Slowtrain

I never played 2, but iirc 1 was really atmospheric. It was like being right in the movie. It was also dang hard, too.

Bioshock is kind of an odd game for me as far as atmosphere goes. It certainly looks striking. And, especially if you like the artistic style of the visuals, that can certainly hold a lot of appeal. But for me, the game never really FELT like it was in an underwater city for the most part. There were a few times, especially toward the beginning, where the underwater aspect of the gameworld was made more obvious, but for the most part I tended to toatally forget that I was underwater. I think they really missed the boat (so to speak) on untilizing an underwater enviorment to any real effect. When I think cool underwater stuff what comes to mind is the underwater level of Deus Ex. THAT was sweet. What an amazing game. SO much variety. And so well utilized.

I remember one of the devs from Microforte ripping on his own game (after the fact) for being completely and utterly lacking in tactics, despite the name. I still enjoyed it though. the first 2/3 of fo:t were pretty good. last 1/3 were... awful. sadly, the complaints we seen most often regarding fo:t were the typical hardcore fo nonsense. fur on deathclaws? how DARE they! HA! Good Fun! Now that you mention it I don't think I ever actually finished the game. I replayed it 4 or 5 times, but each time never made it past more than 1 or 2 of the final robot missions. The raider missions in the early part of the game were my favorite. Each set of missions (raiders, deathclaws, supermutants, reavers, robots) seemed to get a little less interesting though. Tha absolute and utter outrage about hairy deathclaws remains one of my most lol Fallout fanbase moments.

I remember one of the devs from Microforte ripping on his own game (after the fact) for being completely and utterly lacking in tactics, despite the name. I still enjoyed it though.

Definitely. The art director and some of the developers spent a couple weeks in Kenya and it shows. Big time. Some of the design decisions however are really disappointing. Its a little bizarre that they would work so hard to get one aspect of the game so spot on, then just kick the can on so much other stuff. Still, I can wander around unfettered in the bush for hours though, so there's still some good. Good atmosphere goes miles towards making a game playable for me though. VIsuals obviously, but also ambient sound, background music, accents and languages. WHen a gameworld and its environement really feels solid, I can forgive an awful lot. There's a certain pleasure to had just kind of rolling around in a well-created world even if some of the stuff that happens in it is kinda meh.

So, I've been playing Far Cry 2 a lot for the last month or so. Its not a great game, really, but the sense of atmosphere the game has really makes up for a lot of faults (at least for me). Anyway, I appear to be drawing near the end of the game, and I am looking for another game that has a really well done and powerful atmosphere to it. By which I mean, the gameworld has a sense of place and time that is very strongly realized; the sense of being in an existing world is very strong. I'm curious if any of you have any particular games that you felt worked very well along those lines. It doesn't matter what place and time the atmosphere is. It could be a futuristic city or a medieval countryside or whatever. Some examples I can think of that I have played would be Thief, Fallout, System Shock 2, and STALKER. Do you guys have any personal favorites that you would recommend?

DO you remember the totally awesome zombie mod for HL? They Hunger. It was a three part mod. Very extensive. You play some guy in the country who finds himself in the middle of a zombie invasion. I only ever got to play the first 2 parts. It was one of those rare mods that was better (at least in feel if not production values) than the game it modded. One of the very very few playing experiences that actually had me "scared". The crypt/graveyard/church sequence in the first episode was pretty unnerving.

I thought the first three levels Half Life were great. Good mood and feel. Well done weapons. Creepy. Verging on survival horror. It all went down the crapper later though. And what was with that ridiculous level where all you did was jump around inside a processing plant or something? Horrible horrible horrible. The soldier AI was pretty close to revolutionary as far as single player fps gaming experiences.

jam with puss. Now that's good eating.

I remeber an interview with Tim Cain in which he talked about the design of Fallout. In it, he said that the point of the joinable NPCS was to provide some help through portions of the game. They were not intended to be with the pc from start to finish. The developers vision of Fallout was that of a lone wanderer in the wastes. You were supposed to begin the game alone and finish it alone. SO it is understanable that the npcs are not extactly robust in either ganeplay optrions or personality. In Fallout 2 of course, a lot more attention was given to the NPCS of course, due to their popularity in the first game. The ramping up of the joinable NPCS was one of the biggest advancements of the second game..

I have no problems with Fallout 3 having radscorpons or radelephants or radsalmon or whatever. Stuff like that doesn't bother me. Its a game. They can put in whatever they want. MC's post merely piqued my curiosity of how widepsread scorpions actually are in the US. My post was not intended in any way to be an attack on Fallout 3 or Bethesda or game design in general. WHich was why your post seemed a little aggressive to me, since I really wasn't intending to be attacking anyone. Thank you for your clarification.

Are you being unduly antagonistic? I can't tell. If you are, let me know and I will be happy to antag right back. Otherwise, peace. @mc: Only misleading in the sense that your post gave the impression that scorpions can live anywhere it isn't cold all the time. Which would have been most of the US. I wasn't being critical in any way. Your post just made me curious as to how widespread scorpions were in the US. SO I looked it up.

Scorpians are all over. Deserts, tropical rainforests, temperate environments, mountainous, or cave biotopes. As long as it's not cold year round, they're there. Here's species that lives in Maryland now: I hadn't realized that scorpions were that widespread in the US. I checked wikipedia and your statement appears to be slightly misleading. Scorpions are only found in 31 of 50 US states. Maryland does in fact happen to be one. I wonder if Bethesda knew this or if they just got lucky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpion edit: I hasten to add that 31 of 50 is way more than I thought. I had thought them to be restricted to the desert SW/Texas of the US.

So are you saying that you believe ghosts are imprints of a former human AND that you don't believe these imprints exist? Of course. There are many possible frameworks. Perhaps ghosts are actually aliens. Science may or may not have a framework at the moment, but that does not preclude the possibility of a framework existing. Again it is important to note here that I am not arguing that ghosts exist, as a proven fact, I am simply stating that I don't believe or knowledge has advanced to such a point that we have total knowledge of all possibilties. I would say that we don't yet know all that is physically possible. There's no real equation between ghosts and unicorns. Our knowledge of our world has advanced to the point where we know that unicorns, ie horse-like creatures with a horn on their head that like to lie in the laps of virgin females, do not exist. Explorers have past hither and yon throughout the world and haven't seen one. Nor do people randomly report seeing them even anecdotally. Not really. Its more about recognizing that my belief (or lack thereof) does not preclude the existence of something, and recognizing that there are still limits to what humans know and experience.

In the spirit of agreement, I suggest we retitle this thread "Wishful Thinking - let's try to take it seriously." Hey there, blue, I didn't know you were still around. *waves*

I don't believe in "ghosts" per se, since no one has ever produced proof of one despite thousands of years of looking, nonetheless I remain open to their existence and spend a decent amount of time conversing with those who do believe. By ghost, you mean a spirit of a dead human? Or what? SOmething else?

Eh, it's just a theory. Probably no truth to such at all. Black Triangles are a pretty common UFO sighting though so there are some specific theories related to them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(UFO)

@HK: I remember when you posted that link to that story once before. Believe it or not this line still cracks me up. I quoted it before and I am going to do again because I love it so much. . lol. Who the hell would carry a pistol and a sword and staff on a paranormal investigation? I wonder if he was wearing chainmail and a cape.

Like taks, I am an atheist, but I see no reason that ghosts must link directly to religion. If ghosts exist more likely than not they have been co-opted by religion to serve a religious purpose, but are not religious entities themselves. Usually, when discussing paranormal entities, a distinction is drawn between "ghosts", as generally being in some connected to something that once existed as a human, and "non-human" entities which never existed as a human. Maleveolence and evil is rarely associated with ghosts but rather with non-human entities. Non-human entities may also have been co-opted by religion as demons and devils and what not.

One of the theories on that (and other Triangle sightings) is that is was the Aurora project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)

Can you be more specific? Establishing a working definition of what would constitute a ghost would seem pretty critical. "ghosts" might exist for example, but they might not be the disembodied remains of departed humans. @taks: not that I am disagreeing with you but what it is about the concept of "ghosts" that makes you see their potential existence as so less possible than UFOs?

There's no doubt that paranormal investigation is "fringe" science. I mean, it is out there in a space where no one really knows anything. It is going to be a lot of hard work in creating hypotheses, testing them, then discarding or refining them and testing again. Over and over and over. And ultimately there might very well not even be anything there to find. But all science was once "fringe" so there is not really an excuse for not doing it right to begin with. Paranormal investigators don't appear to lack interesting ideas and concepts; many of them do appear to lack the rigor and/or resources to actually test those ideas and concepts properly, however. Remember "From Beyond" by HPL? Awesome stuff.

But that's my point, the claimer claims to have got it FROM the UFO. The person hearing the claim only see a weird metal; the claimer's experience though is something that can't be passed on, which is the problem with proving most of the unusual phenomena claimed to exist in the world. I agree. WHich is why I think "proof" can only happen when anyone who wants to can duplicate the experience by following a known methodolgy. edit: Which is why the onus is on paranormal investigators to establish a methodology rather than post photos of "orbs" on their webesites.

To me, it doesn't even need to be that specific at first. The first step would be to establish if there is any correlation between the commonly accepted phenomena that indicate paranormal acitivity and a haunted location. If you can find these phenomena anywhere, then that either means that all locations are haunted or that the phenomena are not in fact neccssarily indicative of paranormal activity. Paranormal investigators need to spend less time investigating "haunted" locations and more time investigating non-haunted locations as well as more time in a controlled laboratory environment, so control baselines for phenomena can be established. From what I understand most phenomena that are allegedly indictors of paranormal are also capable of being produced by a variety of non-paranormal events. For mr, they don't work even remotely as proof since most paranormal investigators don't rigorously control the test environment. I mean, if you really want to validate EVPs as potential proof, you would need to completely seal the test area from any sort of radio waves or exterior sound. You would also need to perform the same tests in a labaortory environment as in a haunted enviroment so you have a control. Youwould also have to set a criteris for what consitutes an EVP. Would a sudden loud burst of static be enough? Or would it actually need to be a voice speaking in very discernible words? EVPS are of course for the most part a total joke. lol.

But what would that be proof of? It would only be proof that I possess a piece of metal that no one has ever seen before. And that is pretty interesting in and of itself. But there is no proof to support a logic jump of: that piece of metal came from a UFO. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, there is no evidence to support such a claim. Its like the Patterson-Gilman film. SOme people think its fake, some people think its real. The battle lines have been drawn for years. But it doesn't really matter whether it is genuine or not. Since such an experience has never been duplicated, its more of a curiosity rather than proof.