Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2, GRID, FEAR.

[Mozgus]

Just wanted to discuss these PC games I've been playing lately.

Race Driver: GRID: I am not really a fan of traditional racing games, or cars in general, but somehow, I am enjoying this one. It's just so well polished all around. It looks amazing. It runs amazing. It's one of the finest 360 to PC ports I've ever experienced. The cars get damaged so dynamically and it effects performance. The tracks and race types are varied. The car selection is huge and the handling is appropriate for each. The online mode works great and has stat tracking. What little music there was, it was badass. What more could you want out of a racing game? A new standard.

Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2: I finished 2 first, since that's the one I actually own. Despite being a sloppy port with frame rate issues, graphical and audio bugs, and generally not a very pretty game to begin with, I had fun. I don't really know why. Maybe it was the huge weapon selections and customization options. Maybe it was the cover and squad system. The enemy AI was probably the star of the show. If it weren't for their surprising strategies, I'd have hated dying so often. I'm still midway into the first game, and it seems like more of the same.

Gatta say though, the community online for Vegas 2 hasn't been so great. I've been banned from matches for being a low ranking newbie, I guess because I didn't buy the game day-one. I don't know what else to do. I beat the campaign, which raised my rank a few times. What the hell do they expect? But whatever, it was $10 on steam and I already had my fun.

F.E.A.R.: Completely let down by this game. I just cruised through it in a day and a half. Everyone and their mother has told me now for 3 years that this game is amazing. This game just...was not allowed to shine in any way. For example, the graphics. It would have been a great looking game if 95% of the areas weren't identical narrow hallways and empty office rooms. The horror segments would have been great....if you were ever actually threatened by them. Instead, it's just a bunch of cutscenes you walk around in, or there are super slow ghosts that you kill with a pistol.

Finally, you have the action side of things. I played on normal, and it just wasn't that challenging. When you can instagib a fucking armored soldier with a shotgun and bullet time, what is the god damn threat? All you ever fight in this game are frail little soldiers, frail little cyber ninjas, and every once in a while, you get a robocop 2 tank walker, but a couple remote bombs is all you need for that.

Story? Nothing to see here folks. It's about a 3 sentence long tale strung out 400x too long by a bunch of bullshit codec and phone messages. Don't bother listening to any of it. It's just a distraction. I don't think this game can be spoiled, since in the context of things, nothing is revealed with any real notice. All you need to know is that little girl is Alma, she's pumping these flashbacks into your head, she was kept in this lab til she was 15, they turkey basted her uterus, made you, took you away, she raged while screaming "GIMMIE BACK MAH BABY!" Oh and then there's points near the end where she can actually kill you in these visions. So I guess she wants her baby back so she can kill it. Ok....

Yahtzee does this shit better than me anyway. He covers an expansion here, but it's all the same. 100% truth:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... us-Mandate

[PharmaceuticalCowboy]

Just purchased F.E.A.R. on gogamer.com's 48 hour madness for $5.90 because of the consistent praise and use of the game as a benchmark in the last few years. I am disappointed in Mozgus's opinion of it, but I had a feeling the game is as he describes. It seems the horror genre gets stuck in a rut and can only make look-a-like corridors and enemies. I still hope it's worth the $6... Oh and GRID looks good too, I want to get that eventually along with the new PC version of Burnout Paradise (as long as we're talking about car games).

[Ack]

It's true, but he forgot that after the first two levels or so, the horror stuff just stops until the end of the game, so not even that really keeps you going. By the time I had made it to the office complex, I was actually pretty bored. I did end up beating it, but there is a lot more they could have done with it. I haven't bothered with the expansion.

Oh, and from what I hear, the multiplayer was absolute crap anyway.

[Mozgus]

It's true, but he forgot that after the first two levels or so, the horror stuff just stops until the end of the game, so not even that really keeps you going. By the time I had made it to the office complex, I was actually pretty bored. I did end up beating it, but there is a lot more they could have done with it. I haven't bothered with the expansion.

Oh, and from what I hear, the multiplayer was absolute crap anyway.

I feel like chapters 1-9 were all consistently dull. In fact, they seemed like a machine made them, instead of humans. So little personality or creativity anywhere. Completely typical, by-the-books FPS map design. The Alma segments were all strewn about evenly I think.

But then chapters 10 and 11 weren't bad. They actually did a few things that impressed me, and the story suddenly DID SOMETHING every 5 minutes. Chapters 1, 10, and 11 are the only ones people need to play to get the overall idea.

I need to point out that I have some kind of immunity to horror genres. No game or movie has ever been able to scare me. There's something wrong with me. When this genre's main ammo fails on a person like me, I always notice the layer of retardation underneath, and have a worse experience overall.

[Ack]

Honestly, I felt FEAR was about as good as Doom 3, which was also repetitive and bland. But at least FEAR didn't suffer from a lighting problem the entire time. Of course, I do need to give credit to Doom 3 for some of the enemy designs that I thought were pretty cool(the locust/baby thing, for instance) but if ever I feel the need to play it again, I'll just play Serious Sam. They're basically the same game, but at least Serious Sam knows its a joke.

[Hatta]

Serious Sam was badass. Was the sequel any good?

[Mozgus]

Honestly, I felt FEAR was about as good as Doom 3

FEAR and Doom 3 are practically the same game. I don't know why people say "FEAR is what D3 SHOULD have been!". Same game in my eyes. Actually Doom 3 might have been better because the last 30 minutes you were in hell. Also the flashlight didn't go out after 10 seconds.

[Mozgus]

After an hour of Burnout Paradise on the PC, I think this might be the biggest disappointment for me in at least a year. This open city shit has got to stop. I'm just completely lost in it. I will drive for 10 minutes at times and never come across an event. And then every time I do find a race, I get lost and take last place! This is bullshit fluff material. This crap started with Sonic Adventure's overworld city and it's just been getting worse and worse since.

Grid is just better in every way. It really is the new standard. I'll give Burnout a few more shots later but its not looking promising.

[Jayson]

After an hour of Burnout Paradise on the PC, I think this might be the biggest disappointment for me in at least a year. This open city shit has got to stop. I'm just completely lost in it. I will drive for 10 minutes at times and never come across an event. And then every time I do find a race, I get lost and take last place! This is bullshit fluff material. This crap started with Sonic Adventure's overworld city and it's just been getting worse and worse since.

Grid is just better in every way. It really is the new standard. I'll give Burnout a few more shots later but its not looking promising.

Burnout Paradise just takes some getting used to. I have it for the PS3 and I didn't like it at first either, having cut my teeth on the last few linear Burnout games but it did grow on me as I started to get used to how the races start at the intersections. Its an amazing game.

I have had my eye on GRID as well, I am just waiting for the price to go down on the PS3 version of the game.

[Mozgus]

Burnout Paradise just takes some getting used to. I have it for the PS3 and I didn't like it at first either, having cut my teeth on the last few linear Burnout games but it did grow on me as I started to get used to how the races start at the intersections. Its an amazing game.

I have had my eye on GRID as well, I am just waiting for the price to go down on the PS3 version of the game.

Another hour in and I've uninstalled it. I played online for a bit, but no matter what, there were cretins breathing into their mics as loud as possible. To my surprise, there was no way to tell them to knock it off, for there is no way to type to anyone. Apparently typing is risky in today's world, but talking and putting any picture on your profile, porn or not, is perfectly fine. I literally could not mute these fuckers as fast as they were entering the room. I quickly disconnected.

Another 30 minutes of driving around aimlessly with no objective, and I was done. I try uninstalling it, and guess what? The uninstaller RUNS the game instead! I've never even heard of such insanity. Fuck Burnout. Fuck EA. I hope no one buys this garbage. Grid can be had for less than $25 on amazon used, and used is ok because the game doesn't use cdkeys for verification, so you can still play online without worry.