dsheinem wrote:I always feel like I am one of the few genre fans who found Crysis to be an unplayable bore (even if it was pretty).
Funny enough, I agree. Something about it never felt right. I sucked it up and managed to beat the game to say I had, but I felt that the gameplay felt clunky. Something about the firearms just felt stiff to me. And I had some issues with psychic guards. Too often I would pop a guy and cloak and crawl away, only to have a patrol suddenly psychically find me. Or a helicopter. I remember at one point literally crawling at a snail's pace using cloak through tall grass under a tree in a densely wooded forest, and the helicopter still found me. Still, it was better than Turok.
But for all the weird issues where gameplay didn't seem to work, it just got worse with the aliens. I've also beaten Far Cry, and I understand people's complaints about the aliens in that one, but I don't remember them being so bad. Then again, I beat that game around 2005, so I don't really remember much of it.
Far Cry 2 has issues with soldiers respawning rapidly at checkpoints, but I loved its style and much prefer it to the Crysis games. And S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is my favorite FPS series of the last decade. For all their flaws on a technical level, those games impress me so much in terms of raw gameplay and the randomness and openness of the worlds, particularly the third one, that I find it very easy to become lost in them. And that is what I want of a modern FPS. Not a rail to run on, but a world to explore, fight, and die in if it comes to that. I know Hobie laments Deus Ex, but I feel it was at least a beginning step in a direction that I want to continue in first person shooters: the open world, not one limited by cramped levels, but a place for me to seek out what I want.
Speaking of which, I picked up Deus Ex and Serious Sam 3 through the Steam Sale. I'm busy playing a JRPG, and I need to finish Bulletstorm, but once I sit down with those, I'll share my thoughts. I wonder if I will love or hate Deus Ex. I thought the second was ok, and I liked the third.
If you liked the third then I think you'll like the first. The only annoyance I can think of you running into is the interface can be clunky at times, as it was during that era where devs hadn't learned how to do context-sensitive controls yet.
Damn and I still have the STALKER sequels to play. Can't run them well enough at all on my rig, so I'm just waiting to play those on max sometime with new PC. So stoked. I agree with Ack completely there about it. I liked how it had health packs. No hand holding at all. Simple little things like that, just had a lot of old school design elements that I wish were still around. I felt it could have been even better with a bit more character interaction, but at the same time the real focus seemed to be just sinking into that world on your own, so I can't fault it.
[Paragraph BGM] I'll be anticipating your thoughts on Deus Ex, Ack. I've certainly replayed that one so many times it's insane, and every single time I discover new things and have a different experience. I don't hesitate nowadays to call it my favorite post-16bit era game of all time, so probably my third favorite game ever after Link to the Past and Super Metroid. If you can still sink into old games (which I know you can haha), then it just might blow you off your feet because as okay as IW was, and as solid as HR was (I definitely dug it, but it got a little MGS-ish at times with the story, some awfulness towards the end), I still think the original completely blows them away in every regard. Just... nothing compares at all, I'd say Deus Ex drowns me in its world even more than STALKER and whatnot, I can't even breath. It's had one of the weirdest gaming impacts on my life as well, whenever I see big cites in the night now... I instantly think of Deus Ex. It's hilarious, but that's been going on for like 10 years now. Pictures or even driving around at night sometimes and it triggers Deus Ex in my mind.
I'll just stop there, don't want to overhype it... haha. Give me a diary when you get into it though.
I actuatlly started duke nukem forever and think its okay, dirt cheap price but something about it screams trainwreck. All the talks made me wanna see for myself, worth the $8 bucks I paid tho.
If you can see the future while remembering the past, you may just have control of the present.
TEKTORO wrote:I actuatlly started duke nukem forever and think its okay, dirt cheap price but something about it screams trainwreck. All the talks made me wanna see for myself, worth the $8 bucks I paid tho.
I'm with ya, not too shabby. I'm curious to see a Duke game that was built from the ground up by Gearbox though.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended...so the world might be mended.
Yeah DNF is totally worth $8. But yeah one by Gearbox with a regular production schedule would be cool to see. I'm not betting on it though, never. lol
I think they should just straight up make him a character in Borderlands, that'd be awesome.
Xeogred wrote:Yeah DNF is totally worth $8. But yeah one by Gearbox with a regular production schedule would be cool to see. I'm not betting on it though, never. lol
I think they should just straight up make him a character in Borderlands, that'd be awesome.
I could totally see that working actually.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended...so the world might be mended.
Ack wrote: I know Hobie laments Deus Ex, but I feel it was at least a beginning step in a direction that I want to continue in first person shooters: the open world, not one limited by cramped levels, but a place for me to seek out what I want.
I'm sure everyone including Mr Popo just think I'm being a dick about Deus Ex, but really.
Yes the game had some germs of good ideas. Just that so much of the game is still terrible.
Ugly level designs that were just a bunch of boxes lying around and other design failures. Yes it is an older game, but other games that came out around the same time had much more interesting levels that weren't a bunch of ugly boxes. First level - a huge boring sprawl around the statue that's just a bunch of boxes. City block level with the apartments - bunch of boxes. Warehouse/dock level - big huge warehouse boxes and a laughable looking crane and ship. In that ship level there was a room with a huge 20 foot fan like so many other FPS like to toss in. I'll forgive the fact the fact the fan was there since it was a given cliche at the time but if this fan was supposed to be moving air around, why was it fed by a little tiny 2 foot square vent that you crawled through? At least other games had big appropriate tunnels for their huge fans of death. For a game trying to hard to be realistic, that jumped out at me as a fail.
People look like children in the bar with how large the tables and chairs are. Same with the gallon paint cans for soda and bottled beer as big as your forearm. Dropping a bunch of flares at once to make an improbable stack of fiery lincoln logs is silly. They bothered to implement mirrors in bathrooms, but you're clearly holding the item in your hand totally differently in the reflection versus what you 'see' in front of your eyes. The angled mirror in the club shows you in some falling motion as opposed to standing. Why put effort into gee whiz mirrors if they're so screwed up?
The game story is just a bunch of conspiracy bullshit thrown in a blender. The 3 endings are all stupid and anticlimactic. Voice acting and characterization seems borderline racist at times.The tranquilizer gun seemed useless for non lethal takedowns. It just made enemies run around alerting the entire world for 10 seconds. This made this supposed option useless so I just went with the bog standard killing people. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but I've see this complaint elsewhere too.
The game lets you move bodies, ostensibly to hide them. The problem is that you can't move bodies unless they're empty. So you have to completely loot the body before you can pick it up. This is further complicated by the fact you can't carry 2 of weapon and that every motherfucker in the game carries a knife. So in order to move a body, you have to drop the knife you're carrying from the last guy if you haven't already, hope they're not carrying some other weapon you already have, loot them, then pick them up to hide them behind the dumpster. Of course the knife and anything else you dropped is still sitting there too if you were trying to hustle and be sneaky inbetween patrols. Although this seems to not matter anyway as bodies on the floor seem to be mostly ignored. Awesome!
For all the illusion of choice it railroads you several times or otherwise screws up and gives plot points away:
When you meet with the NSF guy on the airplane, if you set mines in the hallway leading up to that room, they will go off as Anna is already marked by the game as an enemy. When Gunther goes to arrest you upon exiting the subway, it is a battle you cannot win. However it pretends to give you a choice and arbitrary things keep you from winning. You cannot jump or otherwise get around all of the waist high sawhorse barriers around the entrance. Despite being loaded up with weapons, Gunther (and the others, I forget) seem to have infinite health. I used all of the mines on the stairway, rockets, grenades, and all of my copious ammo, but Gunther just kept walking and talking despite taking enough damage to kill an army. Again, for a game trying to be kind of realistic, this was a jarring BS point. Make it believable that I couldn't win, don't cop out with invulnerability and an environment where I should clearly be able to run away.
I started writing this hours ago on lunch break, but then had to get back to work. Have lost my train of thought, but what the hell, dumping it here anyway.
Are you even a fan of that era of FPS's? I think it's the golden age to me. Do you like System Shock 2, Thief, Unreal, Half-Life, etc? I think it'd be a little weird for some reason if you did like some of those but not Deus Ex. *shrugs*, I can't concur with anything else you said there.
Xeogred wrote:Are you even a fan of that era of FPS's? I think it's the golden age to me.
Yes.
Do you like System Shock 2, Thief, Unreal, Half-Life, etc?
No, had trouble getting it to run on a 'too modern' system when I tried, yes, OMG yes.
I think it'd be a little weird for some reason if you did like some of those but not Deus Ex.
Not 'not like' DE. Fucking hate the fire of 1000 suns.
*shrugs*, I can't concur with anything else you said there.
Quality of the story and voice acting of other nationalities is certainly subjective. So are the environments (taken in perspective to games of the time of course) but Unreal and HL have much more interesting looking environments IMHO and they both came out in 98 versus 2000 for DE. As for visual stuff I complained about:
OMGBOXES! (some contrast adjusted to make it easier to see)
This is supposed to be the bottom of a crane on rails like a train, but it's a box on two ridges.
Here's the big fan. Not seen behind me and behind that grille at the bottom are the tiny tunnels this monster is expected to move air through... from one side of the building to the other.
Hello little children.
Flare stacking.
Mirror madness.
I don't see how you can disagree with me on the Anna and Gunther things I noted as being anything but a mistake and a poor design choice respectively.
But everyone has different opinions and I know mine is an unpopular one. And I've once again spent way too much time thinking about a game I fucking hate.
