Joseph Bulock

Which reasons are these? Well, the moves are all mocapped, so with the amount of time spent in the studio it seems unlikely that they would have a plethora of different strikes and only one takedown for each situation (armed/unarmed front/back). Martial Artists also tend to know a variety of takedowns, and many like to show them off. Add to that that the CQC is it's own skill and level progression is supposed to grant new combos etc., and it seems like too significant a portion of the game to skimp on visually. Ao2 and K&L didn't even have much in the way of mechanics governing CQC, it was just something you used when you ended up too close. In the case of AP it's a "weapon" skill with its own progression like pistols and assault rifles. That's just my edumacated guesswork though, Sawyer might step in at any moment to tell us (hint hint). The game currently features multiple takedowns. I even did the mocap for one of them.

Which means you see even *more* viable techniques in a real fight. Again, what are the balance issues? Because any system that has "win buttons" will feel shallow. Real fights have many win buttons. A lucky or skilled shot to the groin, eyes, throat, chin or temple end fights. It's as often as not the more skilled fighter that hits one of these targets. It would be very hard to make these targets feasible without making them the whole game. Notice that I didn't just say there would be balance issues, but pacing and control issues. Another issue is that real fights are very environmental. Giving the player a reasonable way to use their surroundings without breaking the game would be really challenging. In a real fight, pushing someone into something that causes them to trip and then kicking them repeatedly while they are down is a great fight strategy. Sounds like a really awful game though.

Is reality actually all that unbalanced? Even within the rather limited arena of MMA, you can see a variety of techniques and strategies employed successfully. MMA is not a real fight. MMA has a ton of rules that allow fighters to actually have careers of any length.

Those sound like sucker punch or lucky punch situations. Fights between two people who know what they're doing that don't have one guy getting a lucky shot in can take a very long time, and are not particularly exciting. I mean, as a fight enthusiast, I would love to see a game that just tried to capture the feel of a real fight but A) it would have a really small market B) be really broken in terms of balance C) and would likely have some really nasty control issues do to the fact that people fighting do a lot of different things.

I'm going to agree with this. There were moments of brilliance in both of these films, but American Gangster really fell apart at the end and Body of Lies had fantastic action sequences and some great espionage drama, along with some sequences that could have been trimmed out completely.

Toshiro Mifune is an awesome dude in his own right.

I have no idea where you got notion that AP would be a NOLF clone. And I've no idea what you're trying to get at. Peace. Worst bickering ever.

My house is all about the cookies. Everyone brings at least a dozen of their favorite recipe(s). I usually go with some sort of peanut butter cookie.

I know you're also trying to be helpful, but we're not making the game less realistic out of ignorance. Many of the folks here at Obsidian are very much into simulation combat games of some form or another, and many of us have enough experience with real fire arms to be entirely aware of the ways in which we depart from reality. It's not that we don't know when we depart from reality, we just know what works for the game best, what we have time to change, etc.

Keep in mind that AP is not a hardcore survival military simulator. Realism is not goal number one. Goal number one is fun, goal number two is getting the cinematic action movie feel. We're keeping the game firmly rooted in the modern day setting, but not in a simulationist mentality.

Dual wielding does little things like giving the SMG twice as much magazine capacity, and justifying the guns spitting out an awesome amount of lead. It also looks really cool in a very iconic action movie sort of way.

To answer your gameplay question, it gave the SMG it's own unique role. If the SMG was just a more powerful, faster firing pistol, it would only be a baby, and inferior, assault rifle. By letting it be a rapid firing, but only semi-accurate weapon, it gives the weapon it's own unique role. It also gave the weapon a flavor that the SMG abilities could build on.

Length of barrel is not the only factor in accuracy. If we're talking about ideal (ie. non-practical) condition, then the barrel length and quality of manufacturing do play a large roll in the accuracy. Now when a weapon is used in combat, other things become very important, such as the amount of kick/recoil the weapon produces, the ease and quality of the sighting of the weapon, etc. This is not to say that barrel length isn't important, but it isn't the only factor, and to claim such over simplifies the concept of accuracy a great deal. The quality of the barrel can be as important as the length. To make a ridiculous comparison, any pistol on the market will be more accurate than a colonial era musket, due to the fact that the concept of rifling hadn't been introduced, so no spin was imparted on the round by the barrel. Also, the gun is a gun comment doesn't really work either. Any weapon with a .22 caliber round is actually going to have a hard time killing someone unless you manage to hit the most vital of areas. That being said, the .22 round does not see a lot of combat use.

Yes, I do. Two reasons: hugging each other after a fight is considered good sportsmanship in MMA. Second, I live in the 21:st century so I don't have to hide behind pathetic homophobic insinuations. :)

Fedor's style is cool, but is also still a sport style. As far as I know, Fedor has never claimed to be trained in anything more than Sambo, and while it is one of the more open sport systems, it doesn't allow for the types of attacks you'd want to use in self defense/ lethal combat situations. Flying arm bars are cool, but kinda useless if there are three guys trying to punch, stab, or shoot you.

Pop gets two bonus points for figuring out which scenes are still WIP and which have been given a pass or two of polish.

Man, cycloneman keeps beating me to all of the follow-ups. Stupid cinematics taking up all my time...

I really enjoyed all the extras they threw in to remind the viewer that they were watching a Bond movie. Cycloneman pretty much got the best of them, and I thought they did a great job with make sure this one was a much more Bond-ish Bond film. As to having no gadgets, I'm fine with that. They were always so contrived, and even the medical kit one felt a little too convenient in the last film.

For my part, Gears 2 was a really fun afternoon. My roommate and I popped in our copies, started around two in the afternoon and had wrapped up the campaign by 11:30 or so, and that was with a break for a quick dinner. I was consistently having fun for the whole time, save one of the vehicle sequences. It wasn't ground breaking, but it was very polished, very solid, and they found a few decent ways to change up the action. The story was very predictable and goofy at times, but no more so than any Hollywood action film. It seems like Gears 2 really has the biggest improvements in multi-player components. I only checked out hordes briefly, but it had a very classic gaming feel, and I could see burning a lot of time in that mode, not to mention a few of the other new competitive modes. I'm not sure if the game deserves some of the comments about being gaming's highest achievement ever, but it is a solid game, and the co-op campaign is a pretty good way to burn through an afternoon.

It wasn't that the AI was overall too smart, it was that they could put a burst of five shots into Mike at long range, before the player had a chance to react or make any decisions on what to do. That has since been dialed down, but don't worry, we are aiming to make our enemies challenging in more entertaining ways.

Kaftan is mainly describing the sorts of things that a gameplay animator would do. Cinematic sequences often contain more single use animations and special case, flashy stuff. I couldn't tell you anything about any other company's practices though.

Oh . . . *sullen*. Any chance of recasting? Wait til you hear the real voice of Mike. It's awesome.

The point, at least for me, is that I never have to stop doing PVP. I can queue up for the scenarios (aka battlegrounds), and then go fight in the open RvR areas. I can quest if I get bored, or if we've dominated the RvR area, but that doesn't happen to often, so I can stay playing against other players and still level up lots and get cool loot. It's very refreshing.