Hell Kitty

I originally played through the game at 1024x768 on my old 6800 and ancient cpu and motherboard. The game could get quite jerky at times, but I still think it was as pretty then as it is now with my new system. Those screenshots were taken with my new X2 4200+ and 7950GX2, and the only difference I noticed was that now it's a hell of a lot smoother (and I suppose less jaggy with the higher resolution, though jaggies weren't something I noticed much first time around. Funnily enough, while LadyCrimson mentions the screenshots looking better than seeing the game running, I found the opposite, with the game looking better in action. Don't really understand the bit about the graphics not being crisp and sharp, the character's armour in LC's pic looks pretty crisp and sharp to me. To each their own. Now, if only I had a turn-based party-based ancient mythological Greece that looked as good as this... *drool*

Was HL the first FPS to make heavy use of scripted sequences? The best thing I remember about the game was that the marines acted in a way I had never seen before in an FPS. The game that drew me into FPS was Duke Nukem 3D, as it ws the first to let me play in a game world that was actually made up of realistic ( and wonderfully interactive) places. Before that all I got was rooms and corridors painted with a different flavoured texture. Oh, and did I just see the spambot Gabs criticise someone for spamming? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! *dies*

Graphics are unchanged since the demo. You don't think this is pretty (the first screen when starting a new game)?

If you've played any of the AAA PC FPS, I wouldn't bother. Halo has the most annoying level I've ever played through in a shooter. And then the final level was some rubbish obstacle course. Blergh. The rest of the game was okay but entirely forgettable.

I get read errors fairly often with rental DVD movies, but I've never had any problems with games, with my old vanilla PS2 (with managed to survive several nephew related incidents, being launched across the room, and having me pull it apart and put it together again when I really had no idea what I was doing.) or the newer skinny one.

Like Diablo but prettier.

I'd like a Vampire: The Requiem RPG. First-Person, like Bloodlines, set in an old European city, like Paris or somesuch. Game would take place over several nights. All the quests available to you would equal a specific amount of points, and a night would end once x amount of points have been met. So, major quests might be worth 40 points, minor quests worth 20 points and simple tasks worth 5 points, and the night ends when we reach 100 points. The quests we complete (or possibly screwup) determine the possible choices we have in later nights. The points wouldn't ever be revealed to the player, it's just a way to incorporate time and make the player think about the choices they make. There would be no epic major storyline to complete, rather the game ends when the covenant (or unaligned) that we have allied with becomes the major power in the city, or whatever else it is that group or individual wants. ************ If not a Vampire setting, then a cyberpunk one, same deal as above, first-person taking place over a number of days, in a large stereotypically cyberpunk kind of city. Actually, I'm just reminded of the Christopher Lambert movie, Nirvana, which was set in Marrakesh. A city we haven't seen a million times in games would be nice. The game would start with an old aquaintance contacting you, entrusting you with some kind of information/item/secret, dying/getting murdered, and leaving you in danger and needing to figure out what the hell is going on. The game would revolve around finding clues to the whole plot, and the clues you find determine your options in later nights. Rather than completing quests so the group/individual will hand over a clue, you would complete quests in order to put you in a place that allows you greater access to information. For example, gaining someones trust so they might leave you alone in their office for you to ransack. MWAHAHAHAH. ************ Having just rewatched Brotherhood of the Wolf, I'd like a Thief style game in a world like that, but playing as an investigator type character, so more adventure type elements, though still with a heavy emphasis on stealth. ************ I played Resident Evil: Outbreak File 2 not long ago, and I loved the fact that the characters where just ordinary folks trying to escape the city instead of the heroic of the characters from the regular series. A team based RPG in which the characters you team up with all have specifc tasks they want to complete before escaping the city. Perhaps character creation could give the player a number of option what it is their character needs to do before escaping the city.

How very profitable of you. I'm sorry (to everyone else that is).

After around ten hours of downloading the demo lasted about ten seconds. Not so much a fan of the way the view bounces around, but I suppose I'll get used to it. Want to play an assassin character but having the two daggers take up screen space when I turn is rather distracting. Not a fan of the HDR lighting thingy but at least that can be turned off. Of course as soon as the full game is available I'll buy it like the little bitch that I am.

Given your desire to hit things with a sledgehammer or fire axe, it seems you've confused "senselessly brutal" with "not nearly brutal enough".

Yeah, man, do you remember the days of 286? Those were the days, weren

he's <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That little mission was forced upon him, though, unlike all the others.

I dunno, I think the resident evils would lose a hell of a lot with ascii for graphics. Like the atmosphere, the horror... Oh, and when did the forums biggest spammer become a mod? crazy...

Great graphics don't matter if the gameplay is crap, but I wouldnt go so far to claim graphics are meaningless. I sure wouldn't want all my games to be in ASCII.

I was able to walk around the wedding mission with my fully upgraded shotgun. Them hillbillies loves them some guns. In the playboy christmas mission I was never able to drop anything without the game crashing, which meant I wasn't able to drop the poison sausage. Strangely enough no sexual innuendo intended.

Then it should excite you to know I played the the whole thing as quietly as possible, using violence only when absolutely necessary. I know, you'll probably have to have a lie down.

Presentation is part of the telling of the story. HL tells the same story as Doom and many other FPS, but presents itself much better. HL stands out because of it's then new and exciting scripted sequences, which added more life than we were used to in shooters.

In my opinion it's the presentation that did it for HL, the story itself is the same poop we've been feed over and over. Just because we enjoy the poop doesn't make it good.

Half Life has a great story? It's Doom all over again. Instead of space station/Mars/Hell we have research facility/desert/silly alien world. Instead of zombie marines & demons, we have zombies, aliens and real marines. Instead of a silent, no personality space marine, we have a silent, no personality Gordon Freeman. The "must play" status of the games you list has nothing to do with the story. I think the only genre that needs story is adventure (it's not dead yet!), but I do prefer RPGs when they have a story moreso than other genre. (I don't need any story in my FPS, only good shootin').

"All it takes is to stop focusing on trivial things which don't have an effect on gameplay and move on up to what he really wanted to do." sure sounds like a judgement to me. You've judged certain aspects of the game as trivial and seem to lay the blame on Spector for focusing on those aspects instead of his vision of an alternate story, which may or may not be his vision at all. Being the lead isn't any sort of guarantee that you vision is reached. As I said in my first post, plans change for any number of reasons, and being the head of a project doesn't mean you can set a plan in stone without wanting it or needing it to change for any number of reasons. Being the lead doesn't mean you have total control everything that happens. And as for the comment about scripts in HL2, when the first video of that game was shown, we were told that things like characters reacting to the environment (enemies kicking in doors you've blocked, the interaction of your allies based on things you do) would all be unscripted. In the end, they were as scripted as HL.

Yes, you are, because a version of DX with an alternate storyline is the road not travelled. The plan to include an alternate storyline was abandoned, it was a road they didn't travel down. All you did was mention that DX allows you to complete your objectives in very different ways, which has nothing to do with an alternate storyline that sees JC stay on with UNATCO. Was an alternate storyline even Spector's idea? Was it Harvey Smith's? Or Sheldon Pacotti's? Was it something they all wanted to see and were really disappointed it wasn't going to happen? Was it something they really weren't fussed over and could care less about once it was gone? As Hassat Hunter points out the alternate storyline was abandoned because it didn't fit with the game. Who thought this? Spector? The team as a whole? As much as you may like to deny it, any sort of speculation on what might have been is judging the "road not travelled". Is Bloodlines lacking a multiplayer mode because Leonard Boyarsky failed to meet his vision? Was a multiplayer mode even his idea? Did Half-Life 2 use scripts instead of AI because Gabe Newell failed to meet his vision? Geez, if Gabe can't do it, that doesn't leave much hope for anyone else...

But he didn't, which makes that road... *drum roll* ...the road not travelled. There are an infinite number of roads - one of them led to the release of Deus Ex as we know it. The other roads include all manner of shoulda/coulda/woulda - stuff the Spector wanted to do but didn't, stuff he wanted to do but couldn't, stuff he wanted to do then changed his mind. All the roads that might have been are irrelevant. You can praise a dev for not going down a road you think is bad, or criticise them for not going down a road you think is good, but it's all worthless criticism. Your previous post mentions nothing of Spectors vision, only your own idea of what might have been. Nor have you given any reason why Spector was able to fufill that vision, whatever it might be. If your belief in his ability to create his vision was true, then Deus Ex and Ion Storm Austin would never have existed, instead we'd likely have a game called Troubleshooter from Origin. Game design is about compromise, not fufilling a single vision of one man.

And vastly superior to many games which label themselves "Adult" or "Mature".

Of course it's relevant. You claim Spector had "more than enough room to create the game that fit his vision". What do you mean by this and why do you think it? What exactly was Spector's vision? The Deus Ex we know with the alternate storyline Hassat Hunter would like to see? Troubleshooter? Junction Point?