Slowtrain

Yeah, I know. but I had never seen an official stance on the rationale behind it. I'm not oppposed to health regen per se, but I think the rationale of avoiding health pickups because they require exploring a level is really super super weak.

No argument from me. It may have been clunky, but its influence was huge. And it is still, even by today standards, very good at what it does. Bioshock and FO3 are almost as clunky shooting-wise as DX was. Both games would have been vastly improved with better fps combat. It makes you appreciate that the fps combat in even a mediocre shooter like Far Cry 2 is the result of a lot of work.

Its not that it doesn't work. Its more that it way too easy in most places, but in a few places it's impossible. Cattle prod + sneak can get you through the whole game almost. But not quite. ANd, iirc, you have to kill Simons, Anna, and Gunther but that's it.

lol. That thing was awesome with the tranq darts though. Pop out, shoot someone, then they would run around for about 5 seconds and then collapse. It was pretty overpowered actually. My vote for stupidest weapon in DX was the PS20, tiny single shot plasma gun. It only has ONE shot and you could only carry ONE gun at a time and it almost never killed anything with its single shot even at max skill level.

I do agree that a) sneaking wasn't really implemented all that well b) combat was hideously clunky. Many of these fps/adventure/crpg hybrids seem to suffer from clunky fps combat. Bioshock and FO3 also, for example. but, I think the levels were pretty awesome for exploration. Were they of Thief-level quality? No, but how many games have levels like those.

Yeah, that's what she's talking about. She could have been a bit more clear, but I got her meaning. I think she has a good point about games needing to be more accessable, but I haven't seen her present a compelling arguement on how 'more accessable' nessarily hurts innovation or quality. I wouldn't say innovation and quality. I would say complexity. And I don't think it has to, by definition, but that appears to be the current trend in development. A lot of games today are pretty high quality; god knows, they cost enough. WHere else does all the money go?

Hard to say. Its very similar yet very different. I guess it would depend what you liked about the first one and why you lost interest. The core gameplay of traveling through the zone, collecting artifacts, and shooting things is still the same. The "story" is equally non-existent in both games There is a big emphasis on the faction wars in CLear Sky. (Clear Sky is one of the factions in the game as well) All the major factions are constantly fighting each other and you can choose to join or not. It gives the game a different feel from the first game. The artifact and trade and and weapon and armor systems have both been greatly improved. The AI throws grenades all over the place now. I don't think the levels are as interesting or as well-utilized as in the first game. I prefer the first one to the second, overall. I find it unlikely that if you didn't like the first, that then you would like the second. But maybe.

Gratuitous use of smileys is always spam.

Seconded! The 80's had the best action-comedies, by far. I'm not a big fan of action comedies as a rule. They usually consist of blowing somebody's head off, than cracking off a one liner. Beverly Hills Cop did the action/comedy thing well though. Better than most. Eddie Murphy made that movie.

Stalker: Clear Sky seemed reasonably difficult. When I first started it, I was getting totally wasted, because I was coming off Far Cry 2, which was pretty easy and my FPS skills were down. Once I played STALKER for a while I got back up to speed. But it is still challenging. ANd I only played it on medium difficulty. ANything higher would probably be plenty hard.

- your science is too cruel. smiley spam

Deus Ex 3 complete with regenerating health. Stolen from the Deus Ex 3 forums.

That's right, I forgot about Donald as Himmler. lol. Awesome casting. Next time I watch I'll look for old Rutger. Never noticed him there before. And I will say that the movie is clunky and not nearly as in-depth as the book, but that is nearly always a trade-off of book to screen, so for the most part it rarely bothers me. As long as the movie can distill some sort of essence from the book, I'm usually ok with it.

I would assume MC, that you've read every Alistair Maclean novel?

I looked it up on IMDB and this appears to be correct. Did you actually know that, Kelverin? Or did you look it up? I've never heard of it.

I love the book, too. My copy is all dog-eared and torn up from reading it on trains. The movie was uneven, but Donald Sutherland was great. Larry Hagman was amusing in his incompetence. Treat Williams was comfortably reassuring as the American Ranger Who Knows What He Is Doing. Michael Caine is just about always awesome. And Robert Duvall was suitably menancing and mysterious in his small role. Really a great cast. That is probably what makes the movie. I vaguely remember a movie about some merc or troubleshooter who has to resuce a diamond magnates daughter. Is that the one? TOo much klate night TV grows foggy after a while. And yes, Robocop is a badass film. Another high point of 80's action. Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is also a favorite of mine.

SLy is cool. And Nighthawks is a fab action movie. Other great action films are The Dogs of War and The Eagle has Landed. The 80's had its high points in action movies. The ones that come to mind are probably Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop, and Lethal Weapon, although Lethal Weapon was horribly tainted by its string of increasingly inane serio-comic sequels. For me, movies like Cobra, Raw Deal, COmmando, Total Recall, The Running Man were cold and joyless experiences that completely stripped the fun out of the action movie genre. Others like Missing in Action were more fun, but ultimately too bland to be remembered fondly. I didn't realize anybody but me had even watched The Eiger Sanction. edit: also in the 80's: The Terminator and Aliens. Can't forget those

FOr me, the action movies of the 80's, such as Raw Deal and Commando aren't nearly on the same level of entertainment as the action movies of the 50's, 60's, and early 70's, especially the war movies. Ther are great non-war action epics like The Killer Elite and Bullitt and The Magificent Seven and The Wild Bunch. To me all those all seem to have a certain flair and passion that the 80's could never muster. All the 80's could deliver was a body count. And that's not enough.

Bah, once you have Jeep with a Grenade launcher no spawning can hurt you :D I finished it once, found all the AKs and diamonds even. Never playing it again though. That ultimately is the reason why the constant resapwning doesn't bother me; the game really isn't very hard. As Majek said, once you have the jeep with either of the cannons, you can just drive all over the place and blow the crap out of everythin without even leaving your jeep. Every once in a while an enemey will hit you with an rpg, but al you have to do is switch to a different jeep, of which there are plenty. I'm not saying the the respawning is good, only that for me, it is poor game design that is mostly ignorable.

I like tossing a mine in their path. Mines are awesome.

Is there really going to be one? Or are you just hoping?

Yes, I do agree. Sadly. Games are just too expensive these days to make them anything other than as accessible as possible. I'll still complain about it though.

Well, maybe Bioshock's success has bought him the freedom to do something more interesting now.

ANd the writing was really the best part of Bioshock anyway. SO I guess it doesn't really disqualify him from this thread. It was the rest of the game that was so tedious. Did Levine actually write Bioshock himself? Or did he just control the overall design of the game?