I've played both sides, and from all the lore I have encountered in the game, the Alliance are 'evil' in the sense that they fight for the domination of their people over any outsiders, where as the Horde fight against the Alliance just to survive.
As far as actual player behavior, I think Alliance tend to act like bigger dickheads than the Horde. I get ganked more playing as Horde, and random players are more eager to help me out on the Horde server.
Everyone who is explaining that a dealer would never count cards because they play using a solid set of rules and that whoever disagrees knows nothing about blackjack, well I have news for you... YOU know nothing about card counting!
No one ever said that the dealer could use card counting to make a higher profit for the house by playing using a game that incorporates card counting. In fact, thinking this is totally retarded because the house NEVER BETS.
Card counting is usful in determining how much you should bet on a hand. When you 'count cards', you are actually keeping track of which cards have been played, so that you can determine if the cards left in the shoe are mostly high cards or mostly low cards. By using a formula, you can keep track of all the cards that have been played and as the shoe empties, have some idea if the odds of hitting 21 on a hand are in your favor or against.
A card counting dealer could prevent casino losses from cheaters by keeping track along with the counters. When certain players who have been betting small all of a sudden start making huge wagers, the dealer could have a good idea what is going on and alert floor personel to remove the suspected cheater.
It's not really that big of an issue anyway, because most casinos are going to have way better systems than card counting dealers to sniff out crooks and cheats, this whole conversation is absurd.
I'm sorry, this comment is almost totally pointless, but...
YES YES YES!!!!
I'm so happy, the original was one of the best multiplayer games ever, though it needed some attention that it never got to really balance it and make it a great competitive game. I really hope they get it this time around, what awesome news!
I am impressed that they have sold so many copies yet I can still play with no problems. I got it Saturday and I have had no problems with lag or disconnects at all. Three cheers to Blizzard!
There are so many factors that go into how good or bad a review of a game is that there is no way to know if you are getting useful information unless you do some homework. Having worked as a professional game reviewer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this matter, and discussing it with fellow editors, game developers, and friends.
The most important thing you can do is find a source you can trust, be it a web site or magazine, or even an individual editor. Someone brought up the point that some gamers prefer certain genres of games to others, and of course this is going to be reflected in a review. Some organizations have specialized reviewers that only review one or a couple different types of games, I would not trust someone if they seem to always hold most RTS games in high regard but never seem to like many FPS games. Another problem is how committed the reviewer is to gaming. Some reviewers are hardcore gamers, others are casual gamers or have tastes that would cater to that segment. Again, find a source that suits your preferences.
I honestly don't think corruption in the form of publisher bribes is as widespread as some people are making it out to be. Sure, publishers will spend a great deal of money to make editors happy, but what happens to your credibility when you give a shitty game a good review? I would say that the vast majority of professional editors and game publications are more concerned with this than getting a cool T-Shirt and mouse pad from a game publisher, I know there must be some swaying of scores due to publisher gifts, but I don't think it is as big a factor as the fact that there are a lot of shitty writers out there who really don't understand how to write an honestly good review.
First of all, let me apologize, it is fair that you stand by your article as not being a comprehensive review, the article is flagged on the site as "First Impressions" and you do clearly state that you haven't played through both games. Fair enough.
On the other hand, I don't think it is fair to outright recommend one over the other when you haven't finished either of them. To me, that is almost like watching the first 15 minutes of a movie and telling someone which they should see based on your initial impression, when the one you liked could actually end up being horrible because of a crappy ending. Now, I wouldn't care if you were giving your impression and recommendation to a friend or on your personal blog, but it appears to me that Sudhian is a commercial site, and I hold professional writers to a higher standard than random internet fanboys, so if you tell me that you think one game is better than the other, without having taken in the entire game, I am going to lose faith in the website or magazine altogether.
I honestly love both games, and one person's opinion isn't going to make me feel any better or worse about that, but I have worked as a professional writer for a gaming publication, and I have been bitched out for reviewing games I didn't finish, and I've felt the backlash it can cause. I guess maybe I wanted to express that I think it is a bad idea to express opinions about a product you are not completely familiar with, both because finishing the games may change your opinion, or because you leaving yourself open to internet dorks such as myself to rip into your work.
I have to agree with anyone who read the article and felt like it was very poor journalism. First of all, right from the start the author mentions that he only played a little bit of each game. I think he said Alpha Labs 3 is as far as he played in Doom 3, that's what, 15% into the game? This is no more useful to me than the forum and comments flames from jaded gamers who spam their opinion all over the place after playing through just the intro to a game. If it was a good article, I think first of all he would have played through both games so that he could actually tell us which one he actually likes better than the other, not which one he thinks he may like better than the other, and instead of just saying one is better than the other, he could recommend one or the other to the reader based on their preferences. These are just some basics of writing review/opinion pieces. This guy makes himself sound like an ass.
What would I have said? Well, I think most people will enjoy both games. As for casual gamers or people who are new to FPS games, I would say Doom 3. HL2 has some puzzles and concepts that any FPS nut will breeze by, but someone who hasn't been playing these games all that long will find themselves frustrated. For instance, I was watching my girlfriend play HL2 and she couldn't get past the train yard, because she is not coordinated enough to time the jump from the train top over the fence to get to the next part, she would have been stuck there for ages if I wasn't there to take over and do the jump for her. Some of the puzzles will confuse people who didn't already have a good idea about how the game was going to work as far as physics puzzles go. Doom 3 is mostly just a pretty frag-fest, my girlfriend has gotten much farther in Doom 3 than she can get in HL2 without my help.
Hardcore gamers are going to choose one or the other based on what kind of game they like to play. HL2 has more variety in it's gameplay, with more puzzles and more ways to dispatch enemies (knocking out platforms they are standing on, using objects in the world, etc.) where as Doom 3 is point, click and kill and focuses on little else other than keeping the situation tense at all times. I really like both, and luckily I do not have to choose one or the other. If you like killing everything in sight and being a bad-ass, maybe Doom 3 is your cup of tea. If you like to explore and are looking for more than just brainless action, then maybe you will get your kicks out of HL2. I say get 'em both, and maybe toss in an Xbox and Halo 2 for good measure.
I think stats are great, the more detailed the better! I wouldn't look at stats for 90% of the games I play, but I think they are very important in fostering a competitive community around a game. For instance, I am playing a lot of Warcraft 3 right now, and Battle.net keeps an insane amount of stats on your games, which provides me with a great resource to look at what trends I can find in my playing, and can help me identify what I could do to make myself a better player. Of course, if I was just playing a game here and there with friends I would hardly ever check it out, but as I play several games a night trying to become a good player, it is important to me to have that resource. When I used to play Counter-Strike, it was nice to have stat tracking just to give me another reason to try an excel. We had a ladder on our CS servers, so playing well to try and boost my stats to climb higher on the ladder was fun, and enhanced the replay value of the game. Stats are a great thing, especially for pro-level competition games.
Well, yes, I am sure that they have motives in addition to preventing cheaters from using the service for banning modded Xboxes, but as a Live subscriber with an un-modded Xbox and only legitimate software for it, it makes me happy to know that there will be that many less people out there with the ability to use software cheats.
If Microsoft wasn't doing this, I would be very upset that I am paying money for their service, but they have proven to me over and over that it is worth every penny. They constantly add improvements and features, all the while keeping out cheaters to the best of their abilities. You guys can knock Microsoft all you want as a company, but their gaming division is really incredible and making it a great time to be a gamer.
I think this is great news for all Xbox Live gamers. Personally, I was sold on the idea of Xbox Live because of the broadband only enviroment, and the thought that gaming on a closed system meant there would be less cheating, plus with everyone playing on the same platform there would be no more bitching about having a crappy video card or slow CPU, it leveled the playing field.
Of course as someone who pays $50 a year for the service, it upsets me when I get into a game where someone is using cheats when the whole point of paying for the service to me is to have Microsoft step in and remove cheaters and hackers from the service. They are keeping up their end of the bargin, and for that I am thankful.
Mind you, I played Counter-Strike for 3 years on and off and was an admin on my own server for half that time, and I could not play a single public game without someone wall-hacking or using an aim-bot. It was especially annoying because I was very fair, and being friends with and having a few professional gamers who played on our server, I knew that just cause someone had 50 kills and 3 deaths that they could just be really good, so I would have to quit out of CS, jump onto our HLTV server and watch the offender in first person until I was absolutly sure he was cheating. This wasted many, many hours of my time, and was the major factor in me getting onto Xbox Live.
I think it is cool that you can do so many unintended things by modding an Xbox, but I love that they are kept away from playing on Live and screwing up everyone else's fun.
The people who are making negitive comments are very ignorant. This game was great for it's time, it was the only game like it for it's time, and it is still one of the best MMORPG's out there as far as I am concerned. This game got PvP right on the first try, the quests were always fun, and I definatly spent more time playing this game than others like it. I can't wait to get home and start downloading the client.
Also, I think it is a shame that anyone would attack an independant developer. These guys work their asses off for very little, if any, cash return, and then they have to deal with pricks who think they know everything bashing their work. I bet you guys like to beat up cripple kids as well?
If you don't like the game, fine, but don't shit on good people who are trying to do something nice for everyone and have no sinister agenda...
Making these options cheat protected in Multi-Player is the only way to make it fair. Especially the shadows, I've found it quite fun to be hiding in a shadow waiting for my roommate to grab the RL, only to be blown to bits by my other roommate running on a slow PC with shadows off because he just saw me sitting there, no problem.
Also, IIRC, all of the lighting data is synched between the clients, so that everyone is seeing the same enviroment light wise. This is why they originally made the game peer to peer, and why it is only 4 player, because all that data takes up bandwidth. So it would be a waste to be sending all that and unifying the lights across clients if they could just turn them off.
I think Doom 3 DM could have been fun, but they should have left the adreneline meter in, IMO. I've played standard, fast-paced DM to death. I was hoping the movement speed in Doom 3 DM would be a little slower, and to compensate there would be a lot of hiding and seeking in the shadows, but as it stands it is just a mindless fragfest, which isn't a bad thing, I just don't have fun with it anymore.
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I've played both sides, and from all the lore I have encountered in the game, the Alliance are 'evil' in the sense that they fight for the domination of their people over any outsiders, where as the Horde fight against the Alliance just to survive.
As far as actual player behavior, I think Alliance tend to act like bigger dickheads than the Horde. I get ganked more playing as Horde, and random players are more eager to help me out on the Horde server.
Everyone who is explaining that a dealer would never count cards because they play using a solid set of rules and that whoever disagrees knows nothing about blackjack, well I have news for you... YOU know nothing about card counting!
No one ever said that the dealer could use card counting to make a higher profit for the house by playing using a game that incorporates card counting. In fact, thinking this is totally retarded because the house NEVER BETS.
Card counting is usful in determining how much you should bet on a hand. When you 'count cards', you are actually keeping track of which cards have been played, so that you can determine if the cards left in the shoe are mostly high cards or mostly low cards. By using a formula, you can keep track of all the cards that have been played and as the shoe empties, have some idea if the odds of hitting 21 on a hand are in your favor or against.
A card counting dealer could prevent casino losses from cheaters by keeping track along with the counters. When certain players who have been betting small all of a sudden start making huge wagers, the dealer could have a good idea what is going on and alert floor personel to remove the suspected cheater.
It's not really that big of an issue anyway, because most casinos are going to have way better systems than card counting dealers to sniff out crooks and cheats, this whole conversation is absurd.
I'm sorry, this comment is almost totally pointless, but... YES YES YES!!!! I'm so happy, the original was one of the best multiplayer games ever, though it needed some attention that it never got to really balance it and make it a great competitive game. I really hope they get it this time around, what awesome news!
I am impressed that they have sold so many copies yet I can still play with no problems. I got it Saturday and I have had no problems with lag or disconnects at all. Three cheers to Blizzard!
There are so many factors that go into how good or bad a review of a game is that there is no way to know if you are getting useful information unless you do some homework. Having worked as a professional game reviewer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this matter, and discussing it with fellow editors, game developers, and friends. The most important thing you can do is find a source you can trust, be it a web site or magazine, or even an individual editor. Someone brought up the point that some gamers prefer certain genres of games to others, and of course this is going to be reflected in a review. Some organizations have specialized reviewers that only review one or a couple different types of games, I would not trust someone if they seem to always hold most RTS games in high regard but never seem to like many FPS games. Another problem is how committed the reviewer is to gaming. Some reviewers are hardcore gamers, others are casual gamers or have tastes that would cater to that segment. Again, find a source that suits your preferences. I honestly don't think corruption in the form of publisher bribes is as widespread as some people are making it out to be. Sure, publishers will spend a great deal of money to make editors happy, but what happens to your credibility when you give a shitty game a good review? I would say that the vast majority of professional editors and game publications are more concerned with this than getting a cool T-Shirt and mouse pad from a game publisher, I know there must be some swaying of scores due to publisher gifts, but I don't think it is as big a factor as the fact that there are a lot of shitty writers out there who really don't understand how to write an honestly good review.
First of all, let me apologize, it is fair that you stand by your article as not being a comprehensive review, the article is flagged on the site as "First Impressions" and you do clearly state that you haven't played through both games. Fair enough.
On the other hand, I don't think it is fair to outright recommend one over the other when you haven't finished either of them. To me, that is almost like watching the first 15 minutes of a movie and telling someone which they should see based on your initial impression, when the one you liked could actually end up being horrible because of a crappy ending. Now, I wouldn't care if you were giving your impression and recommendation to a friend or on your personal blog, but it appears to me that Sudhian is a commercial site, and I hold professional writers to a higher standard than random internet fanboys, so if you tell me that you think one game is better than the other, without having taken in the entire game, I am going to lose faith in the website or magazine altogether.
I honestly love both games, and one person's opinion isn't going to make me feel any better or worse about that, but I have worked as a professional writer for a gaming publication, and I have been bitched out for reviewing games I didn't finish, and I've felt the backlash it can cause. I guess maybe I wanted to express that I think it is a bad idea to express opinions about a product you are not completely familiar with, both because finishing the games may change your opinion, or because you leaving yourself open to internet dorks such as myself to rip into your work.
I have to agree with anyone who read the article and felt like it was very poor journalism. First of all, right from the start the author mentions that he only played a little bit of each game. I think he said Alpha Labs 3 is as far as he played in Doom 3, that's what, 15% into the game? This is no more useful to me than the forum and comments flames from jaded gamers who spam their opinion all over the place after playing through just the intro to a game. If it was a good article, I think first of all he would have played through both games so that he could actually tell us which one he actually likes better than the other, not which one he thinks he may like better than the other, and instead of just saying one is better than the other, he could recommend one or the other to the reader based on their preferences. These are just some basics of writing review/opinion pieces. This guy makes himself sound like an ass.
What would I have said? Well, I think most people will enjoy both games. As for casual gamers or people who are new to FPS games, I would say Doom 3. HL2 has some puzzles and concepts that any FPS nut will breeze by, but someone who hasn't been playing these games all that long will find themselves frustrated. For instance, I was watching my girlfriend play HL2 and she couldn't get past the train yard, because she is not coordinated enough to time the jump from the train top over the fence to get to the next part, she would have been stuck there for ages if I wasn't there to take over and do the jump for her. Some of the puzzles will confuse people who didn't already have a good idea about how the game was going to work as far as physics puzzles go. Doom 3 is mostly just a pretty frag-fest, my girlfriend has gotten much farther in Doom 3 than she can get in HL2 without my help.
Hardcore gamers are going to choose one or the other based on what kind of game they like to play. HL2 has more variety in it's gameplay, with more puzzles and more ways to dispatch enemies (knocking out platforms they are standing on, using objects in the world, etc.) where as Doom 3 is point, click and kill and focuses on little else other than keeping the situation tense at all times. I really like both, and luckily I do not have to choose one or the other. If you like killing everything in sight and being a bad-ass, maybe Doom 3 is your cup of tea. If you like to explore and are looking for more than just brainless action, then maybe you will get your kicks out of HL2. I say get 'em both, and maybe toss in an Xbox and Halo 2 for good measure.
I think stats are great, the more detailed the better! I wouldn't look at stats for 90% of the games I play, but I think they are very important in fostering a competitive community around a game. For instance, I am playing a lot of Warcraft 3 right now, and Battle.net keeps an insane amount of stats on your games, which provides me with a great resource to look at what trends I can find in my playing, and can help me identify what I could do to make myself a better player. Of course, if I was just playing a game here and there with friends I would hardly ever check it out, but as I play several games a night trying to become a good player, it is important to me to have that resource. When I used to play Counter-Strike, it was nice to have stat tracking just to give me another reason to try an excel. We had a ladder on our CS servers, so playing well to try and boost my stats to climb higher on the ladder was fun, and enhanced the replay value of the game. Stats are a great thing, especially for pro-level competition games.
Well, yes, I am sure that they have motives in addition to preventing cheaters from using the service for banning modded Xboxes, but as a Live subscriber with an un-modded Xbox and only legitimate software for it, it makes me happy to know that there will be that many less people out there with the ability to use software cheats. If Microsoft wasn't doing this, I would be very upset that I am paying money for their service, but they have proven to me over and over that it is worth every penny. They constantly add improvements and features, all the while keeping out cheaters to the best of their abilities. You guys can knock Microsoft all you want as a company, but their gaming division is really incredible and making it a great time to be a gamer.
I think this is great news for all Xbox Live gamers. Personally, I was sold on the idea of Xbox Live because of the broadband only enviroment, and the thought that gaming on a closed system meant there would be less cheating, plus with everyone playing on the same platform there would be no more bitching about having a crappy video card or slow CPU, it leveled the playing field. Of course as someone who pays $50 a year for the service, it upsets me when I get into a game where someone is using cheats when the whole point of paying for the service to me is to have Microsoft step in and remove cheaters and hackers from the service. They are keeping up their end of the bargin, and for that I am thankful. Mind you, I played Counter-Strike for 3 years on and off and was an admin on my own server for half that time, and I could not play a single public game without someone wall-hacking or using an aim-bot. It was especially annoying because I was very fair, and being friends with and having a few professional gamers who played on our server, I knew that just cause someone had 50 kills and 3 deaths that they could just be really good, so I would have to quit out of CS, jump onto our HLTV server and watch the offender in first person until I was absolutly sure he was cheating. This wasted many, many hours of my time, and was the major factor in me getting onto Xbox Live. I think it is cool that you can do so many unintended things by modding an Xbox, but I love that they are kept away from playing on Live and screwing up everyone else's fun.
The people who are making negitive comments are very ignorant. This game was great for it's time, it was the only game like it for it's time, and it is still one of the best MMORPG's out there as far as I am concerned. This game got PvP right on the first try, the quests were always fun, and I definatly spent more time playing this game than others like it. I can't wait to get home and start downloading the client. Also, I think it is a shame that anyone would attack an independant developer. These guys work their asses off for very little, if any, cash return, and then they have to deal with pricks who think they know everything bashing their work. I bet you guys like to beat up cripple kids as well? If you don't like the game, fine, but don't shit on good people who are trying to do something nice for everyone and have no sinister agenda...
Yeah, a retard with a peice of the $400,000 in prize money.
Making these options cheat protected in Multi-Player is the only way to make it fair. Especially the shadows, I've found it quite fun to be hiding in a shadow waiting for my roommate to grab the RL, only to be blown to bits by my other roommate running on a slow PC with shadows off because he just saw me sitting there, no problem. Also, IIRC, all of the lighting data is synched between the clients, so that everyone is seeing the same enviroment light wise. This is why they originally made the game peer to peer, and why it is only 4 player, because all that data takes up bandwidth. So it would be a waste to be sending all that and unifying the lights across clients if they could just turn them off. I think Doom 3 DM could have been fun, but they should have left the adreneline meter in, IMO. I've played standard, fast-paced DM to death. I was hoping the movement speed in Doom 3 DM would be a little slower, and to compensate there would be a lot of hiding and seeking in the shadows, but as it stands it is just a mindless fragfest, which isn't a bad thing, I just don't have fun with it anymore.