duke Nukem 3D.
And I'll welcome our new "Im new here" overlords...
Anyway, who do these people think they are? Acclaim ?!?
Must... Resist...
"Help us, eBay-wan Kenobi, you're our only hope..."
DAMNIT!
Its only Febuary, and you fail to mention the pickle incident...
All I will say, is that it was a sad day... a very sad day...
Your memory will live on, Peter!
*sobbing*
Nope, its just Video Overlay - makes the playback MUCH smoother, and you can do fancy smoothing effects and so on with the video stream if its held in seprate video space and blitted over. There are quite a few apps that will capture the fully rendered frame - most just capture whats in the screen buffer, however.
Erm, I think you misspelled 'Money'.
Erm, does that include cheap money?
PlanetSide, Ultima Online et al are Massively Multiplayer, and require a subscription. So unless bootlegging extends to currency, theres not much point pirating them, not to mention they need a CD key to set up an account and get your free month... In the event they have finally perfected that Matter Compiler, can you ask your friend to send one over, and ill compile him some money for the shipping.
Well, if its not, whats the bet it'll be a hack of Metal Slug 2? Hey, you already have the bad guys apparently in some middle eastern country...
The most worring thing, is that the Bitmap Brothers site hasnt been updated since May 1st, 2003. However they mention "Speedball Arena" there as being in production.
After a quick look around, it looks like theyre converting the recent Namco title "Kill.Switch" for PC, so they dont appear to be totally dead... which is nice.
Looks like I wont be seeing Gods or Magic Pockets on GBA for a while... damn.
http://www.legomasterbuilder.com/release1.php
Yay for him - theres some VERY nice sculpture on his site, and maybe with the Star Wars influence, he'll become a... sorry... Jedi Master Builder...
Geez, two lots of mirroring in two stories... anyone would think im a Karma whore or something... :)
Managed to get a full mirror of all the images HERE Enjoy.
Enjoy!
Ok, ok... Yea, it looks more like an Evil Aibo... damn.
Sampled vs Synth.
I havent found a speech synth that could do a good Maniacal Laugh yet, either...