Purkake

I didn't mind the IE system personally. But I understand the thought that simply having to save right before a battle and then reload that save over and over again until your party doesn't die, isn't particularly challenging or interesting and is msotly just an exercise in tedious repetition. The tradtional save/fight/reload when die system has worked in many great crpgs and tactical combat games like XCOM and Jagged Alliance, so its not something that bothers me. But I do think other systems could probably work better, since there really is no great significance to a battle that you can just fight over and over again simply by quick-loading a save until everything goes your way. I agree that is is far from ideal, but having to reload from a save point 30 minutes before the battle and play through all the same stuff again isn't better or more challenging it is just more time-consuming and frustrating. Another system is the one in NWN2, where all your "dead" teammates just pop back to life after the battle. I find that system to be worse, because dieing looses it's impact. Maybe a death's door system could work. Basically your guys would have "extra" hitpoints after they "die" and if they aren't healed in time or receive more damage they will die and have to be resurrected. This is pretty much the system in X-Com and Jagged Alliance, now that I think of it.

Of whose general opinon do you speak? Is this what the devs have said? Yeah, that's stupid. The combat will be boring if they think that it is boring and don't make it challenging, Catch-22 I guess. Death systems are very difficult to implement in any game that allows one to save anywhere, at any time, with no penalty. I'm not saying the one is DA is going to be great or even good, but I can't fault developers for trying to come with some sort of system that works. Save points or XP penalties would be an easy fix, but most CRPG developers probably don't want to annoy fans with that sort of solution. I would support either one, personally. I think XP penaties for saves would be great. I think that every PC game should have quicksave, not having it to make games more difficult is pretty much like gimping the controls in RE5 or Dead Space to make the games more "scarey". I think a good idea would be to have the age-old Infinity Engine can't-save-in-combat thing. That worked pretty well IMO. As for death, I think that Xp-penalty and not readily available resurrection(not having raise dead coins or rods given to you) is good enough.

I'd say it obviously will since the general opinion is that combat is boring and people shouldn't have to be interested in it. I do seem to remember the devs talking about potentially having quests that aren't critical to the plot be more difficult than the plot critical ones, which potentially could lead to decent fights. Yeah I had the same problem with MotB, there were so many cool spells to use, but the enemies would either die from a few hits or not be worth the trouble. Why can't anyone do it like in BG2? It was so much fun to figure out what defenses a mage/cleric had and use the proper spells to remove them. A single Finger of Death could kill anyone if you didn't have the proper defenses and most enemies played mostly by the actual rules.

It did not had half the finess of Half-Life 2, which is even older I presume you meant Halo. And as I said in the post you quoted HL2 has more to it than shooting stuff. The fun doesn't only come from shooting different colored aliens, but also from varying gameplay, puzzles and an interesting(to me at least) story.

Half Life 2 is a very boring game. The stupid combine do nothing but run straight at you and provide no challenge at all because they only take 2 shots to the foot to die. If I have to stand there and listen to someone talk for 15 minutes one more time, the whole series is going in the garbage where it rightfully belongs. The only entertaining part of Half Life 2 was baiting the CP guys in the train station by continually throwing garbage at them and laughing in their face as they try to run after you only to slink away in defeat because they don't know how to jump a two foot barrier. This is just me, but the reason Half Life 2 is so boring is because it's actually trying to convey a story. It was also pretty advanced when it came out in terms of enemy AI and some of the things you did. Only problem is everyone improved on the Half Life formula so much Half Life 2 seems to be boring (I'd probably put Call of Duty as the successor to Half Life in terms of story and gameplay) And Dagon, I hated Halo2. It pulled the Metal Gear Solid 2 twist by having you run around as the Arbiter, and it didn't really have an ending. Other than that I found it to be a very by the book shooter. Half Life wrote the book that halo went by btw. I hated Halo 2 also. Well, it was average, but I hated how it ruined the previously very cool Halo universe. HL2 is good because it constantly throws you into different situations, and you have to figure out how to deal with them. I haven't played COD4, but COD2 just keeps respawning enemies and throwing them at you, and is very annoying with the grenade spam. Also the way some of you are talking, you'd think HL2 was an RPG. The story is secondary for an FPS, and HL2 story isn't that great, but does the job. And human world being subjugated by aliens has tons of atmosphere, I don't understand that complaint at all. Also the best shooters I played are Halo, HL2 and Return to Wolfenstein, so I really don't know what these much better shooters are supposed to be. Now that I think about it, the thing I like most about Half-Life's story is that, like Lost, it keeps me coming back for more. We still don't know who the G-Man is or where the story is going. I really want to see how it will end and where the characters will end up. It really isn't your average b-movie sci-fi plot.

Actually from what I remember of that scene, it was pretty much Andrew Ryan monologue-ing you and then . You pretty much didn't have to say anything. I guess they did it right then, maybe Valve really wanted to have dialog, but couldn't so it came off as awkward.

There was that Andrew Ryan scene, but that was all a glorious metaphor about video games so it doesn't really count. Mostly it is the FEAR style - people talk to you over the radio stuff and you don't really need 2-way communication anyway.

Maybe it's to balance out Judith Mossman with that tight sweater. No that I have anything against boobs, but if there is one thing that games need it is more chicks with small boobs. Are there actually any other first person games where you are a mute protagonist and interact with people? JC Denton in Deus Ex was pretty quiet, but he did say stuff every now and then. Did the dude in Dark Messiah talk? I think that they wanted to keep the HL1 thing, but it feels like it is really holding Valve back now.

That could be it, it just felt awkward. I don't get the Alyx hate, though. She better than 99% of female protagonists/sidekicks, she is funny, genuine, doesn't get in the way and actually helps you out. She also helps to keep the walking/puzzle sections fun, otherwise it would get pretty boring after a while. Best of all, she isn't an oversexualized barbie superhero who pops in at the last moment to save your ass, but she can still take care of herself.

I'm not saying that I want cinematic third person cutscenes, but it feel really awkward when all the awesome characters are horribly compensating for that fact that you never say anything. There has to be another way.

What about the episodes? Did you like/play Episode 2?

20/20 hindsight? I wonder how it got all those high scores(Metacritic 96) and huge popularity then(6.5 million copies sold [Wikipedia])? If it wasn't a good game standing on it's own, what made it good? Broken Steam? Well managed hype, it was a sequel to an incredibly successful game and it used Source which is a great, moddable engine. Also, my opinion has nothing to do with hindsight. It has to do with me having played better FPSes than HL2 when I first played it. I agree, as a FPS it was dated even back then and is mostly mediocre. I didn't play HL2 for it's FPS aspects, they were the clue that held it together, but not what made the game great. Kinda like I suffer through PST's combat to get to the juicy story bits, for HL2 it was the cool physics puzzles, interesting gameplay and characters. I have to agree with you on HL3. While I have a lot of faith in Valve, I just don't see how another Half-Life could work with mute Freeman and the camera-on-a-stick style. They will really have to redesign the whole thing from ground up and I hope that they will succeed.

Has there been that much of a change in FPS since 2004? It seems TPS now dominate the market. The last 'big' FPS I can think of was Far Cry 2. I'd say that the "feel" of the guns has improved a lot. In HL2 all the guns felt like I was shooting a BB gun, but in CoD4 and some other more recent shooters you really feel the impact. Also iron sights really help with aiming, it is a bit annoying that none of the guns in HL2 are really accurate. And the feel of the body has also improved in HL2 it is still pretty much a camera on a stick you don't see your body. Other than that, shooters have mostly gained in the brown/gray palette, bloodspray-on-screen and grenade spam sections.

20/20 hindsight? I wonder how it got all those high scores(Metacritic 96) and huge popularity then(6.5 million copies sold [Wikipedia])? If it wasn't a good game standing on it's own, what made it good? Broken Steam?

Bring your +7 torches of console fanboy slaying, this is going to get ugly. What's with the HL2 hate? The game came out in 2004, 5 years ago, of course it doesn't have all the finesse of today's shooters. Judge the game on it's own merits, it has more to offer than just shooting ala Halo.

1) That has always bothered me as well. The combat in these games is boring, especially the you hit me I hit you part, it was never really the high point of those games. Can't they show the breathtaking environments, a few cool spell effects and maybe some bad-ass cinematic dialog? This is not Diablo 3, play to your strengths Bioware! 2) I'll just be happy if it ends, I hate losing interest before seeing the ending. 3) I guess we'll have to wait and see. 4) Agreed.

No, it does not. They were all worthless. FACT

If it's got a half-decent story and isn't so easy that it is faster to just click on enemies once and read a book instead of carefully choosing your spells, etc. I'll be down with that. The "fun" for me in BG2 really was in choosing the best spell/ability/potion for the situation, not actually watching dudes hit each other over and over. The animations aren't that great, but on a good day I won't be zoomed all the way in anyway.

So basically recite facts? Got it. You forgot -Defend your favorite console like it's your firstborn -Whine about the Wii killing gaming

Hope you like quicktime events, because there will be a bunch. Just so that you know.

Stop the presses!

Darn double post...

This thread is pretty much a black hole. Maybe some of the developers would find it interesting. Especially the parts about the games that they designed.

Wrong. Bio did KOTOR and JE for consoles before ME. I am well aware of that, but neither of those games was half as successful as Mass Effect. And this is were you go wrong, making up silly reasons why other people would like things more than you. That the "console crowd" likes ME because they haven't played better (read: PC) RPGs. Obviously hurlshot thinks ME is awesome because he has never played anything better, right? How much one enjoys a game/movie/book/whatever isn't dependent on whether they have first experienced some other, objectively better game/movie/book/whatever. I thought Fallout 3 was great, I guess this means I've never played the original two? Does the fact I have played them, and enjoyed them, make me the exception to the rule? No, because the rule is utter rubbish. You might have misunderstood me a little. All that I'm saying is that a lot of people consider Mass Effect to be a good game, because they might never played an RPG before and find it interesting. That is of course not the only reason, I'm sure that all the marketing hype and accessibility helped as well. I am not saying that if they played Baldur's Gate, for example, they would like it more. I am not trying to imply that Mass Effect is somehow inherently inferior to PC RPGs because it is on a console as well. It is the game that it is and as it stands I find it average. Feel free to disagree with me, but don't put words into my mouth. EDIT: It is a fact that Mass Effect has received both critical acclaim and wider popularity. Why do think this is?

Not liking something is all fine and dandy, but claiming to know why other people do like it, with explanations like this: is just ridiculous. If only krookie and hurlshot had experienced the same awesome storytelling as you, they'd be able to see how bad ME really is. I'm actually not trying to defend the game. I said the story was half-decent, if you disagree fine, but there have been far worse. I strongly disliked the combat, the inventory system and the lack of any meaningful side-quests. Also the Mako sequences were pretty bad. It was pretty much the first Bioware rpg to really hit the mainstream console crowd. I presume that people liked it for the story and the characters, because there is a lot better combat, exploration and inventory systems in other games.