It's also, in true Halo style, not overly entertaining in single player while (at least in Deathrow's case) being a complete blast in multi. In SP mode the teams get ridiculously hard later on, and IIRC it was the robot team in an optional match that appeared to be virtually unbeatable. I can't deny though, it was a fun game, and I very much regret ebaying my copy back when I got sick of SP and didn't have much chance of MP.
The dish on my roof looks cool. I feel like a spy or a military outpost. Sure, the connection sucks, but have you ever seen the inside of a Ferrari? I bet that looks crap as well. Quid pro quo.
he spelt extreme as 'extream' TWICE so it was obviously deliberate, and you picked him up on a name, where people almost have an excuse for spelling errors etc.
Good point. I think the point I meant to make was that they took away the real time option of a real time game in order to make it turn based on a system that actually had the interface/controls to operate in real time effectively, yet still used those controls even though you would have thought the reason they would have moved away from real time is that the system couldn't handle it and... look, it's kinda like this : it knows where it is because it knows where it isn't.
It probably just means that he only plays FPS on console.
But yeah, he is probably just a total fanboy. They seem to go hand in hand. If Halo is the first FPS/Deathmatch game you've ever played, you seem to come away thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread and you refuse to listen to any opposing opinion. Even when it's been done better many times prior and many times since, and even on it's own merits the game is very poor, especially single player. And it's not that hard to get MP right, and co-op makes any game fun.
You've kinda gone the wrong way about it, but I can't help but agree with basic core of your sentiment.
I'm struggling to see the attraction in waving a remote control at the screen in order to play new versions of games I've already played, and a few other gimmicky titles.
I'm a total gaming nerd, but the Wii is going to be the first console I'll probably skip since... well, I don't have a NES cause I came to the console scene late, but I have every console since the SNES/Genesis days and the Wii won't be joining that collection any time soon. I just can't get excited about the Wii. Maybe it's cause I've never been the greatest home-system-light-gun game fan, but it's probably more because having to physically move the controller to affect the gameplay isn't the type of interactivity I crave. I'd much prefer traditional control systems but advanced in game physics and a real feeling of contact between in-game entities (i.e. Dark Messiah).
The DS still feels gimmicky even if for little more reason than that the developers still don't really seem to know what to do with it other than a 'we have to use it because it's there' mentality. Lost Magic is a good example of DS stylus usage. Stuff like Age of Empires just doesn't need it. The ultimate irony of AoE is that the original game on PC, if ported to DS as is, would have definitely required the stylus. But they changed the core game mechanics to turn based, which then remove the hard requirement for a stylus/point and click interface (it's still much better with it, but it's no longer life or death, unlike how an RTS absolutely needs mouse control), yet still obviously felt compelled to use it.
And if anything, I'd suggest the feeling of an advanced level of control is going to be lacking greatly through the fact that you don't actually make contact with anything with the Wii controller. The DS stylus has to actually contact the screen to make an effect; the Wii controller hits nothing but air while still affecting the on screen action. That just doesn't feel right to me. But maybe that's just me. Besides, I've replied to a -1 Flamebait article, I'm either going to get modded down by people that don't agree or ignored anyway.
I know no one gives a shit about individual (especially dissenting) opinion, but I just wanted to chime in with a note of mild agreement, with at least your overall point, if not the specific way it's been presented.
I hope Tim Edwards grammar is up to scratch, cause his maths skills are clearly well short of the mark.
Needs to be first person ...
on
Games and Fear
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· Score: 1
... for me personally to find it even remotely scary. I can get creeped out by games in third person, sure (Fatal Frame for example), but I can't get scared to the point I wanna turn the lights on or put the game down unless I'm playing first person, and preferably on a PC (I sit a lot closer to my monitor than I do to my TV, and generally wear headphones).
Games like FEAR and Thief and Arx Fatalis genuinely scare me (Arx Fatalis is a highly under-rated game, and much creepier/downright scary than has been reported), because they are all in first person and presumably because I can much more easily feel like I'm actually there, instead of watching someone else I happen to be controlling. If something happens in the corner of the screen in a third person game, it's more 'off screen' than 'not where you happen to be looking'. If it happens in a first person game, it's 'out of the corner of your eye', and you freak out and spin around to see what it is.
I can get anymore than creeped out while playing a third preson game. There is too much of an obvious "this is just a game" going on. Except of course for the examples like Fatal Frame where you change to first person to take photos. That can get scary, otherwise all they can really do is diturb me.
Totally. I was actually more afraid of using ladders than anything else in that game after than point.
Although I have to admit the full screen bloodied face didn't exactly do me any favours either. But that was a cheap scare, and it more pissed me off than proper scared me.
I frantically clicked on this story from Gametab thinking it was a report on Nintendo going after importers ala Sony, but because it wasn't specific I was worried it was games as well as hardware. Then I find it's just talking about people that probably don't know what a computar is. As soon as I change my underwear, I'm outta here.
I found that Shadowgrounds was cool old school retro in appearance only. It was apparently totally lost on the devs that the appeal in that sort of game was lots of enemies that are easy to kill, not a middle amount of enemies that take a bunch of shots to kill, thus requiring endless running backwards. I was higly disappointed with the demo, although I'll probably end up with the game anyway as it's part of the sci-fi games pack I've been eyeing off (x3 AND Darwinia for $30? sign me up) so I'll give it another go.
Maybe it's been too long since I played Alien Breed, but I was sure this is how it works.
Personally, I liked Red Faction 2 more than the first one cause it was pure arcade shooting. What I couldn't fathom though, was the fact that the 'multiplayer' in the PC version was you versus bots, there was NO network/internet connection options to play with another RL player.
"You have to side with one of the factions in town (or the mercenaries), clear the Valley of Mines of Orcs and reach the destroyed remains of the Old Camp and then hunt and kill the four elemental dragons to..."
"Ah fuck it, Al, isn't there a brothel down on the docks?"
Yeah no kidding. Wizardry is the fucking king of old school RPGs. It's probably too 'hardcore' for this crowd but Crusaders of the Dark Savant has gotta be up there in the top 5.
Including Oblivion over Wizardry is just garbage. Vanilla Oblivion is actually a pretty bad game. Until you get a mod that 'fixes' all the scaling bullshit.
Damnit someone talked to me when I was writing that comment right at the start and when I came back I forgot to finish it before posting. I was going to say that I'll be that, regardless of all your going on about games that you claim hardly changed you probably love Halo and thought that Halo 2 was totally innovative and the best thing since sliced bread. Or something. But yeah, I fucked that up, eh.
Sometimes a leopard can change it's spots, but it's still worth two in the bush
(I'll bet you ten bucks you're a Halo fanboy taht crWhile you're making what in theory is a good point, I think you've made some really retarded game choices to make it with. EA sports series would have been a much better, and much more obvious, example of what you're trying to get at. The same game with with a slightly altered title and a few tiny extras. It's a problem for sure but at the end of the day it's only stupid people that get suckered in to purchasing the new 'update' for the full price.
But with the games you mention, I think the problem tends to be adding more when it's not needed. Sport games are harder to create new versions of each year because obviously the rules and game mechanics don't change wholesale from season to season, but for 'real' video games the problem can sometimes be the opposite, and I think the games you've chosen made that point much better than what you had hoped to use them for.
Sometimes the issue with sequels is that they aren't just more of the same.
You've obviously played on a Dreamcast (Shenmue) yet you don't know that Metropolis Street Racer came before Project Gotham Racing. Although, they are both actually very similar games to be honest. And were both quite successful. PGR2, on the other hand, couldn't continue the trend without releasing essentially the same game, which with new tracks, a wider range of performance cars, and some different well designed racing challenges, might have been a really top class title. But they decided to seperate the game into stages which involved different classes of vehicle. Oops. Now you have people that loved racing sports cars around in predominantly race based settings that now have to have entire sections where they race horrible American muscle cars (which really need to be excluded by law from all racing games and only allowed to be present if those types of cars are the sole basis of the game), and, to much shock and awe, SU-fucking-VEEs. I mean, really? Who thought this would be a good idea. The game would have improved greatly if they had have ditch those two classes and all else before the Japanese car section (I forget the name). They obviously realised this and made PGR3 purely performance car based, but now the 'style' sections seem to be more prevalent than the pure racing. This may be a side effect of the fact that the game now has global real time leaderboards, but if you only have a friend of two max that you are comparing scores with and don't care for comparing your cone dodging abilities against xxxLubeTubexxx out of Europe than you're going to find yourself bored stiff and patiently hoping that the next set of challenges you unlock has some more, you know, actual races. For PGR4 I'm pointlessly hoping that they just redo MSR with Xbox360 graphics.
Next. GTA3 was obviously a huge step over GTA2, but the 'faction' system in GTA2 was much more transparent and very one sided in GTA3 (i.e. you only ever piss factions off more, with no chance of redemption) but the transition into a 3D world was more than fans could have ever hoped for. Well, except for motorcycles and flying vehicles, which started to be introduced in Vice City. The game mechanics/world is such that people enjoy playing the game itself and were pretty happy with just a very simliar game but with new music, new areas (even if they were flat as a chessboard and laid out similiarly) and more missions to complete. But then San Andreas, seeing that it had reached a relative dead end, decided they needed to force in stuff that really wasn't required. A San Andreas without stupid gang zones that can be controlled, moronic girlfriend missions that are quite possibly the most pointless I've ever seen in a game, and the whole food/fat/exercise garbage that feel exactly like the tacked on RPG elements that they are just got in the way of what was just a really good base game. More of the same in San Andreas' awesome maps of cityscapes giving way to rolling countrysides to smaller townships and back again woul
This is why I will forever mourn the demise of the pure free for all deathmatch game.
Sure, there was a winner each round, but at the end of each round scores reset and you start over again. You can play in a team, but again, people consider themselves the winner if they scored the highest on the winning team, so they will steal team kills from another player and block people out just so they can get the highest score.
A good old free for all barney was the most fun I've ever had playing online, and it's a far cry from the 'teamwork' that occurs in games where you are supposed to work for the good of the team but still have a unique score. If a team deathmatch game only showed a team score and not each individuals score (and I think there might have been one or two) then that would have worked as well, but the moment people can raise a 'rank' or beat other people, even on the same team, retardedness will prevail.
Just have everybody trying to kill everybody. It always works best that way, and no one really wants to play with other people anyway, especially people they don't know. Those people just get in the way of them scoring highly. And often those people are the first to bitch about not getting support from teammates when they were trying to singlehandedly win the game so they could get the highest score.
I used to love coming home and turning on Quake2/3 or MOHAA and just belting everything that moved. Even SOF2 had a great deathmatch game. But a combination of people that suck at plain DM and people wanting the 'teamwork' of stealing a flag/briefcase/someothershit made virtually every game move onto objective based/rank based garbage that lost the pure visceral thrill of knowing that anyone you meet in game will be trying to kill you.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also, in true Halo style, not overly entertaining in single player while (at least in Deathrow's case) being a complete blast in multi. In SP mode the teams get ridiculously hard later on, and IIRC it was the robot team in an optional match that appeared to be virtually unbeatable. I can't deny though, it was a fun game, and I very much regret ebaying my copy back when I got sick of SP and didn't have much chance of MP.
.. that it tells you if Microsoft themselves have forgotten about the games in question :
2. Project Gotham Racing 1 and 2
* Project Gotham Racing 1 review
* Project Gotham Racing 2 review
* Xbox 360 compatible? No - both
Because you asked :
The dish on my roof looks cool. I feel like a spy or a military outpost. Sure, the connection sucks, but have you ever seen the inside of a Ferrari? I bet that looks crap as well. Quid pro quo.
he spelt extreme as 'extream' TWICE so it was obviously deliberate, and you picked him up on a name, where people almost have an excuse for spelling errors etc.
all i can say is WTF
Good point. I think the point I meant to make was that they took away the real time option of a real time game in order to make it turn based on a system that actually had the interface/controls to operate in real time effectively, yet still used those controls even though you would have thought the reason they would have moved away from real time is that the system couldn't handle it and ... look, it's kinda like this : it knows where it is because it knows where it isn't.
It probably just means that he only plays FPS on console.
But yeah, he is probably just a total fanboy. They seem to go hand in hand. If Halo is the first FPS/Deathmatch game you've ever played, you seem to come away thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread and you refuse to listen to any opposing opinion. Even when it's been done better many times prior and many times since, and even on it's own merits the game is very poor, especially single player. And it's not that hard to get MP right, and co-op makes any game fun.
You've kinda gone the wrong way about it, but I can't help but agree with basic core of your sentiment.
... well, I don't have a NES cause I came to the console scene late, but I have every console since the SNES/Genesis days and the Wii won't be joining that collection any time soon. I just can't get excited about the Wii. Maybe it's cause I've never been the greatest home-system-light-gun game fan, but it's probably more because having to physically move the controller to affect the gameplay isn't the type of interactivity I crave. I'd much prefer traditional control systems but advanced in game physics and a real feeling of contact between in-game entities (i.e. Dark Messiah).
I'm struggling to see the attraction in waving a remote control at the screen in order to play new versions of games I've already played, and a few other gimmicky titles.
I'm a total gaming nerd, but the Wii is going to be the first console I'll probably skip since
The DS still feels gimmicky even if for little more reason than that the developers still don't really seem to know what to do with it other than a 'we have to use it because it's there' mentality. Lost Magic is a good example of DS stylus usage. Stuff like Age of Empires just doesn't need it. The ultimate irony of AoE is that the original game on PC, if ported to DS as is, would have definitely required the stylus. But they changed the core game mechanics to turn based, which then remove the hard requirement for a stylus/point and click interface (it's still much better with it, but it's no longer life or death, unlike how an RTS absolutely needs mouse control), yet still obviously felt compelled to use it.
And if anything, I'd suggest the feeling of an advanced level of control is going to be lacking greatly through the fact that you don't actually make contact with anything with the Wii controller. The DS stylus has to actually contact the screen to make an effect; the Wii controller hits nothing but air while still affecting the on screen action. That just doesn't feel right to me. But maybe that's just me. Besides, I've replied to a -1 Flamebait article, I'm either going to get modded down by people that don't agree or ignored anyway.
I know no one gives a shit about individual (especially dissenting) opinion, but I just wanted to chime in with a note of mild agreement, with at least your overall point, if not the specific way it's been presented.
I hope Tim Edwards grammar is up to scratch, cause his maths skills are clearly well short of the mark.
... for me personally to find it even remotely scary. I can get creeped out by games in third person, sure (Fatal Frame for example), but I can't get scared to the point I wanna turn the lights on or put the game down unless I'm playing first person, and preferably on a PC (I sit a lot closer to my monitor than I do to my TV, and generally wear headphones).
Games like FEAR and Thief and Arx Fatalis genuinely scare me (Arx Fatalis is a highly under-rated game, and much creepier/downright scary than has been reported), because they are all in first person and presumably because I can much more easily feel like I'm actually there, instead of watching someone else I happen to be controlling. If something happens in the corner of the screen in a third person game, it's more 'off screen' than 'not where you happen to be looking'. If it happens in a first person game, it's 'out of the corner of your eye', and you freak out and spin around to see what it is.
I can get anymore than creeped out while playing a third preson game. There is too much of an obvious "this is just a game" going on. Except of course for the examples like Fatal Frame where you change to first person to take photos. That can get scary, otherwise all they can really do is diturb me.
Totally. I was actually more afraid of using ladders than anything else in that game after than point.
Although I have to admit the full screen bloodied face didn't exactly do me any favours either. But that was a cheap scare, and it more pissed me off than proper scared me.
I frantically clicked on this story from Gametab thinking it was a report on Nintendo going after importers ala Sony, but because it wasn't specific I was worried it was games as well as hardware. Then I find it's just talking about people that probably don't know what a computar is. As soon as I change my underwear, I'm outta here.
Where's the innovation?
We are talking about Halo here. What made you expect innovation in the third iteration?
You had us all tricked that you were agreeing with him, until we got down to your sig. *deep breath* NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD *points*
I'd like to supply an alternate opinion.
I found that Shadowgrounds was cool old school retro in appearance only. It was apparently totally lost on the devs that the appeal in that sort of game was lots of enemies that are easy to kill, not a middle amount of enemies that take a bunch of shots to kill, thus requiring endless running backwards. I was higly disappointed with the demo, although I'll probably end up with the game anyway as it's part of the sci-fi games pack I've been eyeing off (x3 AND Darwinia for $30? sign me up) so I'll give it another go.
Maybe it's been too long since I played Alien Breed, but I was sure this is how it works.
It was this guy wasn't it? http://www.thottbot.com/?n=272
Yeah, he can be a real little bastard when he wants to be. Always asking for more weapons.
Personally, I liked Red Faction 2 more than the first one cause it was pure arcade shooting. What I couldn't fathom though, was the fact that the 'multiplayer' in the PC version was you versus bots, there was NO network/internet connection options to play with another RL player.
Are they going the fix the thing where if the target gets too far behind the anvil, the target somehow magically catches up?
That always used to shit me.
I'm just happy that something other than my right bicep is going to get a workout while using the computer.
Awesome! So they're finally making a Quake MMORPG?
"Al, why haven't I jumped yet?"
..."
"You have to side with one of the factions in town (or the mercenaries), clear the Valley of Mines of Orcs and reach the destroyed remains of the Old Camp and then hunt and kill the four elemental dragons to
"Ah fuck it, Al, isn't there a brothel down on the docks?"
Yeah no kidding. Wizardry is the fucking king of old school RPGs. It's probably too 'hardcore' for this crowd but Crusaders of the Dark Savant has gotta be up there in the top 5. Including Oblivion over Wizardry is just garbage. Vanilla Oblivion is actually a pretty bad game. Until you get a mod that 'fixes' all the scaling bullshit.
Damnit someone talked to me when I was writing that comment right at the start and when I came back I forgot to finish it before posting. I was going to say that I'll be that, regardless of all your going on about games that you claim hardly changed you probably love Halo and thought that Halo 2 was totally innovative and the best thing since sliced bread. Or something. But yeah, I fucked that up, eh.
Sometimes a leopard can change it's spots, but it's still worth two in the bush
(I'll bet you ten bucks you're a Halo fanboy taht crWhile you're making what in theory is a good point, I think you've made some really retarded game choices to make it with. EA sports series would have been a much better, and much more obvious, example of what you're trying to get at. The same game with with a slightly altered title and a few tiny extras. It's a problem for sure but at the end of the day it's only stupid people that get suckered in to purchasing the new 'update' for the full price.
But with the games you mention, I think the problem tends to be adding more when it's not needed. Sport games are harder to create new versions of each year because obviously the rules and game mechanics don't change wholesale from season to season, but for 'real' video games the problem can sometimes be the opposite, and I think the games you've chosen made that point much better than what you had hoped to use them for.
Sometimes the issue with sequels is that they aren't just more of the same.
You've obviously played on a Dreamcast (Shenmue) yet you don't know that Metropolis Street Racer came before Project Gotham Racing. Although, they are both actually very similar games to be honest. And were both quite successful. PGR2, on the other hand, couldn't continue the trend without releasing essentially the same game, which with new tracks, a wider range of performance cars, and some different well designed racing challenges, might have been a really top class title. But they decided to seperate the game into stages which involved different classes of vehicle. Oops. Now you have people that loved racing sports cars around in predominantly race based settings that now have to have entire sections where they race horrible American muscle cars (which really need to be excluded by law from all racing games and only allowed to be present if those types of cars are the sole basis of the game), and, to much shock and awe, SU-fucking-VEEs. I mean, really? Who thought this would be a good idea. The game would have improved greatly if they had have ditch those two classes and all else before the Japanese car section (I forget the name). They obviously realised this and made PGR3 purely performance car based, but now the 'style' sections seem to be more prevalent than the pure racing. This may be a side effect of the fact that the game now has global real time leaderboards, but if you only have a friend of two max that you are comparing scores with and don't care for comparing your cone dodging abilities against xxxLubeTubexxx out of Europe than you're going to find yourself bored stiff and patiently hoping that the next set of challenges you unlock has some more, you know, actual races. For PGR4 I'm pointlessly hoping that they just redo MSR with Xbox360 graphics.
Next. GTA3 was obviously a huge step over GTA2, but the 'faction' system in GTA2 was much more transparent and very one sided in GTA3 (i.e. you only ever piss factions off more, with no chance of redemption) but the transition into a 3D world was more than fans could have ever hoped for. Well, except for motorcycles and flying vehicles, which started to be introduced in Vice City. The game mechanics/world is such that people enjoy playing the game itself and were pretty happy with just a very simliar game but with new music, new areas (even if they were flat as a chessboard and laid out similiarly) and more missions to complete. But then San Andreas, seeing that it had reached a relative dead end, decided they needed to force in stuff that really wasn't required. A San Andreas without stupid gang zones that can be controlled, moronic girlfriend missions that are quite possibly the most pointless I've ever seen in a game, and the whole food/fat/exercise garbage that feel exactly like the tacked on RPG elements that they are just got in the way of what was just a really good base game. More of the same in San Andreas' awesome maps of cityscapes giving way to rolling countrysides to smaller townships and back again woul
This is why I will forever mourn the demise of the pure free for all deathmatch game.
Sure, there was a winner each round, but at the end of each round scores reset and you start over again. You can play in a team, but again, people consider themselves the winner if they scored the highest on the winning team, so they will steal team kills from another player and block people out just so they can get the highest score.
A good old free for all barney was the most fun I've ever had playing online, and it's a far cry from the 'teamwork' that occurs in games where you are supposed to work for the good of the team but still have a unique score. If a team deathmatch game only showed a team score and not each individuals score (and I think there might have been one or two) then that would have worked as well, but the moment people can raise a 'rank' or beat other people, even on the same team, retardedness will prevail.
Just have everybody trying to kill everybody. It always works best that way, and no one really wants to play with other people anyway, especially people they don't know. Those people just get in the way of them scoring highly. And often those people are the first to bitch about not getting support from teammates when they were trying to singlehandedly win the game so they could get the highest score.
I used to love coming home and turning on Quake2/3 or MOHAA and just belting everything that moved. Even SOF2 had a great deathmatch game. But a combination of people that suck at plain DM and people wanting the 'teamwork' of stealing a flag/briefcase/someothershit made virtually every game move onto objective based/rank based garbage that lost the pure visceral thrill of knowing that anyone you meet in game will be trying to kill you.
Methinks you overcomplicated that just a smidgen, poindexter.
Let me summarise the problem here.
These fucking retards have more money than brains