RPGmasterBoo

Oh great, another strip club. By the way, that trailer probably showed all there was to Grunt. He probably doesn't have anything interesting to say other than "I like to kill stuff". [/pessimism] No he has a dark and tragic past. He was the product of iguana rape and anabolic steroids, and while he in general kills everything and everyone he also has an emo side, that is revealed after the 4th significant dialog. Really, Will, why the pessimism?

Sarevok is back. Only dumber.

... you will complain about it on message boards? Pretty much, yes.

The word "modernizing" always creeps me out Nothing new was revealed, but there is a dwarf video I had never seen before. Bold claims. If they screw it up this time

The funny thing about the trolls is that they're one of the easiest enemies in the game! All you have to do is run in really close to it and then circle strafe around it while constantly poking it with your sword. Just make sure to stay behind his back. Trolls turn very slowly so you'll basically be continually backstabbing it. Or, since you're so small compared to them, buttstabbing them. I'm currently fuming over a corrupted save in the Valley of Mines which fortunately lost me only half an hour of gameplay. I hate redoing things

They're not excuses. There are many good points in pirate's arguments and they are best summarized in this article, where a developer conversed with pirates directly: http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html I'd add that most cracker teams are lifelong gamers, and love good games. Games that were released without DRM or of outstanding quality, or made by small teams were spared from being cracked in the first several weeks. There is the obligatory "If you like the game then support the developers and buy it!" in every txt file that comes with a pirated game. As for EA - its not selfish behavior. I've watched them ruin many, many good developers and game series in the last decade. Many of those devs were very creative teams, of outstanding quality. My assumption is that everyone in the cracker community knows this, and is willing to go to great lengths to damage EA, and I can't say I blame them. If I ever had any sympathies for them on account of the occasional great game eg: CB's Undying it went straight out of the window with the new forms of DRM. Electronic Arts delenda est.

So its basically a lottery, it might work fine or it might not work at all. I'll just have to get hold of one and try it out on my PC before I buy it.

No idea, but I'd overclock that C2D to the high heavens. No need so far, even Crysis runs on maximum in 1680 by 1050, well above 35fps. But you could run it at 60fps... I get what you're saying, its just that there's three games a year that use even this hardware, and they for the most part aren't worth playing ...I finally get the cash to buy a good rig, only to find out that there's nothing to run on it

This game was announced several years ago, and there are serious doubts whether it is coming out at all.

No idea, but I'd overclock that C2D to the high heavens. No need so far, even Crysis runs on maximum in 1680 by 1050, well above 35fps.

I was thinking of getting GTA IV to finally play my countryman but I'm still wondering how playable the game is? Everyone I know says it runs horribly, so has anybody any idea how it would run on my rig? Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86Ghz 3GB DDR2 RAM ATI Radeon 3870

Other than that the pacing was perfect, the action far more fluid than in the games you mention, it introduced usable NPCs to FPS, graphically it was a step above everything else. The AI was not just better, it has never been really surpassed. Add to that outstanding multiplayer functionality... No One Lives Forever, Unreal Tournament and Stalker have better AI than Half Life. Unreal wiped the floor graphically back in 1998. If you're going to talk about the flow of the action, STALKER, TRON, Serious Sam, Painkiller, Unreal Tournament all have better action than Half Life. NOLFs AI was nothing special. Unreal Tournament is a bot based multiplayer game, it cant be compared to a singleplayer game. STALKER's AI worked well only at certain times, just like the game as a whole. As for Unreal, just try both of them out and see which one's graphics have aged better. STALKER had laggy aim and unwieldy weapons. Serious Sam, Painkiller and even Unreal Tournament are arcade shooters in the vein of Quake. Yes they were faster paced and smooth to play but that kind of speed is specific for that subgenre and unsuited for a game like Half Life. Even so Half Life's action never failed to be smooth just like all its other aspects. Single aspects of gameplay have been done better than HL in other games, but on the whole none had done every aspect so consistently well. That's why the game is considered to be the top.

Nice, thanks

And they go for 200$ on ebay

Don't both the city and the isle share the same name? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_II

Still playing Gothic II. Got over the initial weakness of the PC, and am happily stabbing everything in Khorinis. Except when I ran into a Troll near a Aztec/Mayan pyramid and got slaughtered.

The episodes were better than HL2 but too damn short.

They've got virtue but the endless repetition of the same setup/story/characters/gameplay is bound to turn people away at some point. Its like with SSI's games, they discovered a successful formula and now they're mutilating it for the cash. Bioware still hasn't reached the point where the formula can no longer be refreshed and is plain outdated (eg. Might and Magic VIII-IX), but my crystal ball says they aren't too far from it. That's the only real annoying flaw that can be attributed to them, other than that, to be perfectly honest their games are often the best RPG offerings we get on most years.

Ya. For the record I dislike the sequel as well, though not as much as its competitors - Far Cry and Doom3.

Other than that the pacing was perfect, the action far more fluid than in the games you mention, it introduced usable NPCs to FPS, graphically it was a step above everything else. The AI was not just better, it has never been really surpassed. Add to that outstanding multiplayer functionality...

Half Life has plenty of adrenaline pumping moments, though most are based on action - not "boo" horror. The demoralizing feeling that events are constantly slipping beyond your control, that you're trapped and almost alone - and that escape always a step too far is how I'd sum up the game. Its somewhat bleak, though there is a fair bit off horror. But not of the cheap scare variety - more the atmospheric sort.

So, what, they pushed the restart button on the plot on account of recognizing how boring the characters were? If you've got to remove half the characters to make a sequel then something is very wrong.

None of those games had even a part of the significance or radical change in gameplay that Half Life brought. System Shock is the only one that is even in the upper "legendary" class of shooters. The rest are just periodic hits.

Name a better shooter than the first one then?

That's like saying you don't like ice cream. How do you know you don't like it, if you haven't played it? I found Half-Life disappointing, and Half-Life 2 just plain bad. Compared to what?