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Slowtrain

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Everything posted by Slowtrain

  1. I'm not really saying that though, since "downward spiral" has negative connotations. The advancement in graphics has been a great thing. I love it. and there are quality games being made as well. I just don't think that story, gameplay and characters have moved so impressively forward as pixies does. As far as Bioshock goes, I'll just say that I don't have anything positive to say about it. Except that it's pretty.
  2. I would also add that I don't agree with this. Graphics have advanced hugely of course; the ability to represent things visually on a screen is so far beyond what was once the case that I still can't believe some of the things I see when I play games today. But gameplay, story, characters? Sure some games implement them better than others, but overall there has been no real overall advancement in any of these from 10 years ago. I would argue in fact that in order to widen their appeal games have lost much of the complexity and originality they used to have.
  3. Yeah, I'm not saying one system is better than the other, only that how we view a score depends on what we learned when we were younger. When I see someone give a game a 9, I immediately think that they are indicitating this is one of the best games they've ever played, just short of being a classic. Nowadays I have to stop and think again, no wait, that's not what a 9 means anymore. Its just interesting how times change what things mean.
  4. Game ratings have become a lot more lenient over the years. I remember when CGW used to regularly give out scores of 12, 18, 26, 32% on a hundred point skill. During my formative years, giving a game a 9 or a 90 meant is was one of the best games you had ever played and had nothing bad to say about. Giving a game a 10, or close to it, meant that it was an all time classic, something that should be held up and lauded from all corner of the earth and would likely never be surpassed. Nowadays, a 10 seems to mean "a game works and I enjoyed it". Its kind of funny actually.
  5. Eh. I've played plenty of PC games that had keys that didn't reassign properly or at all. I think STALKER had some. FC2 may be a console port, but nothing I've seen in the time I've played screams port. Yes, the PC version has save points, but it also has the ability to save anywhere and quicksave (which I don't use and I think should have been left out, using only save points makes the game much more interesting). The controls, notably the mouse, seen fine. If it is a port, it is a good one and I have no complaints.
  6. The wire stock is the part from behind the trigger to where it goes into your shoulder. The HK is pretty unmistakable. The AK is also unmistakable. It has a lot of wood. When you hold the weapon you can see the brown up by the barrel and down by the shoulder. The idle animation, which plays after several seconds of standing around doing nothing, shows it clearly.
  7. This is the only place I am going to disagree with you. I don't even have the camo suit and stealth is awesome. I've cleaned out entire guard posts with a silence pistol and the machete. I am currently torn between buying the camo suit or buying a silenced MP5 with and some better ammo carriers. Yes, in the bigger installations stealth is harder because there are so many more eyes. But even still I was able to sneak all the way in to the airfield and get right up next to an mission target before a guard saw me. Things went to hell at that point of course, but eh, its an FPS not Thief. Its funny, but I don't even notice the respawning. I guess it has to do with play style. I will say that unlike STALKER guards do not respaqn in an area you are in. I had a huge battle at the railyard and afterwards spent about 30 minutes searching the area thoroughly and no guards showed up or spawned in. In STALKER, I would have had about 2 minutes to get myself out of there before a wave of new bandits showed up.
  8. I do agree STALKER was slightly more complex, mostly because it had large numbers of people who weren't trying to kill you, which is my one main beef about FC2, the complete lack of a non-combatant population and/or simply non-hostile population. But other than that I don't see much more complexity in STALKER than in FC2. STALKER had an inventory, yes, and most of the weapons had selectable fire options, and attachments could be actually removed and or attached to some weapons. STALKER made you eat a lot and thus carry food around. STALKER had armor. But those are all pretty minor things. All the major elements, random and reptitive missions, faction interaction, repawning guards and enemies, world exploration and goodie hunting (artifacts vs diamonds), are incredibly similar. FC2 only lacks mutants and radiation.
  9. Don't they have outlines drawings you can sort of match? Assault Rifle Infos:
  10. I love STALKER:SOC, but the trading system in it was under-developed, under-utilized and pretty much unneccessary considering the insane amount of gear lying around the world and on enemies bodies. The only thing that kind of saved it was when armor degredation was introduced in the first patch, since suddenly at that point it became neccessary to buy replacement armor constantly. STALKER is a great game, but it's got quite a few design problems. As far as the respawning goes, perhaps the devs will reduce it in a patch. I always find it curious that some developers go so ape-**** on respawning when so many gamers seem to really dislike it. Respawning enemies seem to ALWAYS generate irate complaints, yet developers seem to still find it neccessary to go nuts with it for some reason. I think it would be cool if the AI would actually have to roll out a troop transport from the city and drive it to a post to repopulate the post with guards. That I think would help immensely with downplaying the magical restoration of troops that were just killed.
  11. Well, according to the backstory there are a ton of mercs in country because of the factional conflict. Most of the important movers and shakers of the factions and underground are in fact, black.
  12. Stealth is actually pretty effective, even if the manual only subtly mentions the fact. I've been sleeping away the days in a safehouse then traveling at night on foot with the machete and silenced pistol, swimming down the rivers and stuff. Unlike STALKER, stealth kills actually work I think his name is Clyde? Sort of a young guy with black hair. I just took the first one offered. lol. I flipped through the list but none of the seemed any more appealing than the others. I think he is anglo-cuban or something. I did like the super variation on all the potential characters. It was nice not being Joe Smith, US supermerc.
  13. This is a tough question to answer. Its not a super linear scripted game like Half Life, but its not as empty and pointless as Crysis. Its kind of a cross between a shooter and a survival resource game. You are expected to wander about trying to find stuff to make yourself a better soldier. SO exploration/staying off the roads/poking your nose into remote areas kind of comes with the territory. WHen you go on missions for factions, its still sort of the same thing. You can fight your way down a road or take a less traveled path. If you are really looking for a tight linear game like Half life where every moment has a clear purpose and the devs have carefully plotted your every move, you probably will find Far Cry 2 somewhat tedious. Maybe. I don't know. Its definitely not a rpg. Its a shooter where you get to interact with quite a few people in the world and explore that world. I mean your basically droped into the middle of a small country and you have to survive and thrive. How you choose to go about such is your choice. So its not at all like Crysis. Its much more like STALKER. But still very different. I would rate the combat as decent so far. But not FEAR level. On normal difficulty it seems less difficult than other shooters I have played. The weapons do have conditions and you can tell just be looking at them what shape they are in. I have an RPG that is covered with rust and looks really gross. I fired it at a munitions truck and the rocket sort of spun out of the barrel danced around on the ground about 10 meters ahead of me then exploded. It was totally awesome. I lol'ed. My next shot hit the back of the truck though. WHen you buy weapons from the armsdealers however they are all in perfect condition. However, they do slowly degrade, but it hasn't been something I have noticed.
  14. My buddy, the Cuban woman, saved me once, but then I got killed again right away as soon as she put me down and told me to be more careful. Ooops. I think she probably gave up on me as an utter incompetent.
  15. The only thing I can suggest would be to play on a lower difficulty. Seriously, when I first played on Normal difficulty combat was not terribly difficult. I could pretty much walk up to four man guard post and take it out with little pain. I'm sure that the larger installations would be correspondingly more difficult, but for the typical post that guards most of the roads, not so much. On Hard difficulty the posts have more soldiers and the combat is tougher and getting by them is more about avoidance than confrontation since the pain inflicted is more than the rewards are worth and resources need to be conserved for the primary objective. To me that seems more enjoyable. Anway, as a caveat, I should add that resapwns really don't bother me at all in games for the most part, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
  16. You have to pick up their weapons and unload them. (the unloading happens automatically) then pick your weapon back up. (You can only carry one weapon of a type at a time) I run out all the time. WIthout any equipment upgrades, you can only carry about 3 30 round magazines for your assult rifle. I have been done to like 10 rounds and almost no health stumbling through the night bush. Haven't played it yet.
  17. I don't know. I've taken about 5, I think, of my first supply. I don't take them immediately when I first have an attack, but hold off until the fits seems to be getting worse. I hope that isn't killing me. I, too, am worried about running out at a bad time. Scawy. You know, I just looked at the paper map that came with the game, thinking maybe it could be helpful (which it might sorta be), and noticed that the gameworld is 2x the size I thought it was! There's the whole southern districit which I didn't even know existed! Cripes. Its a huge gameworld.
  18. Yeah, it did have the online activation apparently. I wasn't aware of that when I bought it, but it wouldn't have made a difference. For me, personally, it doesn't make much sense to choose what games I buy or don't buy based on the DRM scheme. For me, there are so few games that I am really interested in and if I do find a game that looks interesting and appears to be mostly bug free, then I am going to buy it regardless of the DRM. Worrying about what might or might not go wrong with the DRM seems to me a lot like worrying about being struck by lightning and consequently never going outside. Its just not a way that I am ever going to choose to live my life. But, I probably should have mentioned the DRM in the original post given the attention DRM is getting these days. So thanks for doing so.
  19. So I've been playing Far Cry 2 for a bit and thought I would post some general thoughts about the game for anyone who is thinking of picking it up. Bear in mind, I am still pretty early in what is supposedly a fairly lengthy single-player campaign, so these thoughts may or may not hold up over the long haul. This is pretty much just some general observations about gameplay without being too specific about anything. SO not much in the way of potential spoilers. Basically Far Cry 2 is a free-roaming shooter. You choose to play as one of several pre-defined characters and are plopped down in the middle of a small African nation and are allowed to go anywhere you want at any time, taking whatever risks you choose. There is a main story, which appears to unfold in a series of main quest missions, which you are mostly able to pick up as you see fit. There are also missions for each of several different factions. As well as freelance adventuring and scavenging. Although during the introduction (which is quite well done) and tutorial section you do see civilians, once the "real" game starts the entire country appears to be one huge combat zone with a handful of people who are on your side, a handful of quest related persons, and everybody else who is carrying rifles and pointing them at you. The civilians and non-combatants have all aparently fled between the end of the tutorial and the start of the game. lol. The main city, which is where the various factions are headquartered has a semi cease-fire, so you can walk around without being attacked, as long as you don't initiate combat or go into an off-limits area. The basic gameplay consists of taking quests to either further the story or acquire various helpful items and considerations and a lot of freelance exploring. The primary carrot for the exploration part of the game is diamonds. There is a wide variety of weapons, upgrades, and equipment enhancements that can be acquired from the arms dealers, all of which cost mucho diamonds. Diamonds here function as the de facto currency of this war-torn country. You also need to curry favor with the arms dealers by doing quests for them for which they reward you by offering better gear for sale. DIamonds are scattered about the country in small amounts; the more you can find, the better the gear you can afford. It's an interesting, somewhat non-linear, approach to the more usual way of how FPS games dole out new weapons. You also recieve diamonds as compensations for quests as well. There also appears to be at least one thing related to the main quest that you also find in your explorations. You can develop relationships with other mercs termed "buddies" (a little goofy but what the hey) and they will help you out in various ways, offering suggestions of different ways to complete quests, coming to help you if you are in big trouble in combat and so forth. As an FPS of course, this game is all about combat. Your enemies are a variety of thugs, soldeirs, mercs and general ne'er-do-wells. I started my first game on normal, but after playing for a while, decided that seemed too easy, and started a second game on hard (there is a super-hard difficulty as well). ANd yes, at this level combat is rather challenging. The country is covered with a variety of installations ranging from little 2 soldier scout teams to larger squad sized outposts that guard most of the roads to apparently entire forts. For combat you have you usual assortment of rifles, pistols, grenade launchers, mortars, rpgs, submachine guns, sniper rifles and what not. You can only carry four weapons total from each particular category, so you need to choose what you carry based on how you like to fight. The biggest difficulty so far in combat is that the AI is darn hard to see amongst all the trees and bushes, but once combat starts they appear not to have much difficulty seeing you. Still in general, I find it works well enough to break off an attack and scoot for cover and lose yourself in the bush. The AI seems reasonably limited in its ability to detect you if you go about things in a reasonably stealthy manner. I tried to set up one situation where I was going to kill all the guards with a machete as they came out to take a wee, since they all semed to like to wee in the same spot, but that didn't really work out. heh. So far overall, its a pretty good FPS experience. A few minor complaints: The map interface is cumbersome, and to find your way around you HAVE to keep opening your map. Constantly. Realistic, I suppose but a bit tedious. Plus the map has a tendency to block most of your view. The HUD is basically non-existent. Most of the time, there is nothing on your screen except your view of the world. I can guess that the developers were intentionally going for this, but not being able to see your health level at a glance is more distracting than immersive. I have to keep pressing the Reload key which briefly brings up the info. There are a lot of vehicles in the game and they are very driveable. Not at all twitchy or hard to control which is good. And the country is BIG. So its nice to have all these jeeps and stuff to motor around in. Problem is that there are so many outposts scattered about as well as patrol jeeps, that driving a vehicle of your own is like standing up and screaming "Shoot me, Please!" at the top of your lungs. I drove around a bit early, then gave it up in favor of a more stealthy off-road and on foot approach which seems to do a lot better at avoiding attention. But it takes a bit of time to get from place to place. Overall, its a pretty interesting and complex shooter so far. My guess is it lacks any super-dramatic scripted story-line given its desire to be so open and freeform, but like I said it is still way to early to say for sure. It's really kind of a cross between the original Far Cry and STALKER, which I guess is pretty good.
  20. As MC says, if a MMORPG fails to maintain its initial numbers then it is mostly a failure. One can expect any new MMORPG to generate some initial attention as people go to try it out. SO the pressure is on any new developer in the MMORPG market to put out a really high quality product right from the start since they have to hold the initial subscriptions then build from there. If people start deserting and returning to whatever they were playing before, then the game is lost. I'm not saying no game can compete with WoW. That would be ridiculous. And I do think this one has as good as shot as anything. It's a risky and ambitious move though. It's a big investment to create something that can compete with something as entrenched as WoW. ANd of course, it puts pressure on WoW to upgrade its own game, since WoW doesn't want to lose any subscribers that they already have. A big question is how many gamers will be willing to pay multiple monthly subscription fees for mmorpgs on an ongoing basis. How many mmorpgs can one realistically play at a time? MMORPGS also generally have long life spans. Gamers play the same one for quite a long time. In the single player market, people play games for a week or so, then are ready for a new one. There's a lot more potential for breaking in new titles there.
  21. Its a pretty ambitious undertaking to compete with WoW at the moment. A developer has to think about a) how many people who are not already playing WoW can be convinced to play this new MMORPG. But WoW may have already cornered a large section of the market on potential MMORPG'ers. Those who are left maybe don't really want to play MMORPGs because if they did, they would already be playing WoW b) how many people can a new MMORPG lure away from WoW. Which is obviously a tough sell. People are reluctant to leave what they already know. c) how many people can be convinced to maintain full time subscriptions to multiple mmorpgs, especially given the dedication one has to have to a single game to really pursue. It could be done, of course, but WoW is like Windows. It is so entrenched and iconic that even if better and cheaper products are available, those other products fail to make much of a dent in the user base. The alternate products always have some users and devotees, but they are still not going to generate the huge dollars. And I am assuming that the goal here is big dollars along the lines of WoW. If they are willing to settle for smaller money and a smaller market, then it's not such an ambitious undertaking.
  22. heh. I wish. I'm afraid my fantasies are sadly far more prosiac than that. Mostly having to do with having enough money and being able to pursue my interest rather than the interests of others. Then why did SWG crash and burn so spectacularly? a poopy game is still a poopy game! Regardless of the dork factor. Even ninjas can't save a bad game.
  23. WoW is a beast. The chance of another mmorpg getting those kind of numbers is low. Although, if any IP has a chance to do so, it is probably Star Wars. Doesn't every dork on the planet want to be a jedi or a sith or Han Solo?
  24. Too late. It started sucking years ago.
  25. Started Far Cry 2. Seems pretty OK so far. I accidentally set the countryside on fire with my flamethrower. oops. Then I dropped my best rifle in the grass and couldn't find it again so I had to pick up some dead guys rusted piece of junk rifle. Great. And oh, I keep throwing grenades when I'm trying to lean and look around corners. Going to have to reassign that Q key, I think. ANd I turned off the music. Game is much more immersive without it.
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