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Molotov

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Everything posted by Molotov

  1. The warning letters are symptomatic of the problem - namely that anti-piracy measures are largely toothless. Sure, you get the occasional lawsuit from the music industry now and then, and it makes the news, but by and large most people know they've got a very, very good chance of never being that guy who gets sued. As an example, my brother, when he was living in Florida, filled up two terabyte HDs with nothing but pirated flicks. He got warning letters from his ISP a total of three times, and even had his 'net shut off once. He just switched providers. The occasional, symbolic lawsuit just isn't enough to make a dent in piracy, and I dunno what is, honestly. I absolutely hate Ubisoft's DRM scheme, and avoided buying games I wanted to buy because of it, but I don't see a better solution, even if it isn't foolproof.
  2. That would be very effective - but unfortunately quite illegal. Alright, how 'bout one that simply sends the IP address of the user and the name of the game pirated to, say, an FBI server?
  3. Maybe it's just me, but I think you could make a dent in piracy simply with a concerted effort to rename it. If it were called, say, "nutlicking" instead, I'm not so sure you'd have quite as many fat kids eager to claim the label. I'd also like to see developers given free rein to upload copies of their games to popular torrent sites, with trojans aplenty included. I'd go for ones that brick whatever they're downloaded onto.
  4. I can't read German either, but the picture in the German article simply looks like a line-crossing ceremony, which is done in a whole lot of Western navies, US and British included.
  5. I know it's pretty pointless, given that this game's been out for a good long while and everyone's done playing it, not to mention that there's not going to be a sequel, but I figured I'd rant for a bit just for the hell of it. It's a fun game, don't get me wrong, and I don't regret picking it up, but I do understand why it got the mediocre reviews that it did, which are of course what kept me from buying it when it first came out. The thing that bothers me the most, honestly, is the stealth. It's just such a ridiculous system. I can camp out twenty feet from some dude staring right at me down a corridor, in plain sight, just because I'm crouching and wearing improved digital camouflage? And as for suppressing weapons...dear Jebus. I throw a 'silencer' on a .45 and suddenly I can put a magazine through it while standing a foot behind a guy and he won't even turn around. Oh, and in order to make an assault rifle whisper quiet, apparently you just need subsonic ammo. Who knew? The vast majority of .45 loads are subsonic, of course, yet somehow still manage to make a hell of a bang. There's also the small problem of being able to shoot a guy standing right next to another guy and not having said other guy hear it when his buddy suddenly slumps to the ground - or, more accurately, is lifted off of his feet, does a double gainer, and ends up halfway across the room 'cause he got tagged with a 9mm round - and, presumably, drops that seven pound assault rifle he was holding onto a hardwood floor. It's possible to make good stealth games. It's even possible to make good stealth espionage games. We know this, 'cause they're out there. AP's stealth system just isn't good. The bad guys could all be replaced with simple red boxes for all the relevance they have to actual human behavior. Play the game through any number of times, and you'll always find the same guy doing the same routine, customized to allow you to 'stealth' him no matter how little sense it makes. My favorite example is a mansion in Moscow: three guards, all staring pointlessly at a wall. They don't move. They don't do anything but stare at that wall until you kill them. Then there's the shooter mechanics and overall gameplay. Honestly, AP wouldn't have seemed remarkable in 1999 save maybe for the visuals. It's basically a GoldenEye corridor shooter, complete with 'Pistol Ammo' and 'Assault Rifle Ammo' dumps and health packs scattered throughout the levels. I mean, I wasn't expecting a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-style ammo system, but it would've been nice for a LITTLE nod to the notion that every single cartridge you find mind not work in your absurd .50 pistol. There's just no DEPTH to any of it. It feels like a bunch of very (and in some cases, very VERY) simple systems all working together to create the most soulless game possible. It functions, and it even functions enjoyably some of the time, and there's no doubt it's got an engaging storyline to counteract all the gameplay flaws, but I understand why it didn't take the world by storm.
  6. To be honest, I don't even use Chain Shot all that often - I think the only time I 'spammed' it was on a boss fight in Russia. The ability to line up critical headshots, from cover, without ever exposing yourself, is what makes pistols so ridiculously good in my book. Then again, I'm starting to think that stealth completely breaks the game regardless of what weapon you use.
  7. So I just finished my first-ever playthrough, Hard/Freelancer, and focused mostly on Stealth, Pistols, and Assault Rifles - maxed out Pistols and Assault Rifles, got I think Master Concealment in Stealth, and threw a few points elsewhere. Assault rifles saved my bacon in Saudi Arabia, because my pistol hit like a three year-old girl there, but by the time I was halfway through the game, I didn't need anything BUT the pistol. The assault rifle - I used the starting one the whole time - does alright, I supposed, but once you've got the pistol's Critical Shot and, especially, Chain Shot, it just seems faster to headshot everybody than try to fight recoil and whatnot with the AR, especially given how the Focus Aim or whatever skill sucks on the PC. Am I missing something about them? Should I stop rolling with Hamilton ARs and pick up a Rittergrupen or something? Or is the Pistols line just that godly?
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